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“Can you try talking some sense into him?”
Alex glanced up from his phone to blink at Patrick from wardrobe, who sounded unusually exasperated, standing in the doorway of his dressing room. He was accompanied by Chrissie from makeup, which was never a good combination.
It also meant that the ‘him’ Patrick was referring to was Greg.
“Almost certainly not,” Alex said mildly, setting his phone down. “What’s wrong?”
Patrick heaved a sigh. “He got flowers.”
“Not just flowers,” Chrissie interjected. “Long-stem red roses. From a secret admirer, no less.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “The flowers aren’t the problem,” he said impatiently. “The problem is that he’s insisting on wearing one as a boutonnière. For the taping.”
Alex frowned. “So?”
“So it’s Valentine’s Day today, but the show doesn’t air today, does it,” Patrick said, exasperated. “So how are we going to explain the flower when it airs months from now, especially when it doesn’t make an appearance in any other episode of the series?”
Alex sighed, resisting the urge to rub his forehead. It was a fair point, even if he certainly didn’t want to be the one to break that to Greg. And not just because it was Valentine’s Day, and he found the idea of Greg wearing a red rose boutonnière to be surprisingly charming.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, the wheels in his head turning. Surely there must be something that he could do that would make all sides happy…
Oh. Of course.
He opened his eyes again. “Don’t worry about it,” he told Patrick. “I’ll work it into the banter section. Everyone will think it’s something we planned, and no one will question the continuity issue.”
Patrick hesitated. “Are you sure?”
Alex nodded firmly. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
At the very least, he had the tenuous idea of how to handle this. And all he really had to do was hope that Greg would go along with him.
On that front, at least, he felt fairly confident that he’d be able to pull it off.
An hour or so later, he sat onstage next to Greg, his hands carefully placed palm down on his iPad as Greg ran through the introduction, the red rose boutonnière prominent on his lapel. Thus far, all of the contestants had commented on it, and thus far, none of that material was likely to make it into the edit.
But Alex’s portion was going to, and now was his time to make this work.
“And seated next to me, the man roughly the same height that I was in primary school, it’s– Little Alex Horne!”
Alex gave his usual half-grin, half-grimace at the camera before glancing at Greg. “Hello, Greg,” he said. “I like your flower.”
Greg smirked, puffing out his chest just slightly. “Thank you,” he said. “I got flowers from a secret admirer today.”
Both Alex and the audience gave a collective ‘ooh’ and Greg preened at the attention. “Very nice,” Alex told him.
“It was, yeah,” Greg said.
“Very sweet,” Alex added, nodding officiously. “Very generous. Very caring.”
He put just the hint of a pause between each word, the verbal tic enough to rouse suspicion in Greg, whose eyes narrowed as he looked at Alex. “Let me guess, you were my secret admirer?” he asked, something resigned in the question.
Alex smiled up at him, the sappy, subservient smile he used for these sections. “Not so secret, I suppose,” he said, nodding.
Greg just shook his head, his smirk softening slightly. “Did you really get me a bouquet of red roses?”
Alex nodded again. “Clipped them from the garden myself,” he told Greg earnestly.
“You did not,” Greg scoffed.
“Did so.” Alex lifted his hands from his iPad, revealing the frankly absurd quantity of plasters he’d stuck all over the palms of his hands. “Tricky things, roses. Because of the, er, the thorns.”
The audience both laughed and let out an ‘aw’ at the sight, and Greg just shook his head, his expression torn between amusement, exasperation, and something fond that made Alex’s chest warm. “You silly boy,” he said, and the audience laughed again. “Come here, let Daddy kiss it all better.”
He reached for Alex’s hand, lifting it up to his lips to press a kiss right in the centre of his palm, and the audience and contestants all cheered and whooped while Alex blushed crimson, grinning at Greg. “Thank you, Daddy,” he said solemnly, which got everyone laughing again.
Greg set Alex’s hand down on the arm of his chair and patted it. “Thank you for the roses,” he said, unexpectedly sincere, a moment immediately ruined as he added, his smirk back in place, “Tomorrow, I’d like daffodils.”
“To– tomorrow?” Alex repeated, a little weakly.
Greg’s grin sharpened. “Yep.”
“Oh,” Alex said, looking down at his iPad and feigning his usual awkwardness, “right, I’ll just—”
“Prize task time, Alex,” Greg interrupted, looking back at the camera, and Alex relaxed, just slightly.
Task accomplished.
Alex winced as he peeled the plasters off his hands, thinking he had perhaps not thought through this particularly part of the plan. A knock sounded on the door to his dressing room and he called, “Come in,” without looking up.
“Hey,” Greg said, and now Alex did look up. “Can we…” He trailed off when he saw what Alex was doing, his brow furrowing. “Let me see these.”
He crossed to Alex in three long strides, taking both Alex’s hands in his, and Alex huffed a laugh as Greg examined his hands closely. “It was just for the banter section,” he told Greg. “I didn’t really clip the roses myself, or prick myself multiple times in the process.”
He made as if to pull his hands away but Greg didn’t let him, smoothing his thumb over a red mark one of the plasters had left when Alex peeled it off. “But you did give them to me,” Greg said, his voice low, and something in his tone made Alex swallow, a blush rising in his cheeks. “Didn’t you.”
Greg didn’t say it as a question but Alex still nodded. “I did.”
“Why?”
There was something in the way Greg asked it that had Alex’s heart beating double-time in his chest. “It’s Valentine’s Day,” he said, the breath hitching in his throat, just a little.
Greg arched one eyebrow, almost as if he was amused by the answer. “I know,” he said, before prompting, “And?”
Alex wet his lips. “And I was hoping you’d, erm, be my Valentine.”
For one long, agonising moment, Greg just stared at him, his expression unreadable. Then, the corner of his lips raised in a half-smile. “Really?”
Alex nodded. “Really.”
Greg’s smile widened, and he shook his head slowly. “You silly boy.”
“You said that before,” Alex reminded him, suddenly acutely aware that Greg was still holding his hands.
“Good thing it’s still true, then,” Greg told him, his voice low and warm.
Alex hesitated, biting his lower lip before blurting, “So is that a, erm—”
He didn’t quite get the question out before Greg reached out to cup his cheek with one large hand before closing the space between them and kissing him.
For one brief moment, it was as if the constant ambient noise of the studio had fallen away entirely, fading into something secondary and leaving Alex solely with the feeling of Greg’s lips against his. He melted into the kiss, his lips parting with a small sigh against Greg’s, and he could practically feel Greg’s lips curve into a smile against his own.
“Funny,” Greg murmured. “I thought you’d never ask.”