Chapter Text
“Why are you smirking?” asks Jenny. She does sound genuinely quite cross with him, and also he's in shot, so he straightens his face out a bit and shuffles closer.
“Well,” he tries, “you keep doing the same thing over and over again.”
Her reply is a single, dejected thud of bouncy ball on the drum skin.
Handing her more balls – oh, they match her outfit, that's nice – he tries again. “Do you think there's any way of improving your system?” He aims for politic: it comes out catty.
Fairly predictably, she explodes.
“There's a way, then, there's a way, there's a logical way!" Orange balls go flying brightly off the drum kit, scattering over the drive. He stoops to retrieve the closest before it can go rolling away. “There would be a way, there would be a fucking way, and I haven't got it!"
Certainly, some part of her is watching herself even now, knowing that her fit of pique will make good telly. But he can see that the feeling is real. Even as he hands her the ball back, she barely seems to register him. It's a weird thing to be proud of, definitely, but he is proud of it: when he writes a task just right, there's no need for a blindfold. A really good one puts blinkers on people anyway. Do you know what that means, he thinks to himself with a small smile, debajo de la mesa?
"It’s very frustrating, doing the same thing over and over again, and just not getting any better!”
Covering his mouth, Alex grins into his hand; taps his feet; keeps quiet.
He always enjoys it, these unexpected moments of… company? Is it company? Fellow feeling? Companionship, he supposes.
He’s so often much less lonely than he would ever have imagined. All things considered.
* * *
He really does try not to bother Greg too much. Not in general, and, as a rule, especially not during filming.
But he’s more or less certain that today won’t count. He might as well enjoy it.
You should start cartwheeling at gigs, I think.
His phone buzzes almost instantly with a reply.
Jenny, give Alex his phone back.
Eight years older than you. Cartwheeling.
Didn’t she need surgery after?
Keeps claiming she can’t throw a bouncy ball. Just because she almost lost her left arm.
I like my left arm.
It’s in your top three arms, definitely.
Don’t you have some sort of rule about spoilers?
Alex smiles helplessly down at his phone and, for a few mad moments, imagines telling Greg all sorts of things he really shouldn’t.
Then one of the cameramen coughs, jolting him back to the task at hand.
Go back to sleep, he replies instead, because it’ll be nearly midday now in Spain, and he likes to imagine Greg trying to scowl, and laughing instead anyway.
* * *
At lunch, Jenny holds court, her voice seeming to shake the walls even on the other side of the house. When he checks in on them she’s presiding, squinting and magnificent, over an impassioned debate amongst the crew about masturbation.
He slips soundlessly out again. He’s heard it twice already, and his ears turned red both times. He doesn’t feel it would be fair to get teased over it again. He can’t be held responsible for his blood vessels.
The house is small, of course, and strewn with crew, but thankfully everyone is concerned enough with food and Jenny and different categories of sex toy that he’s able to reach the garden unmolested, feet carrying him over to the statue in the corner. After a moment’s dithering embarrassment – there’s literally a bench – he drops himself down on the grass at its feet and flicks through his contacts.
Greg picks up on the second ring.
“Hello, there,” he says, warm and easy and a little surprised. “Being a good boy?”
There’s something jarring about hearing his real voice, his real self, when Alex is in costume, playing assistant. Another reason not to do this, really. Greg doesn’t live in this world like Alex does.
“Just for you, yeah.” He pulls his knees into his chest, trying not to smile so widely it might be heard on the other end. “Hello.”
“What’s got into you, then? I don’t normally hear from you when you’re filming.”
“No, no, nothing bad. Going well.” In theory, he could tell the truth, say something like I sort of always want to call you, actually. It's just that I can only do it when time goes weird like this. But what would be the point? “Just thought I’d say hi.” He leans back against the plasticky trouser leg.
“Sure.” Greg still sounds confused. Alex rarely breaks his own rules, and Greg can't possibly know that technically, he still hasn’t.
“How are you?” he asks, rather than admit anything. “What’s going on?”
“I’m the victim of a conspiracy,” says Greg promptly, as though he’d just been waiting to say so the whole time. “The man who does the hams here despises me and wants me dead, as you know–”
He grins, cradling the phone close in both hands. He does know. Greg has concocted a fabulous backstory for Alejandro, irascible purveyor of ham, and how he came to be so full of hatred for innocent British ham-buying giants. A thrilling tale of love, loss, and disgusting bodily functions.
“But it’s spreading. I swear the girl at the off-license is getting snitty with me now.”
“Snitty–?” He decides to leave it. “This is nothing to do with you turning her down?”
“I didn’t turn her down!” Alex makes a doubtful noise. “Again, she’s twenty-seven and her boyfriend rides a motorbike, Alex, I promise you she's not remotely interested. They are recruiting and I’m about to be horribly murdered any day now.”
“If– big if– you are horribly murdered,” Alex promises solemnly, “I’ll put a lovely In Memoriam to you at the end of the series. Music by The Horne Section.”
“Yeah? You’d go ahead with the series, would you? You and what Taskmaster?”
“I’d get Liza Tarbuck in.”
“Oh, as if you could sit that close to an actual woman. You'd explode.”
They giggle, then sit a few moments in peaceable silence, almost as though they were actually together.
“Ah. I probably need to get back to work,” he admits, trying to sound brisk and busy rather than heavy with stupid longing. He has rules because they’re important, after all. And he’s starting to think that breaking them still counts, even when nobody else ever finds out.
“Yeah, of course. You should call more,” says Greg after a moment.
“Yeah. Yeah, I will." Alex rubs distractedly at his chest, where it suddenly feels weird.
He won’t.