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He lives alone, and there’s plenty of time to think, in that weird liminal space between turning the light off and having a wank and falling asleep, and Christ knows he’s got plenty to think about.
It’s always been about sex a little bit, and Greg’s known that from the start. Almost from the start. It doesn’t matter – he’d known that going in, and he’d still signed up, name on the dotted line, because he doesn’t care.
Truly, it’s never bothered him. It’s always also been about being funny, which he’s proud to say they’ve definitely achieved; he wouldn’t have signed up for it otherwise. He’s a comedian, an actor, not some sort of weird kinky sex freak – not that he thinks Alex is either, not really – but he’s not some pervert, signing up just to get his rocks off on whatever the fuck Horne brings to the table. He’s not some fall guy, and he’s hardly at the very start of his career; he could have said no. He was on TV when Alex was still learning Latin in the Footlights, or fucking about on the River Cam with crumpets and books of poetry, or whatever. Whatever posh twats do when they go to posh twat school.
So that means he signed up because he wanted to.
“You can do pretty much anything you want to me,” Alex had said at the time, before the thing was even fully commissioned, back when it was in that uncomfortable time where a lot of people had committed a lot of time and money to getting this made, but there was a high chance – a high chance – that someone up above would pull the plug, and everyone would have to slink home with their tails between their legs. Serious person money, and Greg Davies was somehow involved, and he’d been disconcerted at how eager Alex had been to cast him. They’d been passing acquaintances at best.
“Oh?” Greg had said, for lack of anything else to say.
It had been both of them in a Costa near Pinewood, and Greg’s overarching memory of the whole thing is still that he’d got toothpaste on his stupid fucking t-shirt that morning, the awful one that’s got aFar Sidechicken cartoon on the front, and was desperately hoping Alex wouldn’t notice.
“In the studio, I mean,” Alex had laughed, then; Greg laughed obligingly too, “We tested it.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” in the memory, Alex taps his long fingers on the plastic-wrapped Lotus biscuit that came with the coffee, looking ill-at-ease but no more than usual, “Me and Tim, back in Edinburgh. I think it’s funnier that way, yeah? Subservience without limit about surreal topics.”
“Totally,” Greg had agreed unhappily, most of his mind still dwelling on the toothpaste.
He’d forgotten about that chat until the screen tests at Pinewood. He’s always enjoyed weird, crazy improv; when Alex automatically rises to meet the occasion, he’s just happy. It’s why he quit teaching for comedy. Less rules, more stupid, stupid fun. It’s not until he’s on the Tube later, absently not-reading the adverts for vitamin supplements, that a phrase drifts across the blue sky of his blank mind.
Subservience without limits, eh?
To each their own.
And to be honest, he doesn’t really care. If Alex gets a bit intense about doing what he’s told, well, he’s a grown-up, and he can make grown-up choices, and besides, it makes great TV. He’s not being taken advantage of by anyone – he’s the one behind the bloody show, he writes the jokes, at any point he could pull the plug and it would all go down the drain and they’d fund some other Edinburgh game show, no doubt. It isn’t even like Taskmaster takes up that much of his life, either. They’re in rehearsals for a day or so, and they record the studio bits over the course of a week if they’re lucky, and for a few hours randomly and rarely he has to go to the house itself to film those bits where he’s looming through the walls and pulling Alex’s tie, or whatever. Stalking him through the woods while Alex flees, his shirt untucked from his trousers, a look of posed, pure terror on his long face. Days where he has to pose for photos, although the production team is good about using stock images where they can – Greg’s busy. It’s a minor part of his working life, his world, and a steady, relatively low-effort flow of funding while he holes himself up in the home office and tries to write his next big script. He never sees Alex outside of those days, maybe fifteen, twenty days a year at the absolute maximum. The man’s busy. He has a wife; kids; he doesn’t live in London.
And still that phrase is ringing in his ears.
Subservience without limits.
All for the jokes and the gags, of course!
And that line of thinking makes him roll over in bed, that unfortunate phrasing forces him to bury his head underneath his ocean of pillows and force himself into sleep, no matter how much it might be playing on his mind, no matter how closely those words – said with such ease, such ease! – dance across the front of his consciousness. Sleep. He has to sleep.
The years go by.
Greg glares at his laptop screen, the blank document Untitled Document (17) making fun of him through the sheer audacity it possesses to exist and continue to exist unchanging. He’s in between scripts at the minute; his last project is being filmed, and the BBC have been talking to his agent about a new idea that his agent has sold as completed when in fact it is – well, winking cursor, blank page, etc.
He swears, feels vaguely impotent for doing so, and stamps away to the umbrella stand for his scarf. A crisp, cold walk will clear his head; as he lets himself out the front door, his foot falls heavy on the heaps of leaves which the wind brushes up close to the step. He’s expecting to hear from Taskmaster production about the filming days this winter; has been expecting for several days now, and he hates waiting on emails like that. He’d rather the diary were full, or at least, full-to-middling, and that’s something that he can’t rearrange.
“Yes please, mate,” he says to the fellow inside the converted horsebox selling coffee in the local park, “Ta.”
The cup doesn’t come with any cardboard sleeve. It’s burning his palms. He scowls at it.
He doesn’t think about Alex Horne much in the day-to-day, here’s the thing, but maybe someone will mention him, or he’ll get one of those reply-all Pinewood emails about payroll or whatever, or two-factor authentication bullshit, and he’ll remember. Subservience without limits, and the prissy way he’d said it, like they were mates tossing stupid ideas back and forth in the pub. Without limits.
There’s a skinny, rather pathetic river running alongside the park, but nevertheless, with the dogged London determination that ends up looking stupid, a few Canada geese are fighting by the black fence, hissing at each other with their feathers skew-whiff and cuffs on their ankles. Greg mooches over near them – they’re far too London to give a shit about him, and continue to squabble uncaring – and leans out over the water, watching the leaves and empty Fanta bottles bob their way to the drain at the end of the park.
That does wonders for his mood, too.
His phone goes off in his pocket.
Coffee in one hand, he pulls it out, juggling it over the river – it’s the fucking scheduling email, the official Avalon one that gets sent out by some dickhead in the central team, the one that does Russel’s shows too. That pisses him off, the fact that this email has come through before the one from Alex, although he doesn’t know why it should, and he knows he’s being unfair, in a dark mood. Alex is a producer, not a bloody secretary, and it’s always been this way. Email, text.
Who’s on, anyway? The wind sneaking up through his sleeves and down through his scarf, he scrolls. He knew Rhod was, he’d got that message… without thinking it through, he quits and heads for Whatsapp.
thought my assistant was meant to keep me abreast of developments? poor show, poor show, little alex.
And he’s forgotten about the text by the time he gets a reply.
He’s in Sainsburys, looking for those grapes that’re meant to taste of candyfloss, his coffee long-since discarded. It tasted like bitter shit, anyway.
Sorry, Mr Davies. I strive to be attentive. See you next month.
Standing there with an unripe mango in one hand and his phone in the other, Greg’s mouth is suddenly dry and the hair on his arms is standing on end, but he couldn’t say why. He squeezes the mango.
On that Friday of next month, they have screen tests and rehearsals. No audience, and yet it’s nowhere near intimate, nor private, not the sort of stage practices Greg used to attend in uni. There’s producers and directors and gaffers and wardrobe and makeup and talent and script and blah-blah-blah all running around, but there’s less pressure to be ‘on’, to be Greg Davies, professional funnyman. He’s in a t-shirt and jeans (untoothpasted) and, when he eventually bumps into Alex, he finds him with his hands full of red-lined scripts, wearing a yellow, Joules-y jumper with a wet sort of teddy bear on the front and an orange shirt. He blinks when he sees Greg, like it’s somehow a surprise to see him.
“Hey,” says Greg, suddenly unsettled. He’s thought often of that text over the last few weeks, and is annoyed with himself for it.
“Hey,” Alex says. He shifts from foot to foot. He’s in jeans and brown Doc Martens, and bizarrely, Greg thinks his shoes match his hair. He’s irritated again, and he doesn’t know why, and he hates being this fucking cross all the time – he’d like to think he’s more easygoing than that. “You ready.”
“Yeah, ‘course I am,” Greg says, and retreats to the safety of the green room.
Alex has proposed a few new sketches for the introduction, some of which require practice to let the Andys work out things like camera angles and, fuck knows, whatever. Greg finds a list of them blu-tacked to one of the mirrors in the green room, incomprehensible words in Alex’s neat handwriting: potato gun, bang flag, dog bed?, toddler lead, golden certificate.
He stares at them for a minute, then turns his back and makes a cup of tea.
Of course, in the chairs it’s a different question.
They’ve been put in costumes, the black shirt, the white shirt, and Greg’s always been attracted to that, the simple dichotomy of them. He loves this part of rehearsals. The adrenaline, the hilarity, the real surprise belly-laughs he gets from the people behind the camera when a piece of off-piste goes well; of not-quite-knowing what will happen next, of trusting your partner to land you somewhere safe. And, critically, somewhere funny.
“Sorry,” Alex says solemnly, looking up at Greg. His bottom lip is depressed slightly by his long top teeth, a sight Greg has always found fascinatingly endearing, “I appear to have let you down – oh, and here, should I say sir or Taskmaster?”
“Sir,” Greg says. Alex nods, and they both look at the autocue as the word populates itself. They leave it a beat, then Greg slides his gaze back to Alex, lets his lip curl a little; “I don’t believe that you are sorry, you little pervert.”
Alex swallows – looks genuinely nervous. He’s an excellent actor. “Oh,” he says, “Well, that’s unfortunate. I’m terribly sorry, you know – I aim to please.”
“Right,” Greg looks at the autocue, but it’s winking just the words GREG MAKES ALEX APOLOGISE. He rolls his eyes for a second at Andy, then spreads his legs slightly and pats his thigh. “Come on then,” he purrs, seized by a mad, nasty desire to keep the anxiety on Alex’s face, “You aim to please, do you? Please me.”
“Oh,” Alex looks from his iPad to Greg to Greg’s knee, “Of course,” but he’s not as easily beaten as that; he stands, bows jerkily to Greg, and perches right there on his lap, his back pressed to Greg’s shoulder, his spine up straight, “Are you pleased? I can please you with the scores, too, if you want.”
Subservience without -
And suddenly, Greg swallows. He’s not sure whether he can remember if he ever knew the end of the joke, if ever he imagined light at the end of the tunnel. “Yeah,” he says, and sees the confusion flicker behind Alex’s eyes, “Yeah, the scores’d be good.”
“Oh. Right.”
But all the same, Alex doesn’t move until the end of the scene, rattling fake numbers off the iPad, one hand anchoring himself on Greg’s chest, his thumb in between the lapel of Greg’s blazer and his shirt. The lights always bring forward the sweat, the uncomfortable heat, but even moreso with a tall man sat in his lap, and Greg finds that he can’t wait until the cameras are happy, until the autocue switches itself off, until Alex scrambles away from him and back to his seat in the lower chair.
“That ought to be fine,” he says to Greg and Andy, “It’ll just be relying on the element of surprise for everyone else, and making sure there’s a strong finish.”
“Spring it on them,” Andy says cheerfully.
“Yeah,” says Greg.
Rehearsals are always weird; Greg works best under pressure, and it’s not really him that has to practice, but a whole other section of production, the kind that make sure they look good, sound good for Monday. Greg doesn’t like practising his bits, anyway – he likes to surprise Alex with them if he can – he’s just tremendous at rising to whatever challenge thrown at him. He wriggles magnificently.
“I want to just check those spots on the stage,” Andy’s rushing about with his headphones around his neck, “And then we need to test that section with the, what is it, Alex?”
“I’ve been calling it a lead,” Alex says. He’s fussing with the box under his chair, “I think I should wear it through the whole taping to be honest – it would save time in the long run, especially if we’re already setting up for that last part.”
More planning. Greg mops his brow.
They take a quick, short lunch. Greg knows he’s imagining Alex watching him across the table in the green room, over hot, sweating sandwiches and orange-coloured tea. He’s got that image in his head, Alex’s wide eyes, his discomfort. His stomach twists.
When they’re out of costume again and Alex is back in that fucking jumper, Greg catches him by the elbow, scurrying down one of the corridors to the dressing rooms. “Here,” he says, and can’t believe he’s saying it as he does, “Come out for a pint, would you? It’s been ages.”
“Oh,” says Alex in that infuriating voice of his, eyes all blue, “Let me just, um, text Rachel.”
“I mean, you don’t have to-”
“No,” Alex tilts his phone screen away from Greg, “I know I don’t.” There are layers to this bloody business, aren’t there? And Greg’s not without people he could get off with. Not that he’s getting off with Alex. He’s going for a fucking pint.
And so he waits for Alex in the car park, hands in his coat pockets and wishing he’d brought a scarf, thinking still. Teeth digging into lips, hands under blazers, wide, nervous eyes. He pinches himself through the pocket -
And then Alex is mooching out of the building in a Barbour jacket, a ratty Timberland backpack slung over his shoulder. He looks up at Greg (as everyone does, this is not a surprise and is not sexy) and grins. His tongue shows through that fucking gap in his fucking teeth, and his voice is raspy with use when he says, “Lead the way, then – I’m all yours.”
“Uh-huh,” says Greg stupidly.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that all people in England should be no more than three streets away from a pub called either the Crown or the King’s Head; therefore, they find themselves in one of these, and Greg gets a round in. Guinness and a gin and lemonade, and when he reaches the table he finds Alex building a stack of beer mats with all the concentration of the world, and there’s his fucking tongue again.
“I don’t think we’ve ever done this,” he says.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah. No, I don’t think we have.”
“Nice, though.”
Alex looks at him quizzically. “I suppose.”
One pint turns into two, turns into three, turns into Alex asking what speciality rums they have, turns into a shot of tequila with the salt and the lemon in wanky little paper cups, turns back into pints again – this time Alex has joined him on the stout, and is looking rather worse for wear. He’s taken off the wax jacket and unbuttoned the top few buttons on the orange shirt; Greg’s got his coat off and is wishing he’d worn something fancier. “D’you know, I’ve always,” he pauses, pats his chest, waits for the Guinness to go back down, “I’ve always known it was a sex thing.”
“Uh,” says Alex.
“I mean, what sort of weird fucker gets, like, fucking, like fucking, like, fucking rope and shit and lets fucking, like, me call you a fucking pervert and there’s no P45 at the end of it?” Greg is proud of himself for getting the sentence out – he sits back in the old leather chair and grins.
“Uh,” says Alex.
“I don’t mind, Jesus Christ, that’d be a bit fucking, like, rude, or hypocritical, or whatever-the-fuck, right?”
“Uh,” says Alex.
“Like, we all like to fuck.”
“Uh,” says Alex, and takes a long slug of his pint. A little foam clings to the hair on his top lip; Greg stares at it until it fades from cream to brown, and that infuriating tongue comes out to lick it away, “Are you sure you want to be saying this?”
“Yeah,” Greg says, “Quite sure, actually. Actually.” He tries to hide a burp behind his hand, and is worried he hasn’t succeeded.
“Only – well, we have filming next week-”
“I’m only saying,” Greg finishes his drink, and watches the bar, contemplating getting another; he doesn’t want to look at Alex while he says this bit. He doesn’t even know why he’s saying this bit. “I’m only saying, it’s a fucking elaborate sort of scheme, getting the bloke you want to fuck you to script in bits calling you a little screwball freak, and – what did you say earlier – a lead? Like a fucking dog?”
“Uh,” says Alex.
Greg gets another pint. The girl behind the bar has half her head shaved, and probably recognises him; there’s three bars in her lip and she’s half as young as he is, and she looks him up and down like she might want him to lean over the bar and speak to her, and he would rather be back in the corner of the Crown-or-fucking-King’s-Head, speaking to Alex Horne. “Thanks, love,” he says to her, and carries his drink back to Alex.
Alex, who’s twisted his thumbs into the holes at the knees of his jeans, and whose ears have turned an appealing red.
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to fuck you,” says Greg, after a third of the Guinness is gone, “Fucking Christ, I’m pissed.”
“Uh,” says Alex, “I didn’t say I wanted you to fuck me, exactly.” He casts a nervous look at the girl behind the bar, who has started fiddling with her phone in a very this-will-be-in-the-Daily-Mail-tomorrow kind of way, “Um. Do you want to, I mean – continue – I mean-”
“Text Rachel and tell her you’re staying at mine tonight,” Greg puts his hand over Alex’s, the way he’s done a million times in filming, and Alex freezes. He looks like those fucking cartoons, right before the electricity starts showing you their skeleton. “Text her and say you’ll see her tomorrow. Text her and tell her night-night.”
And Alex pulls out his phone right there, using his right hand because Greg’s still got his left, and sends those exact messages -
And Greg sees his phone screen. Sees a text or two from before they went out.
5:04PM
Going out with Greg (D) after filming. Be home late.
OK. Be SSC love you
Text me when ur heading home yeah
Sexy sexy
If ur going back to his get piccies
Love u
Love you too
10:48PM
Going back to Greg’s. I’ll see you tomorrow.
He says to say night-night.
Lol
Be safe
Be ssc
See u tomorrow morning
I repeat about the piccies
“What’s that?”
“Huh?”
“What she said,” Greg says, slowly and loudly, “Look. There.”
“Oh, that,” and Alex looks up at him, the fucker, and bites the inside of his cheek, and his whole face shifts, “Well – it stands for – sort of, like -”
“You don’t want to say it?”
“Um. No.”
Greg squeezes the hand under him until he sees the pain cross Alex’s brow, “You’re going to tell me, yeah?”
“Stands for safe, sane, and con, um, con...” Alex stutters and stops, his ears burning, the girl at the bar surely halfway through her moneyshot email to the Daily Star, but it’s fine. Greg’s not a fucking moron.
“I’ll book an Uber,” he says, and finishes his pint, and Alex’s too for good measure. Without limits, he keeps hearing, and then Alex’s voice, safe, sane – consensual.
He books an Uber.
By the time they get in, Greg’s aware he’s pushed it at the pub; through the murk of the booze, he’s also aware that he quite fancies Alex – beyond that hour before sleep every night – or at least, fancies the sight of him put off and uncomfortable. The solution to this is to arm Alex up the steps and into the house, deposit him on the sofa, and go hunting for the Glenfidditch in the cupboard, and two glasses that aren’t too dusty.
“Um-”
“You should get a new word,” Greg says, sloshing a finger into one of the glasses, downing it, and then pouring out a generous two-or-three fingers into both the cups, “C’mere, then.”
Alex does as he’s bidden. He’s taken his shoes off at the door, the poor bastard, and looks mildly terrified, like it’s the lion-training experience day at the zoo. “What are we doing here, exactly?”
“We’re drinking.” Greg leans against the counter, imagining for a dirty moment how Alex’s voice might break when prodded, “So drink.”
Alex drinks, then drinks again. The whisky goes down hard on him, and Greg, watching under his eyelids, sees the cough Alex valiantly suppresses. “And the texts-”
“Do you get off on it?”
Instead of replying, Alex chokes, then sips at the whisky. He looks dreadful, and Greg has a drunken urge to make it worse.
“Do you want to know what I think?” He says, tongue thick with it, and watches Alex bury his face in the glass, “I think you do get off on it. And you know something, I think your wife knows and all, too. I think you get off on me telling you to do stupid shit, what, like – like – without limit, and that. What’s all that about? But you know something? Who wouldn’t get off on that shit? Some little prick sitting on you, letting you toss him about? Doing what you tell him? Of course I get off on it, you fucker.”
Alex has finished the drink.
Greg shuffles past him to slump on the sofa, dangling his glass from the finger and thumb of one hand. He spreads his legs just like he had earlier, and some part of him, some sober, terrified part, is screaming at him. This is technically his boss, very technically, if one was to be an arsehole about it. “Well?” He says, “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
He has a lapful of Alex Horne then, and somehow it’s more stiff than earlier, under lights and cameras and makeup and all. He takes the man’s hands and pulls them, roughly, until they’re placed on his chest; he lifts his knee and hooks his ankle around Alex’’s until he’s almost caught there. Difficult to move. “Tell me I’m not being a thick fuck,” he says, and is so close to the other man’s ear that he’’s rewarded with Alex’s minute shudder, “Tell me you get off on it. Tell me I’m not a drunk bastard.”
“Of course I do,” Alex murmurs, prim and proper as they come, “I’m a – what did you call me – a little-”
“Pervert, yeah,” Greg bounces his knee; Alex’s mouth falls open, and it’s only composure that keeps him silent.
“I wouldn’t be, um, opposed,” Alex says. He’s bright red, and has turned his body so he’s straddling Greg; Christ. Christ. Jesus Christ. “I didn’t know you, um-”
“I’m not stupid,” Greg whispers, and does something he’d never do sober; puts his hand right over Alex’s belt, just to hear him yelp, “I’ve known for years. Years.”
“Oh, God,” Alex only doesn’t whimper it because grown men don’t whimper, “I didn’t think…”
“’Course you did,” Greg puts his weight down the front of the flat of his foot, and bounces his leg again, once, twice, three or four times, “’Course you fucking did, hey? And now you’re, what, getting off on this, too? And your wife wants pictures?”
“Fucking-”
“Shh,” Greg fumbles drunkenly with Alex’s pocket, fishing out the phone, “What’s that fucking thing you write in the fucking scripts? Good boy?” He couldn’t miss the reaction to that, the jump against his hand, “Oh, right. Well, you want to be one of them, don’t you? Good boy.”
Alex lets his head fall forward onto Greg’s shoulder and reaches for his other hand, the one still holding the whisky. “Christ,” he breathes, “I need a drink-”
“Yeah, sure,” but Greg’s drunk on confidence (and Glenfiddich), and holds the glass out of reach, “Sit back, hey? Sit back. Good, yeah, just like that.”
Alex surely knows what he plans to do, but he sits back all the same, and Greg splays his fingers at the root of his skull, the back of his neck, clutching. Clinging. He can no more move now than a statue, and when Greg presses the glass to his mouth, he parts his lips willingly, his eyes fixed on Greg’s.
(Greg’s done this before. He’s had girls – and boys – sat on him, because Christ knows if he’s going to be six foot fucking eight he might as well use it, and he’s fed them little fucking Dairy Milks and had them lick his fingers, but something nasty ((and drunk)) in the back of his brain whispers-)
“Not done yet,” he says, when Alex swallows, when the whisky spills up over his top lip, “C’mon, you’re going to finish,” and he watches it dribble down Alex’s neck and into the collar of the bloody orange shirt, and listens to Alex choking, spluttering, and thinks: you’re a dirty fucking bastard, aren’t you? He’s hard. Alex is hard. Fuck this.
“Good,” he says anyway, “Good boy,” and then laughs at the reaction this gets from Alex, and catches one of the flailing hands in his own; twisting his wrist until it must surely hurt, Greg uses Alex’s trapped thumb to open his phone, which is still there on the text page, those damning little memos from Rachel Horne. Stay safe.
“Good boy,” he croons, filthy, and shoves three of his whisky-drenched fingers into Alex’s mouth; he takes a photo, blurry, close-up, of the tears brought forth by the gagging, of the wet on his lips and his beard, and sends it. Chucks the phone across the room, where it lands on the carpet, face-down. “You want me to get you off, yeah? You been thinking about it when you write those little scripts, yeah?”
He makes Alex nod with his fingers hooked under his jaw. Alex looks desperately uncomfortable, but the evidence of his enjoyment is currently rubbing itself on Greg’s clothed thigh, so – so there.
He’s too drunk to care about decorum, so he unbuckles Alex’s belt and shoves his hand inside, taking the man against him. “Jesus Christ,” he says, and Alex shudders, “Jesus Christ, man, we haven’t even done anything.”
There it is. That’s what he’s been thinking about at night for the last year. The look of horror – shame – discomfort – the wide eyes, as though this can’t be happening.
The pace he sets is fast and messy, but Alex is so close it ought not to matter, and it doesn’t. Up, down, up, down, and the breathing is so heavy, and the whole room smells of Glenfiddich, and Alex is making these awful little noises -
“Call me what you called me in the studio earlier,” Greg grunts, close himself now to coming in his trousers if he doesn’t get a hand down there fast, “Go on, say it. Say it, you little bastard, call it me, go on-”
“S-sir,” Alex’s mouth is open against the side of Greg’s neck, and his hands have slunk down to Greg’s buckled belt, are working at the hardness under there, and Greg’s going to spaff in his pants like a fucking – “Come on, Gr- come on, sir, let me – let me-”
“Fuck,” and Greg lifts his leg so Alex slides down onto his cock, and the ensuing friction is enough to make him jerk, jerk and then finish, and Alex bites down hard on his shoulder, all sirs and pleases and sorries and sirs again for good measure.
“Fuck!”
12:14PM
Did you get home OK?
My head is banging
2:37PM
Yes, home fine.
Rachel says thank you.
For the picture.
Hope your head is better.
I’m similarly afflicted.
thought I’d killed you
yeah tell her any time
like properly
any time
haha
I’ve discovered a good hangover cure
heinz soup with fucktons of cheese
and sausage
I mean no offence here – that sounds horrible.
dont knock it til youve tried it
I will take you at your word.
11:09AM
[img.scheduleTASKMAS.attached]
are you taking the piss?
Yes.
No, this is actually the email.
Just trying to do my job
What else is an assistant for
I can name a few things an assistant is for
But id have to check with your hr first
now id love to see their faces if they read THAT on the form
Indeed.
11:42PM
u awake still?
Depends what you want me for.
Had u thought of that before
like was that something youd imagined
What do you think?
You do still technically control my employment.
You’re not stupid.
You saw what Rachel said.
And you saw my face.
Whyd you leave then
11:51PM
fucking hell ignore me
im a wanker
can I ask u something
send me a selfie
Why on Earth do you want that?
Nefarious purposes
do it
[img.selfie.attached]
12:09AM
thanks.
See you next monday
Next Monday, he’s in early and changed into costume before he sees any of the production team, to say nothing of Alex, who hasn’t replied to any of Greg’s texts since the ill-advised late-night selfie. The last week has been like being back at uni; he’s been frustrated, waiting on a text that always seems to take ages (when it comes at all), and writing, and when he’s not doing one of those three things he’s wanking to the memory of his fingers against Alex’s tongue, and Alex’s thick-voiced noises of welling protest, and Alex’s submission to him, the way he’d stilled for that awful, humiliating photo, the way his face, his cheeks, his crows’ feet, had been wet with the effort of not gagging. The way he’d gagged anyway. Greg doesn’t know whether he wants to see him today or not.
Another lie. Of course he fucking does.
In fact, it’s one of those days where he doesn’t set eyes on Alex until five minutes before they go on, in the green room. Greg’s unwrapping Milky Way chocolates from a sad box of Celebrations on the low table, listening to the susurrus of the audience tuning themselves up like an orchestra, and his hands are clammy the way they always get before a show. Residual nerves from a lifetime ago.
“Hey.”
“Lord fuck – warn a man?”
“Sorry,” Alex doesn’t look a bit repentant, but he’s an appealing pink colour and his gaze keeps falling down to Greg’s mouth, like there’s only been five minutes between their last meeting, not five days, “You ready?”
“So long as we’re not doing the spud gun today, yeah.”
“Not doing spud gun,” Alex’s teeth dig into his bottom lip and again, Greg is taken by a mad urge to just hit him, to get him to say thank you for the privilege, to call him awful pet names that will embarrass him. He realises that Alex has no intention of mentioning the other night; he hates him for a second then. What have those two been doing with that bloody picture? He should have forwarded it to himself when he had the chance.
“Good,” Greg says. He hears how low his voice has gone with the trail of his thoughts, “How’s Rachel?”
Alex’s eyes close. He inhales sharply, then looks up again, up-up-up through his eyelashes. “She told me to say thank you. Sir.”
“Message received,” Greg says, and then, because he’s a dirty bastard, he cups Alex’s elbow and says, “Good boy.” He grins when the words electrify the other man, when he jolts in his grasp, “Let’s go, yeah?”
“Right – yeah. Right. Right.”
The audience cheers, and they cheer Alex more; they whoop when Greg meanly insinuates that Alex is too shit an assistant to meet his every need, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, oh Matron, and Alex can’t look at him but that’s fine because that’s the role, that’s all it is, and Greg’s high on the power anyway without being given more of it. A stick to beat him with, right?
Rhod’s here today, and a few other people Greg vaguely knows. Men and women he’s seen in the back corridors of the BBC deep in conversation with David or Stephen or Ian, or in articles talking about the must-see venues to visit in Edinburgh. They get on well enough, and he’s met them at rehearsal last week and in the green room today, and none of them are thick. Greg finds more than one set of essentially-stranger eyebrows raised as he and Alex struggle through the opening bit, which Alex fondly titles ‘banter’ on the script document.
(This time, Alex has written in a riddle for Greg to imperiously read from the autocue, something for him to say and Alex to get implausibly wrong. Then Greg gets cross at him. Bread and fucking butter, or it should be, but he keeps seeing that other Alex superimposed on this one, the Alex that knows what he’s doing. Subservience without limits Alex.)
Shit doesn’t really hit the fan until right at the end of filming.
It’s long after lunch, ticking closer to five o’clock, and everyone’s started surreptitiously checking traffic updates on CityMapper and hoping they can get through their lines in one go.
The script says something unhelpful at this juncture, like – anger at incompetence – and the whole episode they’ve been building on that stupid bit at the start, some explosive conclusion. Alex writes that in about half the time, depending on Greg to fill in the gaps, and he flatters himself he’s usually able to rise to the occasion.
“Oh dear,” he says now, his voice deep and still, the sort of voice that used to make Year 9 shit themselves on a Thursday afternoon, don’t think about that, you stupid fucker, “Oh, no, this won’t do at all.” Out of the corner of his eye he can see Rhod covering his smirk with his hand, and Andy behind the camera, nodding encouragingly.
“Um?” Alex says, turning his whole body to face Greg’s, his legs crossing and uncrossing nervously, and he’s such a good actor it comes across real, “Which part?”
“All of it, you incompetent buffoon!”
Alex mimes pointing at himself, mouthing the word incompetent to the nearest camera. Greg’s traitorous mind reminds him of how he looked before, that fucking sight, a hand in his mouth, wriggling on his lap. Jesus Christ. “Would you mind,” Alex says, and then looks so fretful Greg wants to put a thumb between his brow and press it away, “Would you mind providing clarification?”
“Yes, I would mind, you little weasel,” Greg says sharply. The crows’ feet under Alex’s eyes wrinkle when he suppresses shocked laughter, and he’s doing that now.
“Can I – can I make up for it, then?”
What a leading fucking question, the little dick. The audience (and there’s an audience here, don’t forget!) obediently makes a little oooooh noise of anticipation, and the comedians across from them (there’s comedians across from them, don’t forget!) join in, and Andy behind the camera (there’s fucking cameras, don’t forget!) claps silently in glee.
“Yes, you can, actually – what a clever idea, little man,” Greg says. Which one of them will be first to blink? Ten steps and then fire, chaps. He stretches out his body, puts both feet on the floor and his hands on the arms of his chair, and flexes his fingers.
“Oh,” Alex knows the other shoe is falling, but the great joke of it is that he doesn’t know where, and they both know he must jump when Greg says how high, “Oh, good.”
“You know how they used to apologise in Medieval Britain?” Greg asks, and a laugh at the ridicule of it all bubbles up, and he hides it with his cue cards, “You know?”
Alex shakes his head.
(Don’t get fucking hard on set, you bollocks.)
“They used to-” another laugh – “They used to kiss the King’s shoes, did you know?” Lie. Of course it’s a lie. Everyone knows it’s a lie. Does that make it better or worse, that the lie is so bald-faced, that everyone knows Greg has said this because some fucked-up part of him wants Alex Horne to kiss his shoe?
Worse, of course, and better.
Alex’s face does something very interesting. It shutters, and his cheeks go very red, like he hasn’t been doing this on camera for years, and he slots his iPad in between the cushions of his chair. “You want me to,” he looks to the camera, accentuating the insanity, and he’s better at TV than Greg because at least he’s playing the veneer of improv, “You want me to kiss your shoes?” He laughs. He actually has the gall to laugh.
Greg stamps both his feet on the carpeted floor. He feels like an untethered balloon. He feels hard, and knows he can’t be, and shifts in his seat under the ruse of stretching his legs out further, his belt and slowly-untucking shirt hiding anything he wants to disguise. “Come on, boy,” he says – another whoop from the audience – “Kiss ‘em.”
(The air feels thick. Golden syrup. Everyone knows it’s about sex a little.)
Alex falls out of his chair and onto his knees and the thud, that horrible hard sound, makes Greg grin. “Go on,” he goads, tapping his hands on his knees, “What are you waiting for, you little pervert?”
Down there Alex is voiceless, it seems, but goes to his hands and knees to crawl the three feet from his chair to Greg’s, and to fill the weird sucking silence Rhod whoops – the audience follows suit, like little lemmings – and Alex reaches Greg’s feet. He looks up at him, his mouth a little open, his eyes very wide, but covered with a mist Greg’s seen before, and a challenge; I’ve come this far, but will you close the distance?
Greg pats the top of his head a few times, like a hapless neighbour meeting the new dog.
And Alex bends down, his arse in the air, and kisses Greg’s shoe with all the tenderness of a lover, his hands between Greg’s planted feet.
“Right!” Shouts Andy, centuries or perhaps millennia later, “Well done, everyone! That’s a wrap on day one – pints all ‘round!”
Usually, after filming, he’s tired and sweaty and would quite like to be at home in his pants with his feet up. Some of the crew are going to the pub, though, and they’re good, they always offer even if Greg’s always a sad bastard that says no – and so they look at him in complete shock when he accepts. How can he say anything but, with Alex staring intensely at him even as he’s speaking logistics to Dymphna, the stage manager, there clutching his clipboard like a lifeboat?
So they go to the pub.
It’s the same as the other day, the Crown or the King’s head or whatever, who cares, but there’s a different girl behind the bar, and Greg has no intention of staying long. He gets two gins and hides himself in a corner, where someone’s lit a fire, and waits.
Doesn’t have to wait long. Alex is in a burgundy jumper and the Doc Martens and offensively unassuming when he pulls up a barstool beside Greg, slinging his backpack underneath the table, “Good show today.”
“Oh, you thought so, did you?”
Alex smiles at him for a carefree heartbeat, then hides the expression with a sip of gin. It’s still reassuring to know that there’s a real personality under there, under the charged flirting and the foot-kissing and what have you. “Why, should I not have thought so?”
“No, no, it was a good show,” Greg drinks too, the proverbial bullet between his teeth until he bites down with the words, “Do you do that sort of thing often?”
Of course Alex knows what he means, and he doesn’t fuck about pretending not to. “Only when sufficiently motivated,” he says, and if Alex feels as weird about this as Greg does, he’s much better at hiding it, “And only if I think there’s something in it for me. I’m sure you know exactly the feeling.”
“Something in it for you,” Greg echoes, “So was there?”
“Well, I did it, didn’t I?”
Greg has to allow that one. “And the… the photo,” he says, tries to make it sound casual, like he’s thought of loads of other shit in the intervening days, “The photo from Friday,” like it hardly matters, “What did she make of it?”
He’s crap at this. Alex is grinning into his gin. “Oh, she liked it. She liked it quite a lot, actually.”
And then Greg doesn’t know what to say, after that. “I dunno what to say,” his mouth voices before he can stop it.
Alex shrugs. “Say what you like. I think we’re… close enough.”
“Right. So if I said I’ve got a fuckload of beer at home and need help drinking it, and if I said oh, by the way, that’s a huge fucking come-on and make no mistake?”
“I’d ask what relevance that has to me.”
“You’re a squirrelly little fucker,” Greg says with some admiration, and watches Alex laugh, properly laugh, his face scrunching up, his eyes wrinkling with surprised delight.
“Suppose I am,” he replies, and finishes his gin with a very un-Alex-like flourish, “So… about that fuckload of beer.”
“Do you need to, like, text Rachel or anything?”
“Oh no, no.”
“Oh?” Greg teases, and like clockwork watches those ears redden, “What, did you talk about it already? You little shit.”
“You don’t know that we did,” protests Alex feebly, although he’s dug his own hole by now and Greg won’t let him wriggle out of it, “I could have got a hotel for the night for all you know.”
“You’re a shit liar, Alex.”
“Yeah, fine.” And Alex is blushing, quite sweetly, like he’s some virgin at a debutante ball that Greg is planning to deflower, “I told her. You know I told her.”
“’Course I did. I just like seeing you squirm.”
Alex has nothing to say to that, and Greg’s at trouble of getting hard in the pub, so there they leave it.
It takes all of five minutes to say goodbye to the few people in a wide table at the window, who are building towers with soggy beermats, and if anyone finds it odd that Alex and Greg are leaving together, no-one mentions it. It’s somehow so much worse than it was last week, the standing in the uncomfortable wind debating Uber or Tube, deciding on Uber for speed, then watching the little car icon inch through traffic. Small talk about the fucking wife and kids seem wildly inappropriate, but so do their sexual proclivities – Greg can hardly turn around and say, so, you like to be humiliated in bed, do you? Because I get my rocks off on calling you a whore and slapping you ‘til you’re red, can he? Alex ends up taking his phone out and showing Greg the ducks he’d taken pictures of on his walk on Sunday.
“Look,” Greg murmurs, both of them in the back of the Uber with the middle seat between them, “We can have a drink, you know? And talk.”
“Oh,” Alex looks surprised, “I thought we had.”
Oh? Well, in that case…
But nerves, or whatever they are, only last the length of the journey, held captive by the disinterested driver. Greg all but chases Alex up the steps to the front door, gallantly ushers him in, and when he turns around from the coathooks, Alex is kissing him full on the mouth.
He isn’t expecting it, but it doesn’t take long to react; fumbling with one hand at the door chain, he takes the front of Alex’s jumper in his hands and applies sufficient brute force so as to spin them both around and thrust Alex by his shoulders into the coats, scarves falling in his face, his eyes.
He can feel Alex laughing delightedly into his lips, and that makes Greg want to go, too, off into a fit of giggles. This is far too much. He wants to do awful, disgusting things tonight, and wants Alex to look up at him and thank him for the honour. He doesn’t want to think of scripts, recordings, travel times, bullshit; he wants to suspend himself in that one ridiculous moment when he’d realised Alex was really going to do it, because neither of them have ever backed down from anything. He just wants to enjoy himself, and if that can be at Alex’s expense, well, all the better.
Alex is pliant once Greg has him by the front, content to be kissed, but Greg is not a patient man, and rarely content. “Right,” he breaks off and wipes the back of his mouth, and watches Alex’s eyes dilating, “Upstairs, yeah?”
“Sure,” Alex says.
“And this is fine?”
“Greg, I’m forty-one. Don’t patronise me,” but he’s smiling as he says it, and taking off his shoes.
“Right. Good point.”
Up the stairs they pad, and by the time they reach the top Greg’s mind has sunk down into the lower place he goes to, fully in the memory of Alex’s back arching, his head dipping down to his feet; he swats Alex’s arse on the way to the bedroom, is rewarded with a yelp, one that satisfies him because of how low it is, how surprised, how full of pain without the pleasure. “Right, you’re going to get me off properly, aren’t you, ‘cause you rudely didn’t last time,” says Greg, slipping into the bedroom and sinking onto the bed, watching Alex enter, “And if you’re good, I’ll give you my leg like a little fucking dog. Would you like that?”
“Oh, yes please, sir,” says Alex immediately, and then just stands there in the doorway until Greg lifts an eyebrow towards the place between his spread legs. “Oh – oh, right-”
“And you can shut up on your way, too.”
“Right. Thank you.”
Greg pokes his cheek when Alex kneels, and then pure desire – and a little memory – makes him slap where he’s poked with his open palm. Alex grunts a little, and then mumbles, “thank you,” and reaches for Greg’s belt.
Now he knows the game, he can play it. Alex likes a little physical, he knew that anyway, but now he pulls his hair, slaps him, digs his heel into the back of Alex’s thigh, and each time the response he gets is that maddening thank you. It’s doing it for him, something he didn’t know would happen, and he wants to do more. Hit him harder. Make him cry.
Alex takes him out of his jeans and then sits back on his knees, face turned up to Greg obediently, hands on the front of his thighs. Christ, even at the thought of him Greg’s harder than he ought to be; he’s been on the edge of it all day, ever since that fucking scene, or maybe even since last Friday. God knows. He certainly doesn’t. How the fuck has this happened?
Because he can, because he wants to, Greg takes his cock by the base, his thumb spreading salty precome down the shaft, and bounces it against the cheek he’s just slapped. The reaction makes them both groan, as Alex’s eyes drop, his mouth opens automatically, and his fingers twitch where he’s left them. “Christ, you’re fucking used to this, aren’t you?” Greg can hear the arousal in his own voice, “What a clever boy, yeah?”
“Mmm,” Alex nods frantically, and the motion means Greg’s smearing himself over Alex’s nose, his lips, “I am.”
“Show me what you’re good for, then. Ah – no, keep your hands where they are. You don’t need to use them, do you?”
“No, I don’t need to use them,” Alex agrees, and Greg is satisfied with the whiteness of his knuckles where he twists them into the fabric of his trousers, “I – now?”
“What are you, stupid as well as a whore? Didn’t I say show me?”
Alex shudders with the words, then drops his mouth open and leans his whole body forwards onto Greg’s cock. His hot, wet tongue flattens against the length of Greg and when he groans, the noise shudders and vibrates in his throat, down Greg and back up again; Greg clutches his fist into Alex’s hair and, utterly unmindful of anything but his own pleasure, fucks down into him.
The sound of Alex choking shouldn’t be as arousing as it is, but he adjusts, and Greg’s using the purchase he has in his hair to fuck up into him as carelessly and roughly as he would his own hand; Alex’s not got anything to stabilise himself, his own hands still obediently lying where he’s placed them on his legs, utterly depending his whole weight on the hand in his hair. And all the while Greg’s saying this horrible tirade of filthy insults, equally filthy compliments, the sort of things he wouldn’t say anywhere else, to anyone else, calling him a whore, a slut, a hole and nothing more; naughty boy, clever boy, anything he can think to make Alex whine, watching him shift uselessly against the backs of his own heels, unable to do anything to get himself off, to pleasure himself without permission.
“Fucking hell – Jesus-”
Greg keeps one of his hands in Alex’s hair, but shifts the other down to cup him by the chin, the jaw; what makes him jerk, makes him shout an ignored warning – “Fuck – Christ – oh, god-” is the feeling of his own cock against his thumb as Alex takes as much of him into his throat as he can, up, down, up, down, “Jesus!”
In the aftermath, the awful thing is that he can feel Alex swallowing against his thumb. Swallowing and swallowing.
“Oh,” Greg eases him off with both hands on Alex’s cheeks, and he’s fucked if he could go again when he sees the glaze in his eyes and the wet on his lips, running down his chin, “You’re a filthy thing, you know that?”
“Yes,” Alex agrees, rather mindless. His hands are still on his knees. “Yes, thank you, yes, thank you, yes, yes.”
“What did I say you’d get?”
“You-” Alex pauses, licks his lips, “You said if I was, if I was good you’d give me…”
“Yeah, go on?”
“Your leg-”
“Like a what, boy? You forgot?”
“No,” Alex is so embarrassed, how delightful, “No, you said like a, a dog-”
“Say it properly.”
Alex shuts his eyes. Whispers: “Like a little fucking dog.”
“Say it properly.”
“Like a – little fucking dog, sir.”
“You think you deserve it?”
Alex nods against his hand.
Greg shifts his foot, roughly kicking Alex’s bent legs apart, and catches Alex by the shoulders when the shift in equilibrium threatens him with falling; he pushes his shoe right up against the bulge in Alex’s trousers, and Alex’s moan is high and reedy, cracked with the recent abuse against his throat. “Oh, yeah? You could get off like this, could you? You’re that pathetic?”
Alex leans his mouth against Greg’s knee. “Yeah,” he says, muffled, and Greg can feel the spit soaking through his jeans.
“Go on then,” Greg says, with absolutely no compassion in his voice, “If you can, prove it. Get off.”
He must be as wound up on it all as Greg is, because all it takes is Alex’s hips shifting a few times against Greg’s shoe, and Greg’s hand back in his hair steering him, and his eyes shut, his mouth still there on the denim, looking so used Greg would feel guilty about it if he wasn’t pleased -
“Oh, thank you,” Alex groans, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou-”
It’s always been about sex a little bit, and Greg’s known that from the start. Almost from the start. It doesn’t matter – he’d known that going in, and he’d still signed up, name on the dotted line, because he doesn’t care.
“You can do pretty much anything you want to me,” Alex had said at the time, before the thing was even fully commissioned, back when it was in that uncomfortable time where a lot of people had committed a lot of time and money to getting this made, but there was a high chance – a high chance – that someone up above would pull the plug, and everyone would have to slink home with their tails between their legs.
“You can do pretty much anything you want to me,” Alex begs now, lying with his shirt unbuttoned, open by his sides, his trousers down to his ankles, a makeshift blindfold (Greg’s scarf, slung down from the edge of the door) around his eyes, his hands knotted together behind his head, kept in place with hot-pink electrician’s tape, “Greg, you can do – you can do-”
“Yeah,” Greg says, hands on his hips, surveying Alex with pleasure, “You think I don’t know that?”
It’s always been about sex a little bit, and Greg’s known that from the start.
Subservience without limits means Greg will shove unpleasant sweets in Alex’s mouth and hold it shut, his big hand covering all of Alex’s mouth, his lips, his chin, until he can feel him swallowing against his skin, and then they’ll go home and Greg will sit Alex down at his feet at the dinner table and feed him, and Alex will duck his head, a little thank you after every bite. It means Alex will tell Greg they’re going to do a bit with a toddler leash, and then Greg puts a collar on him and walks him ‘round the flat and makes him bark and then laughs at him until Alex is red and sulky with embarrassment. It means Greg will tie him to the bedposts and then go to the shops for an hour, and maybe call Alex’s wife and let her know exactly what to say when he gets home. It means he’ll fuck him into the pillows, come on his face, and go for another round before Alex ever gets to recover.
It’s always been about sex a little bit, and Greg’s known that from the start.
But so has Alex, and it’s his bloody show.