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Without really thinking about it, Hugh grabbed the nearest pen and thumbed the cap off of it, staring at the date-marked square as he put in the five-letter reminder, 'Chris'. The pen turned out to be a red biro; Hugh had a moment of wondering when exactly it had got mixed in with the blue and black options across his desk, but supposed that it didn't really matter. It made the note different, at least. Made it stand out. Other notes patterned the calendar, lunch with... and meeting for... and they were important, of course they were - they wouldn't be marked on there if they weren't - but Chris stood out to him as much as if he'd filled the square in with fluorescent marker. This did not, however, feel inappropriate.
This had all been happening for closer to a decade than hadn't, although events had evolved since those heady days of 2005. He remembered it being nothing in particular with Rory and something very particular with Frankie and he wondered if, after almost a decade, he was tiring.
"You're the one who can stop it though," Dara had told him. "Just refuse it. ...Or, you know. Do the drastic and leave the programme. You'll be dead to me afterwards, of course, but that's still an option."
He'd smiled as he'd said it, clearly joking, but Hugh had certainly thought about it. Not in terms of something he was actually planning to do, but at least as something that was some vague possibility. In the future, maybe--. One day, perhaps--. He wondered what circumstance would lead him to honestly want to leave; for the moment, despite everything, he couldn't think of anything. Perhaps there was more to staying somewhere than only knowing no reason why you should leave, but he didn't like to think about that too much. He'd make the decade, he was sure of that. Ongoing, twice-yearly, comfortable.
And it was comfortable, which surprised him. It had already been years - whole years! - since Frankie's departure; sometimes it felt like a lifetime away, sometimes as if it could have been yesterday. He'd tired, Hugh knew that much. To begin with, the years had bled into one another; there was the matter of actually recording the show, but they only stood as landmarks in an ongoing narrative. Hugh would catch old episodes on Dave, seeing them there as if preserved (which, he supposed, they were); he could watch an episode and see Frankie there and see how long it took to recall where they were at that point in time. Memories of episodes could run into one another just as much as those of a whole series could, but seeing certain moments from all those years ago would still take him back. Perhaps not even in a way he could describe, but that certain feeling that, just for a moment, just was.
He still saw Frankie, these days. He knew that neither he nor Frankie himself could exactly put to words why, but he was still another entry on Hugh's calendar. Frankie leaving the show was not synonymous with 'I'm leaving you' and Hugh knew that, but also felt that it might as well have been. Stepping away from the show and their group and their habits and all those things that just happened to happen--...
"Should be sat here with a drink, two sad bastards like us."
(Hugh wondered sometimes if that would make this easier, but would never actually suggest it.)
Before then, the show itself had been a small subset of everything else. Now, it felt as if the show itself was compartmentalised and set away, twice-yearly and no more. What happened during those weeks certainly stayed inside that bubble of theirs, but it was a bubble, and Hugh knew it. He found it surprising, sometimes, that it hadn't yet broken. They were certainly fragile, weren't they?
"You're like their whore, though." (Hugh found himself noticing the way Frankie's voice seemed to naturally emphasise that one word, noticed that before even really thinking about the implications.) "Shoulda known right from the start." Seeing Hugh's lack of reaction, Frankie simply chuckled. "Guess we all were, though. Turn up, do your thing, get paid. Get filmed doin' it! Real steamy stuff."
(Was that really Frankie back-pedalling from an accusation? Must be imagining things.)
Hugh thought on that in the days afterward. Had it been an accusation? He sort of saw Frankie's line of thought and, worse, he wasn't too sure that he could bring himself to disagree - not when it was Frankie saying it, at least. Not when it had been Rory and Frankie and Stewart, back when Hugh had felt himself naive enough to think that that could be 'the end', and now Chris... and Frankie knew all of this, of course. Knew, and didn't mind. Or doesn't care? (The latter option felt worse, somehow.) It had all felt so intense, back then, when Hugh had suspected Frankie and Russell (and been proved right, the truth openly admitted on confrontation), when Stewart had felt like the better option in a moment of weakness--... Hugh would think of that, think of everything, and wonder if any of them had had any single moments of strength in all the time the show had been running. Left as the last threads to run all the way back through the years of the programme, Hugh would look to Dara and even talk to him of it sometimes, but knew that they were as bad as each other. Knew that Dara had endless tales of Ed and of Maxwell and anybody else they'd seemed to feel the need to involve, if prompted. Even now, Dara would smile as he said that he didn't know what he'd do if those two ever ended up on the same episode as one another, but Hugh saw weariness behind that smile. Years of dealing with Byrnes and Fullmooners wringing it out of him. They'd end up having those confidential little chats with one another, almost as if they were the last ones left who really knew.
As Dara had said, Hugh knew that he could stop it, if he wanted to. Had that ever felt like a realistic option? It only continued because they kept it up, surely.
Chris had agreed to the position of full-time panellist, knowing what it involved. Had taken that seat on Hugh's team, knowing what that meant. Had been a guest on the programme often enough to know, that decision of his saying only that he was absolutely willing to jump in at the deep end with all of this. There was the sense that their two-times-a-year offered whatever indiscretions they wished to hide within it, but Hugh remembered the first time Chris had approached him, remembered his mild surprise on suspecting this, in fact, not his new teammate's first priority.
"We play to win, yeah?"
"Oh, well--... what is it they say, about the points not mattering...?"
Chris had stepped closer at that point, too close, just enough to feel like a threat to Hugh's personal space. "We play, Hugh, to win."
"... If you like."
Gaining a new teammate meant gaining a new bedfellow as a matter of course, but Hugh couldn't forget the sheer enthusiasm and determination in those words. Chris was just like that; they all knew that the points didn't matter and they'd make up who won in the edit and the whole quiz itself was only really a framework on which to hang topical jokes in the first place, but there was still something there that Hugh found... refreshing, almost. Frankie had left, wanting to reduce his workload and step back from the limelight, as much as he could manage. Russell had left, wanting to move on to other things. Leaving was the catharsis but they'd all felt it beforehand, a certain heaviness none had been able to specify. Frankie felt better for having left. Hugh supposed that Russell probably did too, not that he had enough contact with him to really know. ...And then there was Chris, hardly 'new blood' but still practically buzzing with an excitement that Hugh wasn't sure he'd felt from a fellow panellist in almost as long as he could remember.
They didn't need to meet up outside of their recording blocks, but Hugh still found himself with Chris in his front room regardless. It just seemed easy, somehow; sometimes he'd invite Chris over, sometimes Chris would invite himself over. (He didn't find himself minding this too much.) There came silences that were as comfortable as they were long and conversations that were longer than those, and Hugh would find himself wondering if he'd ever want to stop. It seemed ridiculous, thinking about it as a sequence of events in a chronological order, but to be there with Chris - to actually be there with him - felt only like a sort of current culmination, the place where everything before had been leading to. Everything previous to this, as complicated and layered as it had been, led up to Chris Addison, in his front room, drinking cups of tea. Causing him to stop, every now and then, fixed by a smile and those eyes. Enthusiastic. Determined. Striking. Every time they'd ended upstairs, Hugh found himself breathless at even the mere thought that everything had fallen together so neatly.
"You were never tempted by Andy's team?"
"What do you think?... No offence to Andy himself, of course. I don't think I've ever sat on that side, come to think of it."
"Happy coincidence."
"Maybe."
Hugh wondered, for a moment, if that line of thought lead to those of fate and destiny--!... He wasn't sure that Chris would appreciate that, and yet believing solely in the whims of coincidence alone didn't seem quite right, either. "... You knew what you were after right from the beginning, then?"
Chris gave only the slightest of casual shrugs, giving away nothing one way or the other. "... Maybe."
Conversations would carry through from room to room, to Hugh's office, to where Chris gazed around with a certain sense of wonder (although of what exactly, Hugh wasn't entirely sure). His eyes settled on the calendar hung up on the wall, casually taking in Hugh's noted appointments.
"I'm red, am I?"
It took Hugh a moment to realise what Chris meant, but nodded anyway. "Oh, yes. ...Thought it suited you."
"What, like a correction? 'Meeting with Chris Addison', big tick...!" (He accompanied this with the appropriate physical gesture; Hugh couldn't help but smile.)
"I suppose so."
Chris glanced back to the calendar, staring at it for a few seconds more before throwing a look over his shoulder, back towards Hugh. "Not red for danger, then...?" (Those eyes, again...)
Hugh gave a shrug and a smirk of his own, leaning against the doorframe.
"... Perhaps."
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