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Greg is desperate for a cigarette.
He doesn’t often crave them anymore, but there’s something about being buffeted by the wind as he huddles against the closed storefront next to the bar they’ve all wound up at that makes him long for the warm, orange flare and the hot inhale. Much more satisfying than the drag of cool chemicals from his vape pen, cancer risk be damned.
January in London is a cold, miserable experience but it has nothing on January in New York City. Only Chicago was colder, but they had still been riding too high on adrenaline and jet lag to feel it properly there.
He feels it now though, deep in his bones where he feels like he might never be warm again.
It’s probably just the exhaustion talking.
He takes another drag from his vape and turns, glancing through the fogged bar window to pick out the faces, familiar and unfamiliar alike, of the crew they have with them. He sees Paul, half asleep in his pint, and next to him, the girl from Avalon whose name he’s forgotten yet again.
And there– there, grinning that wide, gap-toothed grin, hand halfway to his mouth to try to stifle that stupid, honking laugh, is Alex.
He takes a deep drag from his vape, mostly to keep from doing something stupid like press his face against the icy glass as he watches Alex take a swig of his beer, watches his throat bob as he swallows, watches him wipe the back of his hand across his mouth before laughing once more.
He feels like a boy at Christmas time, peering through the shop window at the toy he knows he’s not going to wake up to on Christmas morning, no matter how much he might want it.
The door to the bar bangs open and Greg jumps guiltily back from the window, trying and failing to assume a casual, disinterested position. He spares a nod for the man who stumbles out just to be friendly, or something.
Instead, it causes the man to wander over to him, rubbing his hands together as he does. “You got a light?” he asks Greg.
Greg shakes his head, holding his vape up. “Sorry, no.”
“Switched to vaping, huh?” the man says with a nod, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. “I should probably do the same, but you know what they say about old habits.”
Greg snorts a dry, humourless laugh. “Don’t I ever.”
He expects the man to move on, in search of a lighter or just better company, but instead, he leans his shoulder against the window of the bar, giving Greg a slow, easy smile. “So I’m guessing from that accent you’re not from here?”
It’s not exactly scintillating conversation, but Greg’s not exactly in the mood for that anyway. “No, I’m from London.”
The man nods. “England. Nice.”
If Greg was a smarter man, or a better man, he would end it there, tuck his vape away and duck back into the warmth of the bar, but instead he finds himself asking, partly from well-instilled British manners, partly because the conversation with a stranger is scratching an itch that he’s let linger for far too long, “And you?”
“Long Island originally,” the man says, pausing as if waiting for Greg to make some kind of comment. When he doesn’t, he adds, “Moved here in my twenties, lived here ever since.”
Greg nods as if that means fuck all to him. He turns his vape over in his hands before asking bluntly, “Is it always this fucking cold?”
The man throws his head back and laughs. He has very straight, very white teeth, which Greg can honestly say is something he never used to notice about someone. Not until a few years ago, at least.
Not until he had something to compare it to.
“Sometimes,” the man tells him, and it takes Greg a moment to remember what question he even asked in the first place. “Worth it, though.”
There’s something almost flirtatious about the way he says it, and Greg manages a light laugh. Not exactly encouraging it, but not exactly putting him off either. “Yeah,” he says. “I know what you mean.”
The man glances up at him, a small, almost furtive smile playing on his lips. “So,” he says, though he doesn’t seem inclined to continue.
“So,” Greg echoes, arching an eyebrow at him.
“Well, my lighter excuse didn’t really work, so I guess I need to resort to plan B,” the man says archly. He takes a step closer to Greg, reaching out to play with the zip pull of Greg’s coat. “What are you up to tonight?”
The boldness of the question and the movement makes Greg bark a laugh more than the patent absurdity of it. “Almost certainly not whatever you have in mind,” he says dismissively, though he doesn’t step back.
The man’s smile widens. “Why not?” he asks, clearly interpreting Greg’s dismissal as a ‘maybe’ far more than a ‘no’.
The worst part of it is that Greg doesn’t have a good answer.
He has excuses, sure, even reasonable ones at that – how early their flight leaves the next day, how he needs to pack, how he needs to actually get some fucking sleep. He can tell him that he has a policy against sleeping with people when he doesn’t even know their first name. Or that he’s about ten years too old for him with a dick that’s only inclined to work about half the time he wants it to.
But those are just that: excuses.
They’re not the reason.
The reason is the man’s very white, straight teeth, and his mop of brown curls, and his warm brown eyes. The reason is that the man’s only about six foot tall, and wearing a perfectly respectable solid black coat, not a hint of bright, garish colour in sight. The reason—
Emerges from the bar, his breath fogging in the night air as he immediately sticks his hands under his armpits to warm them. “Hello,” Alex says brightly. Too brightly, almost pointedly so. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”
He is, and he knows it, and Greg would hate him for it, just a little, if it didn’t illustrate his point so perfectly.
The man glances between them, understanding and realisation clear in his expression. “Oh, I get it,” he says, and Greg wants so badly to tell him that he’s got it wrong, that what he thinks he sees isn’t that.
Can never be that.
No matter how much Greg wishes otherwise.
“Well,” the man says bracingly, glancing up at Greg once more, “have a good night, and stay warm.”
“You too,” Greg tells him, watching as he makes his way down the pavement and disappears into the fog billowing up through the quiet streets.
Alex stares after the man as well, his expression curiously blank. “I hope I didn’t frighten him off,” he says mildly.
Greg snorts, not quite a laugh but something in that ballpark. “Fuck off.”
Alex glances over at him, still with that stupid, blank expression. “What?”
“You know what.”
They both do. They’ve been doing this for years, because for all that Greg might play a sadist on telly, he’s clearly a masochist at heart.
Something shifts in Alex’s expression, the barest hint of a frown puckering between his eyebrows. “Are you all right?” he asks with surprisingly none of his usual bullshit. “You look…”
He trails off and Greg sighs, scrubbing a hand across his face. “How do I look?” he asks tiredly, too tired for his words to be the challenge he intends. He doesn’t wait for Alex’s answer. “I’m fine,” he lies. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Alex’s big blue eyes search his expression for a moment. “You can still catch him,” he offers. “If you want.”
They both know the problem is that Greg doesn’t. Not like he should.
The problem is that what, or rather who Greg wants is standing in front of him, cheeks pink from beer and laughter, nose red from the cold.
The problem is that the only thing Greg wants, the only one Greg wants, is the one he can’t have.
So he forces himself to look away, to look down at his vape as he fiddles with it, mostly to give his fingers, stiff with cold, something to do besides reach for Alex’s hand. “I was thinking,” he says abruptly, “next series – maybe we should both wear one of those pairs of little shorts.”
Alex honks a startled laugh, raising one hand to his mouth. His entire being softens when he laughs, relaxes into the part of this that is easy and safe and perfect, existing in a world where they both have exactly what they want. “Oh, God,” he says, grinning. “I can see the Ofcom complaints now.”
“They’re no worse than Mat Baynton’s,” Greg counters, grasping onto their usual banter like a lifeline. “Better, in fact. They cover everything important.”
Alex pulls a face, obviously remembering his own turn only a few hours prior wearing the tiny red booty shorts a contestant at the live show brought in as a prize task entry. “Debatable.”
Greg raises his vape to his mouth but doesn’t inhale. “Yours would still say ‘Greg’s Lil’ Slut’, of course.”
He wants the words to come out teasing, but judging by how Alex glances up at him and away again, he hasn’t quite pulled it off. “Of course.”
“And mine—”
He breaks off, suddenly regretting opening this particular can of worms, especially as Alex again looks up at him and prompts, “What would yours say?”
Well, that is the question of the hour, isn’t it.
Because if there is any attempt at verisimilitude, it’d be far more accurate if Greg’s shorts say ‘Alex’s Lil’ Slut’.
‘Property of A. J. J. Horne’.
‘If found, please return to Alex Horne’.
Or, hell, ‘In a deeply complicated, predominantly one-sided relationship with Alex Horne that neither of us can figure out how to walk away from, despite knowing it’d be immeasurably better if we did’.
Might be a bit hard to fit on shorts, that one.
But at least it’d be accurate.
Greg realises a moment too late that Alex is still watching him, that he’s taken far too long to answer, and he shakes his head and looks away. “I’m with stupid, probably,” he says dismissively. “With an arrow pointing at you, of course.”
Alex laughs again, and it sounds like pity. “Funny.”
Greg jerks a nod. “Yeah.”
For a moment, it looks as though Alex might say something real, something not couched in their banter and bullshit and the eight layers of humour Greg wears like armour. But in the end, all he says, lightly, is, “Well, maybe we’ll have to see what Patrick comes up with.” Then he glances over his shoulder and Greg knows that the moment, such as it is, is broken. “Now come back inside, would you. It’s bloody freezing out here.”
He turns to head back inside, and before Greg can stop himself, his hand flashes out, catching Alex’s arm. “Alex—”
Alex looks up at him. “What?”
There are so many half-formed thoughts rolling around Greg’s head, so many half-formed confessions on the tip of his tongue, if only he can be brave enough to say any of them, here in New York City thousands of miles away from London and Taskmaster and Alex’s family and everything else.
It’s either bravery or cowardice that stops him, and he’ll never know which. “Nothing,” he says, the word sounding to his ears like it’s coming from someone else entirely. Someone whose entire world isn’t at the tips of his fingers and yet never further from his grasp. “Next round’s on me.”
Again there’s a moment where Greg thinks maybe, just maybe, Alex understands without him saying any of it. But it’s almost certainly just wishful thinking as Alex nods and pulls his arm out of Greg’s grip. He turns to pull the door to the bar open before glancing back over his shoulder. “You coming?”
Greg jerks a nod. “Yeah, just—”
He holds his vape up. An excuse, or a reason.
They’re one and the same at this point.
Alex wrinkles his nose and shrugs. “Be quick before you freeze to death,” he orders before finally ducking back inside.
Greg exhales shakily and swallows, hard, turning away from the bar.
He raises his vape to his lips and inhales, closing his eyes at the flavour, a stark reminder that it’s still not the cigarette he longs for.
It isn’t what Greg wants, not by any stretch, but it’s what he has. And he’ll make do, because what other choice does he have?
Besides, for as healthier as it might claim to be, Greg knows it’ll kill him all the same, in the end.
He inhales once more before finally tucking his vape away and squaring his shoulders to pull the door to the bar open and return to the warmth and the laughter that’s almost enough but never will be.