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Alex grinned toothily, squinting slightly against the bright light before launching into the opening theme for the podcast, singing with his usual enthusiasm, and subsequent pitchiness, “Hello, good evening, and welcome! It’s time for us to have a lovely time. We timed the time it took to get to the venue – it took less time than we thought that it might do. Mark thought it would take an hour or two—” Alex gestured enthusiastically to the man. “—Ben didn’t though!” Another gesture, this time to the drummer. “Cos it took – no time at all! Because we’re all, well, here!”
This time he gestured emphatically to their surroundings, giving his most gap-toothed grin as the song wound up before turning to the band and gesturing for silence. “That’s enough. That’s enough! Hello, good evening and welcome to this latest episode of the Horne Section Podcast. Everyone shut up. We’re still not doing our normal format because, well, what even is normal anymore, but this should still be fun!”
He paused for the expected murmurs of agreement and dissent from the band before launching into the next segment. “Joe, I understand you’ve finished a new little ditty for the band, is that right?”
The trumpeter’s head listed forward, and Alex took it as a nod. “Whenever you’re ready, please.”
Joe’s head tilted even further forward before popping off of his shoulders and rolling across the ground to come to a sharp stop with a thump against a large rock, the soft, overripe flesh bursting open against the hard stone.
For one moment, Alex’s smile slipped, replaced by something like desperation, and he staggered forward, his eyes wild. “Joe,” he whispered, the name punching from his chest like a plea as he bent to gather the broken pieces together with shaking, dirty fingers that were cracked and raw.
Then, just as abruptly, he straightened, his wide grin back in place. “Not to worry, we’ll put you right in a jiffy,” he chirped, carrying the broken pieces of Joe’s head over to a nearby tree, dumping them unceremoniously on the ground before bending and grabbing a newly fallen green coconut. “Ah, here we are,” he said, bringing the coconut over to Joe and jamming it squarely between his shoulders. “Just like new! Don’t you think?”
The band didn’t respond, their own coconut heads in varying stages of decay, much like their bodies, made as they were from an assortment of rocks, driftwood, and seaweed, draped in torn remnants of clothing and netting.
Alex hummed airily as he observed the ‘band’, occasionally crossing to one or the other to adjust their bodies or the crude effigies of their instruments, equally haphazardly constructed from shells or whatever had been lying around the beach. He adjusted Mark’s grip on his saxophone and took a step back to give it a critical once-over.
“Alex.”
Alex froze for a brief moment before he started forward again with purpose, this time skirting around the band and crossing over to two gnarled palm tree stumps, grabbing a flat, thin piece of driftwood from the stump on the left before sitting on top of it, crossing one too-thin leg over the other and smiling at the vacant stump to his right as he rested the driftwood in his lap. “Yes, thank you, Greg,” he said pleasantly. “I, er, I’ve come up with a new game—”
“Alex!”
Alex’s smile faltered, and he looked away from the Greg seated on the stump next to him, smiling at him with that ever familiar half-fond, half-exasperated smile that seemed to always accompany the banter section these day, to stare at the other Greg, standing down the beach and staring at Alex as if he’d seen a ghost.
Frantically, Alex looked back at the Greg sat next to him, still looking at him expectantly as if waiting for him to continue his joke, before turning again to the other Greg, who had taken a few cautious steps forward, lifting his hands like he was trying to placate a wild animal.
Again, Alex looked at the Greg next to him, but when he blinked, that Greg seemed to waver, the image turning fuzzy before disappearing altogether. Alex looked down at his iPad, now just a piece of weathered driftwood clasped between two hands he barely recognised as his own, frail and smeared with dirt and what looked like dried blood.
He lifted a shaky hand to his face, his fingers trembling as they brushed against the unfamiliar length of his beard, snarled and matted with sweat, grime and sea salt.
As if from a long distance, he could hear the crash of the waves against the shore, his only constant for the past– how many days had it been? How many days since the cruise ship the Horne Section had been playing had been capsized by a storm?
How many days since he’d been washed ashore and stranded, convinced that he would never again see the man standing in front of him?
“Greg,” Alex whispered hoarsely, staggering to his feet, his driftwood ‘iPad’ falling to the sand. “Greg!”
He stumbled, pitching forward, but a pair of big, strong hands, achingly familiar and painfully foreign, caught him before he could hit the sand. “I’ve got you,” Greg said, and Alex’s eyes fluttered closed and he went limp in Greg’s arms.
The last thing he heard before darkness took him was Greg repeating the words Alex had so longed to hear that it felt like he was speaking to Alex’s soul: “I’ve got you.”
“Mr Davies?” a Black man asked in a heavy, unplaceable accent from Greg’s elbow.
Greg barely spared a sideways glance for the man, assuming from his white coat that he was a doctor. “Why’s his arm in a cast?” he asked, nodding toward the hospital room window that showed Alex sitting propped up in a hospital bed, his arm wrapped in stark white bandages. “I know I’m not family—”
Not legally, at least, and Greg was absolutely going to be revisiting that particular conversation as soon as they were back home and both Alex and Rachel were up for it, but the doctor just inclined his head. “Mr Horne’s wife gave us permission to discuss his medical condition with you,” he said, and Greg squeezed his eyes closed, his chest tight at Rachel’s foresight. “His arm was broken at some point – likely from the initial accident, though obviously he hasn’t been able to help us with the timeline – and didn’t set correctly. We’ve had to rebreak it.”
Greg swallowed, hard, and jerked a nod. The doctor hesitated for a moment before adding, something almost gentle in his voice, “That appears to be the worst of his injuries – mostly just minor cuts and abrasions otherwise. He’s malnourished, of course, and was severely dehydrated when he was brought in, but fluids, food and time will take care of that. As for the rest—”
“He was hallucinating,” Greg said sharply.
Again the doctor nodded. “His mind was protecting him,” he said simply. “It conjured up familiar, comfortable scenarios to spare him from the reality of what he was going through. And…” For the first time he hesitated, glancing up at Greg before finishing, “He was very lonely for a very long time.”
Greg didn’t even realise he’d reached out to grip the windowsill until he heard the plaster crack under his fingers and he quickly let go. “Will he get better?”
“Of course,” the doctor said, sounding almost surprised by the question. “The human mind has an amazing ability to heal itself. With time, and rest, and being surrounded by those who love him, I have no reason to doubt that he will be as he was.”
Greg jerked another nod and the doctor hesitated before reaching out to pat his arm gently. “You should get some sleep,” he said. “I understand that you haven’t left since you were both airlifted in.”
“I’m fine,” Greg said automatically, even if what he really meant was that there wasn’t a world in which he would be leaving Alex’s side.
“You’re not,” the doctor said firmly. “And he will need all of the support he can get, making it imperative that you get some rest as well.”
Greg just shook his head. “I’ll leave when he does.”
The doctor didn’t look surprised by that. “I’ll have the nurses bring you something to eat,” he said, before adding, “And you can go in and see him.”
Greg stared at him, his eyes wide. “Are you sure?” he asked, his heart in his throat at the memory of the last time Alex had seen him. “It won’t– won’t make things worse?”
“He asked to see you,” the doctor said, as if that answered the question. “And we will be right outside if either of you need anything. Just– take it slowly. He’s still very touch averse from being alone for so long, so wait for him to touch you first.”
Greg had done that once before, and he could do it again. Even though he hoped this time it would take less than ten years. Not that it mattered – he’d wait as long as it took.
There was never any doubt of that.
He nodded once more at the doctor and took a deep, steadying breath before knocking lightly on the hospital door and letting himself in.
Alex looked sharply over at him, his eyes too big in his pale, sunken features. Even after being bathed by the hospital, his hair and beard were still long and unkempt, and Greg’s fingers flexed instinctively at his urge to run them through the grey locks.
“Hi Greg,” Alex said, his voice small and a little hesitant.
Greg forced a smile as he took the seat next to Alex’s bed. “Hi Alex,” he said, resting his hand on the rail of the hospital bed, remembering what the doctor had said about touch. “How are you feeling?”
Alex shrugged and then winced like he regretted the movement. “Sore,” he said, and a strange, uncomfortable silence fell between them that Greg couldn’t find it in him to break. After a long moment, Alex cleared his throat. “Are you—”
He broke off and Greg looked sharply at him. “What, love?” he asked, as gently as he could.
“Are you really here?”
Alex’s voice was so small that it took everything in Greg not to immediately gather him in his arms, to pull him close and hold him until he believed that Greg really was there, and, if he had his way, would never leave him again. “Yeah, sweetheart,” he managed, his voice cracking. “I’m really here.”
Again silence fell thickly between them, though this time Greg was in no rush to interrupt it, using it to try to discreetly wipe his eyes. Not that his efforts at hiding it mattered, since Alex tracked the motion with those big, solemn eyes, though he made no effort to reach out for Greg.
When Greg finally felt like he’d managed to tamp down on his emotions, he asked, somewhat cautiously, “Did they tell you what happened?” Alex nodded wordlessly, and Greg hesitated before asking, “Do you know how long you were out there?”
Selfishly, he didn’t want to be the one to have to tell Alex, to have to watch him try to make sense. But Alex just nodded again. “They told me,” he said tonelessly.
Greg nodded as well. “Right.”
Alex cleared his throat again. “They said—”
He broke off and Greg’s hand twitched towards Alex’s. “What did they say?”
Alex glanced up at him and away again. “They said you were looking for me the whole time,” he mumbled.
“Of course I was,” Greg said, his heart pounding in his chest. “Everyone was.”
And everyone had, Rachel and half of the British comedians Greg had ever met, and even the members of the Horne Section once they’d all recovered from their own shipwreck injuries. But most of them could only come for a few days at a time, having responsibilities of their own to tend to back home.
Greg had responsibilities, too, but not a single one of them would’ve dragged him away from the search. “Sue me,” he’d told his agent brusquely when she’d called ostensibly to check in on the search, then in its sixth week, but mostly to remind him that he was meant to start filming.
Alex wet his lips before asking, “Did– did you ever think you wouldn’t find me?”
“Not once,” Greg said, just the hint of a growl in his voice.
Not when search and rescue changed the classification from ‘rescue’ to ‘recovery’, not when Rachel had told him she couldn’t keep looking for him because ‘the kids needed their only remaining parent’, not when Greg had spent an entire night holding fucking Tim Key while the man wept brokenly thinking he’d lost his best friend.
“They’d’ve had to chain me up to stop me,” he added, trying to make it sound like a joke, even if it was anything but.
But Alex just glanced at him again. “I’m sorry.”
“Love, you have nothing to be sorry for—”
Greg didn’t even realise he’d reached out for Alex until the man flinched away from his touch, and his hand fell to his side.
Again silence stretched between them, but Greg didn’t dare try to fill it, afraid if he so much as breathed the wrong way, Alex would retreat back into himself, or worse. After so long that Greg almost suggested seeing if the nurses could give him some more painkillers to help him sleep, Alex swallowed and traced his one good hand against the sheets. “I drank turtle blood.”
The non sequitur took Greg by so much surprise that he just gaped at Alex. “Sorry?”
“I read about it in an article,” Alex said. “A fisherman got stranded out at sea. He survived by drinking turtle blood. It– it hydrates you.”
“Right,” Greg said blankly. “How, er, how did it taste?”
Alex scrunched his nose. “Like something you’ve shell-dom had,” he said solemnly.
It took longer than it should have for the pun to land, and when it finally did, Greg let out a noise that was half-sob, half-wheeze. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he managed, and Alex’s lips almost twitched towards a smile.
“Sorry, Greg.”
“No you’re not,” Greg said, and he’d never been happier to say it. Because if Alex was resorting to absolute dogshit puns to make him laugh, it meant that despite everything – or because of everything – he was still in there.
He was still him.
He was still the silly idiot of a man that Greg had fallen in love with. And against all odds, against shipwrecks and deserted islands and a separation so painfully Greg had thought he might not survive it, they might actually be okay.
“I love you,” he said, because he had to, because it was the one thing he promised himself he would never again skimp on saying if he got the chance to say it one more time.
Again, Alex almost smiled, enough that Greg’s heart felt impossibly full. “I love you, too.”
Greg swallowed down the hundreds of other things he wanted to say, because there’d be time. They had time.
They were together again, and they had all the time in the world.
He cleared his throat and patted the rail of the hospital bed. “I should, er, I should let you get some rest,” he said, and Alex’s almost-smile faded, just slightly.
“Stay,” he said, for the first time reaching over to rest his thin, frail hand on top of Greg’s. “Please?”
Gently, so gently, as if he was afraid it might disappear if he moved too quickly, Greg lifted Alex’s hand so he could brush a soft kiss against his knuckles. “Of course,” he said, holding Alex’s hand between both of his. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
And he meant it more than he could ever say.