Chapter Text
“Well, this task might make you think it was inspired by the popular dating app Grindr, because it involves prodding a bear.”
- Alex Horne, Taskmaster New Years’ Treat 2026, Episode 1
Oddly enough, it‘s Rachel who sets it all in motion.
It’s 11pm on a Saturday, the kids are out. Both of them tired and maybe a little tipsy, enjoying the quiet evening, just the two of them. God knows there haven’t been enough of those kinds of evenings lately, and with Taskmaster tapings coming up soon again, it doesn’t seem like that’s bound to change so quickly. Best to make the most of it when he’s get some time.
Rachel’s head is laid on his shoulder, the two of them tucked in together on the couch. Silliness has morphed into a comfortable silence. Well, not for long.
“So, you have you given any thought to what I suggested?” She grins at him slyly.
Oh, God. Part of him should have known this would happen.
“I know it looks intimidating but come on, it won’t hurt. You can stay as anonymous as you want! You don’t even have to interact with anyone, you know. And if you do end up chatting with someone… “ she pauses and wiggles her eyebrows flirtatiously, “…well, don’t say I told you so. We’ve talked about a What If plan enough. You would think you’d remember how this goes, it’s only been two decades!” Alex sighs a quiet little laugh. Oh, the joys of a relentlessly enthusiastic and supporting wife. God he loves her. “Come on, don’t you feel like you want to get out there a bit?”
Why is it suddenly so embarrassing for him to talk about this with her? She was the first person he’d ever told, and yet. If anyone were listening in to their conversation, he gets the feeling they wouldn’t think the two of them were married.
“Not particularly, no… quite happy like this, really.”
“Alex!” Rachel sounds almost scandalised. What does it say about them that she’s so shocked by his reticence, when everyone else would be scandalised to learn what she’s orchestrating on his behalf, something so normal to them?
It’s been quite a few years since Alex realised the full extent of his feelings for men. Truthfully, he’s never thought about it that hard. His relationships with men throughout his life had never seemed that strange to him, until his odd behaviour and well, really, lovesick deference, towards bigger boys had been pointed out to him and gotten him thinking. That’s what you get for growing up in an almost all-male household and going to a boys’ boarding school, he supposes. Despite all that, he’d never really made an effort to explore those feelings, and Rachel had come into his life, and, well… here he was now.
She lifts her head up from his shoulder and grabs his phone from where it’s lying facedown on the coffee table, looking not even a little ashamed.
“Look, if you’re not going to do it yourself I’ll just make you do it.”
A few pointed taps, and suddenly Grindr has been downloaded to Alex’s phone. He's not completely ignorant, he knows what it is and why people have it. Jesus.
“God. There's so many other things I should be making you do as well...” she adds almost as an aside, mumbling under her breath as she works. Hm. Sounds horrible and promising, even if he doesn't exactly know what it is she wants him to do.
“I think you can figure out the rest, yeah?” Rachel hands him back his phone. Another cheeky grin. The embarrassment of it all is absolutely devastating; he sparkles with it.
-
Months go by, and Alex never touches the app. He does Rachel’s bidding, sets everything up, and avoids it with a ten foot pole. Thinking about it makes him feel odd, so he does his level best to avoid it. It feels like cheating, but not on Rachel, though he’s not sure who exactly. He can’t quite place where the feeling comes from or why, only that it’s there and makes his stomach do something odd in his body and knocks the wind out of him.
Live studio tapings roll around in all their glorious hustle and bustle.
They’re stood in Alex’s dressing room after the first afternoon taping, discussing nonsense and post-show notes idly when his phone makes a very, very distinct noise. That noise. The app noise. Oh, God. Of all the times to not have his mobile on silent… Panic flares hot and sharp in Alex’s stomach. He swears he can feel his stomach acid actively rising up without his permission as his nervous system over-activates. The last scattered bits of silly conversation he was having with Greg abruptly cease.
Oh God, Greg! Something about that train of thought grinds his brain to a halt. In the dregs of his internal panic, Alex has failed to notice Greg’s facial features shifting until now. His eyebrows gone furrowed and questioning, eyes narrowing and now aimed directly at him, pursed lips.
Yes, Alex thinks, it’s his distinctly knowing look, but as opposed to the other times he’s had this look leveled at him, there’s not a hint of goodwill behind it.
“What the fuck? Alex. Are you serious? That’s not- ?” Greg looks like he’s ready to unleash a torrential downpour of questions Alex has absolutely no desire to answer. He’s never had the full force of Greg’s ire directed at him like this. His stomach does little somersaults.
“Well. I mean, clearly you know what that was then.” Of all the ways to indirectly come out (is that what this?) to each other, this was perhaps the worst and most out of character way to do it.
“Oh my God, you can’t even say it! Seriously mate, why the hell do you have that app? Is everything alright? Are you finally having your midlife crisis? Does Rachel know? You had best believe I have loads of questions. Sit down.” He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Greg so serious.
Greg grabs Alex and manhandles him gently so they’re sat next to each other on the couch. Feels a bit like therapy, this. Extremely involuntary exposure therapy.
“Well, I should say Rachel downloaded it for me.” Even saying it, Alex knows it’s a weak defense, even if it is the truth. “I’m not- I’m not cheating. I would never. God.”
“Yeah, ok, right.”
“I’m serious! I don’t know how to explain it to you. There’s a lot of things you don’t know.”
“Well, I suggest you try your very best or I will have to call and ask her myself, you know that, right?”
Alex winces. That scenario would spell almost certain doom for him. He can see the headlines now: Taskmaster Creator Alex Horne, Dead at 47, from Embarrassment-induced Cardiac Arrest. No one would be surprised by that cause of death.
An unsteady breath in. If his old uni mates could seem him now, they’d almost certainly be pulling the old nickname out again.
“Come on, chop chop.”
“Well. Um. I- we- well, I’ve been exploring.” He whispers the last bit, raises an eyebrow. “Rachel not so much. Mainly me. You can get over four decades into life and still not know everything about yourself, did you know that? And, well, turns out, I do also quite like... men. In… certain ways. Not just as friends. I never thought too hard about it before considering I grew up with hardly any women in my life, but I’ve been assured that the way I feel is decidedly not… straight.” He pointedly leaves out the part where Greg and his’ increasingly flirtatious banter and dynamic on Taskmaster helped contribute to his realisation.
He doesn’t think he’s ever said that so straightforwardly before. It’s horrible. Neither has he ever been able to maintain such a serious conversation with Greg for so long either. It’s a sign of just how fiddly this whole situation is.
“And, well, Rachel thought I should make up for lost time a bit. And now I’ve got this app on my phone. It’s all a bit.. hmmm.”
Greg snorts. He looks curious, and maybe a little sad, Alex thinks, but thankfully less incensed than before.
“Jesus. Look at you, Alex. Stop worrying. You look like you’re about to combust.… We’re fine.” A pause. “You do know what that app’s really meant for, right?” in a sly tone. A large, warm hand comes to comfortingly pat him on the shoulder.
“And, well, for what it’s worth… me too, alright? As you might have gathered. All those people on the internet are right about some things, but I’m not giving them the satisfaction of admitting that.” Alex’s chest seizes. Greg returning his confession in kind both comforts and scares him. He couldn’t for the life of him say why it scares him or why it suddenly feels like the floor has dropped from out beneath his feet. Maybe he’s just overwhelmed by everything that’s happened in the last few minutes.
What comes out of him instead of any really normal human reaction is a wheezed laugh. Beyond all the thoughts he’s having about the future of the two of them from now on, everything is alright. He feels a wash of utter disbelief. Thank fucking God. They can go back to being two deeply unserious old men, as usual. For now.
“So, have you been… talking… with any nice old men recently?” Oh Greg, ever the little, well, big, gossip-monger. Of course he would ask that.
Truth is, he sort of has been? Curiosity and downtime in between tapings, in London, no less, full of people, had led to him genuinely taking a look. Aside from the copious amounts of unwanted photos of genitalia he’s had to delete, disgusted every time, it has been sort of nice to be able chat with some like-minded strangers, under the radar, anonymously. Anonymity isn’t something he’s really got anymore these days. He’s well aware that flirtatiously chatting’s not what most people use the app for, but he’s doing it anyway. ‘Most people’ haven’t seemed to mind.
“Nice old men? Well, not all of them are nice or old, only some of them. As far as I can tell. Most of them are quite rude, actually. Only a few have been nice.” Alex is proud of that one. Glib and obsequious, sharing something without sharing much at all. And best of all he’s managed to exasperate Greg with it, who’s now frowning at his response. He’d clearly been hoping to eke a few more details out of Alex, for reasons Alex can’t fathom. Nosy little gossip.
“Oh come on…”
A rap on the door from outside.
“Alex? Can I speak to you for a moment? Sorry to break up your little tete-a-tete.” It’s one of the Andys. Thank God. Any more of this and Alex thinks he might genuinely have spontaneously combusted. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so flushed and so warm before. It’s a little concerning, actually.
“Sorry Greg.” he shrugs, aiming for apologetic, but not quite getting there. He knows Greg can see right through his bullshit, but he'll take anything to get away right now.
“Yeah, yeah. Go do your admin shit.” he jokes. “I will be picking this thread of conversation up again later, just so we’re clear, yeah?”
Alex prays he forgets about it before the day ends. Any longer and he might have accidentally let something slip he couldn’t take back.
-
There is the matter of… the man. He just doesn’t want to really talk to Greg about that. Something about that feels wrong to him.
Dan, this man calls himself on the internet. Surely his real name… They have been chatting. Since the beginning of the studio week, actually. He's really only been talking with this guy anymore.
For once, someone sort of his age, an appropriate age range at least. No profile picture, only preferences. Dan, 57. He/him. Bisexual. Gentle giant looking for a good time. Something about that had appealed to him.
Keeping it simple, no photo. No wildly inappropriate overtures to start, God knows he’s had a lot of those recently. Truth be told, he still hasn’t quite caught on to all the language, and all the subtext, and just how… loud everyone is. He feels every bit his age when surrounded by all these seemingly unbelievably self-assured young people. It’s terrifying. His brain has been whirring. He’s already trying to work out ways to spin all this new information into some sort of task or sly reference in the future.
“Dan” had been different. It thrills him when he can feel people are willing to play his games. He is sly, flirty, absolutely charming. But in a quiet way, screaming confidence and I don’t need to show you my dick to get you to like me. He’s playing the long game on an app certainly not meant for that. It fascinates Alex endlessly. Regrettably, he can’t catalogue human reactions and interactions as well via online messages.
All that to say, this little game has been very, very enlightening for Alex. Very enlightening. And confusing. He’s kind of thankful to Rachel for the little kick in the arse. For some reason, though, when he thinks of his confession to Greg, of giving him any sort of updates as friends, it makes him feel a bit ill. Not that anything really serious will come of his little experiment with "Dan" anyway...
But… best not to dwell on that too much, right?