Chapter Text
Falling in love with his best mate was incredibly easy. So much so that Alex quite simply doesn’t notice it until they are both moving towards fifty, have well-established lives, and very little time for one another.
And the thing is, Alex doesn’t have a world-view-shattering epiphany, or anything like that. No, instead, it is the slow and creeping realisation that something is missing, and no amount of texts and calls and moping in his wife’s arms helps. Like the sun rises every morning, Tim Key is meant to be a part of his life.
Which leads to the understanding that Alex Horne has two better halves. Mathematically speaking, that means he really has two better one-thirds of himself (and none of them know about that). Well, no, he’s always suspected that Rachel suspects something to be — suspectable.
To say she has a weird way of showing that and supporting him in the same vein is an understatement. Namely, because she has made it very clear that it would be fully acceptable for him to sleep with Greg Davies, if he is inclined to do so.
That is, of course, all fine and dandy, but Alex has no real interest in Greg. At least, not while there’s no telling how long they will remain working closely together. A consensual workplace relationship would just lead to Alex losing focus, or worse, their on-screen relationship being impacted.
On the other hand, with the lack of a certain someone in his life, it’s reasonable to broach the subject and ask for clarification. Does it have to be loveless? Can it only be Greg?
Sitting on the couch that night with his arm around Rachel’s shoulders, Alex’s eyes flicker away from the TV and follow a speck of dust as it floats up. He wets his lips, draws circles on Rachel’s arm, and lets a breath of air out of his lungs. Slowly but surely, Alex deflates while his gaze stays firmly up on the ceiling.
When he finally finds his voice, it comes out like a ripped-off plaster: squeaky and straight to the uncomfortable point. “Do you remember saying I can sleep with Greg?”
Rachel hums against his shoulder, the vibration telling him how drowsy she is already. What a lovely woman, he thinks to himself and turns towards her, letting his lips rest against the top of her head. Strangely enough, he still can’t bring himself to look at her properly.
“Is that still the case?” Alex asks into her hair.
“‘Course.” It sounds so matter-of-fact coming from her despite the gravel in her voice. Rachel reaches over his chest, her hand comfortably fitting over Alex’s shoulder as she snuggles deeper into his side. “Just tell me when not to wait up.”
Truth be told, he thinks it shouldn’t be cut and dry like this. It feels like cheating, both on her and on life, to get a free pass just like that. Of course, Alex is grateful for the bond he shares with Rachel — the unmitigated trust they hold is something special — and yet, he feels guilty for wanting more.
“Right.” His voice falls flat.
It’s not that Alex wants more per se, but rather explicit permission to pursue the other person in his life. The one who has been there in much the same manner as Rachel and who, if allowed to be, will be there for just as long. And yet, he thinks he could do with an absolution of guilt while they’re at it.
Rachel pulls herself up, her face close, her eyes staring intently into his. “Wait — did he make a move on you?”
“No, I don’t think he has.” Alex sighs, his hand rubbing gently at the arm thrown over his shoulder.
The new position forces him to look at her, lest she realise his growing uneasiness.
He swallows a lump in his throat.
Beside him, her expression is gentle, the lines around her eyes are kind but expectant. Alex knows by heart where he was every single time a new line had shown up and made him fall deeper in love with her.
“Are you finally going to make a move?” Rachel asks.
“No.” As he shakes his head, his voice falters. He tries again. “No, I really don’t think I will. Ever, maybe.”
“Then —?”
Too quickly, too eagerly, he soldiers on. “Does it have to be Greg?”
“Pardon?”
“I said, does it have to be Greg? Just — like, what if it’s not Greg?”
“Not Greg?”
“Not Greg.”
Not Greg, but still a man, and still someone incredibly close to him. Someone who isn’t like Greg at all, but also somehow not not like Greg. Right — Greg doesn’t feel like a word anymore; even in his head, it sounds weird now.
“Are we talking just about anyone, or do you have someone in mind?” Rachel asks. By now, she is sitting properly, still having a hand on his chest but no longer leaning on him. The distance, however, isn’t a daunting canyon but a breath of fresh air.
“Tim,” he whispers.
“Tim?”
“Yeah, my Tim. Tim Key.”
The edges of Alex’s previous tension return when Rachel pulls her eyebrows together. For a couple of beats, underlined by audio from the TV, they’re both quiet.
She licks her lips before forcing them into a wan smile. “Love, you’ve been with Tim since we met.”
“I actually meant — more of a being with Tim.”
When she replies, she presses both a warm kiss and her words directly against his thick skull. “You are with Tim.”
Wincing, Alex flinches back, his eyes wide as his mouth parts in silent protest. Spluttering, rearranging his thoughts, he needs a while to find the right answer. “Not just like you think I could be with Greg,” he replies lamely. The admission betrays just how much he actually wants to be with Tim. A loveless shag with a coworker has nothing on the emotional proximity he craves from his best friend.
“You are with Tim, not just like you thought I thought you would want to be with Greg.”
“I’m not with Tim!” He says maybe a tad too loud. A pink flush climbs onto his cheeks, assisted by a defensiveness he can’t properly place. It clings to him, akin to a thick layer of sunscreen made entirely of guilt and shame and vaseline.
In the background, Strictly dances on, but the unreadable expression on Rachel’s face drowns out all the thoughts from Alex’s brain. In consequence, a silence sits inside his head so oppressive that he is sure a pin needle drop would be audible, even to her.
On Rachel’s face, concern spells out her next words long before she figures out how to put them to her lips. Occasionally, her mouth twitches, her eyes search his face, but whatever she finds makes her teeth click shut again.
When she finally speaks, it’s hushed, “Does Tim know that?”
“What?” The surprise in Alex’s voice is similar to someone finding out that bones are wet and a bit soft.
And then Rachel sits him down and, gently, as if talking to a toddler, explains her understanding of their marriage. Twenty-something years of living side by side, and it’s all marred by one big — ginormous, even — misunderstanding.
For the entirety of Rachel’s speech, Alex’s eyebrows are clinging to his pretty high-up hairline.
When she’s done, Alex slumps heavily into the back cushion of the sofa, drags his hands down his face and uses his fingertips to massage his temples, brows, and forehead. He waits for the sinking dread to fully crawl down his throat and lie heavily in his stomach before speaking up.
“So that’s why —.”
“Yeah.”
“And the —?”
“Mhm, yeah.”
“All of it?”
Alex can see just how carefully she arranges her sentence. She is gentle when she asks, “Do you want to talk to him?”
And unlike her, his words don’t find themselves nearly as nicely arranged.
“God no. I mean, yes, I really should, shouldn’t I?” But he can't fathom how to even broach the subject with Tim, and she knows that.
Her eyebrows rise, just the tiniest of twitches, but somehow her face seems set in stone. Lips are drawn in a line, eyes hard — oh, she's always been able to read him like an open book.
“I love you,” he says, and the words cling to his teeth like molasses. He means it, of course, he does, but the syllables hold a double, no, a triple meaning. I'm sorry, he could've said instead, and his tongue would've felt just as heavy. Worse than that, any option is undeniably the end of their conversation.
“Did I ruin — did I ruin the game?” Alex asked one cold evening in 2020, as the sobering effect of being too argumentative slowly but surely mulled through his lashed mind. He leaned forward, squinting at the laptop while the screen flickered between images of his friends.
For a moment, they seemed frozen.
Tim rolled his eyes in such a manner that Alex knew was meant to be subtle, but otherwise, he stayed quiet.
Mark, although his opinion mattered just as much, disappointed Alex when he spoke. The ‘No’, the soft tone; it felt more like Alex was being placated than anything else.
So, red-faced, he tried to explain himself and waited for the guilt to stop sitting like a viscous mass in his lungs. A plethora of reasons spilt from his mouth, and he had already given up, retroactively throwing the game.
Except the absolution never came. Mark, much like a parent would, tried to stir the focus back to the game, allowing Tim the grace not to bother with Alex’s mess any further. And, of course, Tim jumped on the opportunity like a priest on a Bible. Like a new one with bigger text and nice pictures or something.
They continued the game, which led to the problem that Alex wasn’t done feeling guilty.
In fact, he hadn’t even started wallowing in misery, and thus, he slunk off without closing the laptop or getting acknowledged by his friends.
Thankfully, Tim’s room was just across the hall from his own, sharing a wall with Mark’s.
Upon opening the door, Alex looked right and left and right again. The restrictions of lockdown were still in place, albeit no longer as strongly enforced. Distinctly, he remembered Tim writing a new book, something miserable about being alone, while Alex spent his time with his family. Unlike Tim, Alex considered lockdown an interesting little break.
Surely, that ought to mean that Tim would welcome Alex into his space.
They’re no longer young and stupid; they had the money for separate rooms and beds and necessities, but in the murky waters of his mind, Alex craved the comfort of times long gone. So, he scurried across the hallway, in and out of doors, just so he could get to Tim.
His best friend, who maybe had shorter hair and deeper lines on his face, but who was still just the same man he had always shared everything with.
When Alex opened the door, Tim’s head twitched up before settling right back onto the screen. Somehow, he got both acknowledged and ignored for the sake of the recording and the game. It didn’t sit well with the alcohol in Alex’s system; the way it climbed through his blood vessels made him all too aware of his guilt again.
Light from the tablet flickered over Tim's features, aiding the otherwise warm hotel room with colder tones. It painted his button-up in gentler hues, framing a tired face in a much kinder way. Overall, this Tim was easier to look at than the one behind the little screen.
The world swayed, and so did Alex as he made his way over to his friend. He really wanted some comfort.
“Hold on a moment, Watto,” Tim said as he finally, finally looked up at Alex, “Yeah?”
“Wanted to apologise.” Alex’s voice came out small, the beer-induced lilt hung heavy on his tongue.
“Hm? For the game?” Tim, just as drunk but so much more sober, gestured for Alex to sit on the bed.
Promptly, Alex parked himself on the mattress, fell backwards and rolled over until his face was uncomfortably squished below him. “For the game.”
“It’s one for the ages,” Alex heard Mark say while, once again, Tim remained mum.
It felt cruel of Tim to let Alex stew in the mess he had created, but at the same time, that was what felt necessary; it was what Alex wanted.
The texture of fabric clung to his lips and settled oddly between his teeth as Alex repeated the same mantra of apologies and reasons, the same bunch of excuses over and over again.
Until, finally, a hand settled warm and heavy on his head.
“Alright, dear,” Tim said, and Alex imagined him to frown.
Sluggishly, he turned onto his side to confirm his suspicions, but at the angle he was at, he could hardly make out Tim’s features. The sigh he heard sounded static, filtered through the speakers of a tablet that had seen better days. Mark was still on the line, their game not done.
“We’ll have to do some of the old cutting here and there anyway.” Tim addresses both of them.
Or maybe just Mark, as Alex found himself clinging more to the tone than to the words. He thought there were shadows on Tim’s face, but the hand on his head remained steady. As long as Tim allowed him to stay, Alex felt lighter.
“Scooch up, Al.” And magically, Alex found himself higher up on the bed. He couldn’t recall how it happened, but Tim had positioned himself with his back against the headrest, and Alex’s upper body had somehow slung itself around Tim’s torso.
It felt like home, it felt like 15 years hadn’t passed, and somehow it also felt like a drunken dream they would never address again.
“I’m sorry,” Alex mumbled against something warm and squishy. A tablet got propped up on his head, and a strong arm landed on his midriff. The weight of the world slowly but surely sank through and out of Alex while Tim held him close.
“Blimey, he’s worse than I imagined,” the tablet said in Mark's voice.
However, Alex's thoughts circled around the softness of Tim's belly, the comfort of his thighs and the safety within his embrace. It was nice enough to let him drift away from guilt and misery.
“Yeah. Been a while since he got like this.” Soothing circles were drawn into Alex's shoulder.
“You’ll be okay?” Voices close and far away kept sounding in and out of Alex’s consciousness. “I can come over, and we can make a joke of it. — A cuddle pile or something.”
“Nah, let’s just continue.”
“Kit Watson. Below the line is going to have a field day with this.”
“I tell you what, if he starts snoring, we’ll have a problem.”
A warm laugh, so unlike Rachel's, came from above Alex.
“I miss you,” is what Alex says upon seeing Tim’s face in the static of his laptop. The screen isn't nearly big enough to do Tim justice, but the compressed image and slightly shit connection make up for the months of absence.
“Pardon?” Tim’s image freezes, moves a bit, and freezes again. The video quality decreases notably.
Alex leans towards the screen and raises his voice. “I said, ‘can you hear me’?”
“No, you didn't.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No chance, mate.”
“If you heard me –” Alex knows what’s coming and clicks his mouth shut before the snarky reply can come.
“Small if,” Tim interrupts like clockwork. On his face and through the pixels, Alex can see a smirk starting to form. It’s natural how they fall back into a routine as old jokes roll from their tongues with ease. This — this perfect, instant connection into each other’s brains is what Alex needs.
“Then why make me repeat myself?” he asks and feigns offence.
“Wanted to see what would happen.”
“Well, the same thing that usually happens, I repeat myself.”
“Except you didn't,” Tim calls him out.
“Yes, I did.”
“Al,” Tim says with a certain finality that makes Alex pause and swallow a minuscule amount of saliva. “Rachel told me.”
“Ah.” Suddenly, there is something heavy sitting on Alex’s shoulders. He should be the one to tell Tim, not Rachel, but then again, how can one clear up a misunderstanding like that?
Tim takes the initiative and offers some more information. What he says comes out rather lackadaisical, but the syllables don’t feel right to Alex. It’s somehow as if Tim is desperately pretending that this conversation is about the weather. “Yeah, yeah. — She called me up while I was in the middle of packing, actually.”
“You were packing?” Alex asks to stir the topic elsewhere.
“Don't live here now, do I?” Whether he means the States or his Airbnb, Alex doesn’t know. All he actually cares about is for Tim to come back home.
“So –?” Alex forces himself not to sound too expectant. He tries, and fails, to play it cool.
“Hands off your face,” Tim says with an unmistakable automatism to his voice. “I thought you might want to have this talk in person, although it's not really going to be a breakup if you didn't know we're an item to begin with.”
Something in Alex’s chest constricts. He doesn’t care for the reality of their situation, but in doing so, interpreting Tim’s feelings doesn't cross his mind. Rather pathetically, he says, “I miss you.”
“I know. You said that already.” Tim’s gaze drifts down. When he comes back, his eyes are squeezing a lifeless laugh onto his face. He’s red all over, a sure sign, usually, that Tim has been drinking. “Do you remember when we were touring together, and we stayed in one room?”
A distraction! Helpless, Alex reaches for the olive branch and snaps it by accident. “Oh yeah, I spooned you a lot back then.”
When Tim’s face falls, a sigh stutters out of him. “Hm. I don't feel led on, to be honest. We don't touch, we don't hug. I always figured it's queer, but on an emotional level, it was everything I wanted.”
“Rachel thought we were shagging.” The admission feels hollow, the joke doesn’t land, but crumbles into a messy heap right at Alex’s feet.
“Honestly, I don't know how she got that one either.”
“You used to live with us, you're my eldest son's godfather, you practically helped us raise our children, and we've slept in the same bed many times.” It seems so easy to recount their lives on his fingers, but in doing so, Alex realises just how blind he had been. In retrospect, the amount of missed hints seems ridiculous. “We used to be unable to tell our clothes apart; you're the safest person I know. Professionally, we're basically –” he drifts off.
“‘Professionally, we're basically’ what?” Reaching over the camera, Tim turns the volume up, but the motion doesn’t help with words unspoken.
Meanwhile, cogs turn in Alex’s mind; it’s a squeaky old part of his brain meant for emotional intelligence. With Rachel, it’s oiled perfectly, but somehow, in regards to Tim, it’s oddly rusty. “— And privately as well,” he mutters into his beard.
“I think you're cutting out a bit, Horne.” Tim moves forward in his seat, his eyes searching the screen, irked with his inability to understand Alex. So close to the camera, the frustration is visible in his furrowed brows.
Finally, the cogs stop, and with a friendly ding!, the machine halts before spewing out its result.
“Oh, we are married,” Alex exclaims, aghast.
“Are you alright over there?”
“Why did we never kiss?”
There is a silence full of unsaid things as Tim’s eyes look anywhere but at the camera. He shifts a bit in place, licks his lips and then finally seems to settle on an answer. “Figured if you can't hug me, you won't try that one either.”
“Oh dear.” Alex’s shoulders slump.
“It's fine, really. I should've known, it always felt just so easy —”
“— Like breathing,” Alex interrupts in a tone so similar to that of a man having a divine revelation.
However, upon hearing that, Tim frowns. Static flickers across the screen, grips Tim's face and makes him look very unhappy about being reminded of something. Breathing? Actively breathing, Alex muses, is rather tedious, and he assumes, after years of knowing each other, that they have long moved past it.
“Yeah,” Tim finally concedes, but he sounds tired all of a sudden. “Like breathing. Never really thought I would need to find an alternative.”
“They sell oxygen in tanks these days.” Alex could hit himself for his abysmal timing.
It definitely isn't the moment for jokes, but despite everything, Tim's coughed-out laughter seems genuine.
The tension between them eases the slightest bit.
“I'll be fine, Al.”
“I don't know about myself, to be honest.”
“Why not?”
“Looking back, I think I rather enjoyed being married to two people.” His tongue darts out, licking over dry lips as his eyes firmly stay just a smidge to the side of the camera. Low enough to appear like he is looking at the screen, but too high to actually see Tim. “Really, I'm quite fond of breathing.”
A breath passes through his teeth, out and about into the world, unrecognisable in its quest to never be taken back; just like Alex’s words as they hang between him and the static of the screen. Would Tim be hopeful, he wonders, or furious? Indifferent? Within the span of so little time, their entire relationship got redefined, and here Alex is, realising that it could’ve been more. Except that he has weakened their bond irrevocably.
But, as seconds tick by, his shoulders sag, and his posture loosens. When no response comes, Alex leans further into the couch, his hands coming up, clammy palms squeezing his head as he wills himself not to declare everything a joke. He could’ve had Tim all this time? No, he’s had Tim without knowing it. Looking back, Alex wonders just how often he has dangled intimacy in front of his best friend, how often they could’ve crossed lines but didn’t, simply because Tim thought they were on the same page, and Alex is, what, repulsed?
His brows knit together, his line of sight climbing higher and higher until the specs of dust clinging to the ceiling take up his vision. Alex is almost famously touch-averse and yet allows others to touch him, knowing Rachel and Tim are his safe-haven, his home, his place to rest and recharge.
A part of him is waiting for the facsimile of normalcy to return, for Tim to call him out for having his hands up or something, but nothing comes.
Stillness crackles over the screen.
He gulps down air and spit and fear, and finally chances a look at the laptop. Alex’s gaze stops at the unmoving picture of Tim. With bated breath, he waits for him to blink, for his eyebrows to fall from his hairline and crumple in a frown, or for Tim’s cheeks to deepen in their flush, but nothing happens.
Just barely, he resists calling out, waving his hand in front of the camera as he notices the gentle rise and fall of Tim’s chest. Alex keeps watching as Tim holds his pose unblinkingly until the connection clicks off and the call ends.
“Very mature, Timmy,” Alex mutters under his breath before closing the laptop with a tad too much force. He can turn it off properly later, he thinks to himself, before standing up, wired with a paradoxical kind of lethargic energy.
“Rachel,” he yells, standing helplessly in the middle of the room. A look to his right, to his left, Alex’s eyes linger on the closed laptop before jumping away as if scared by something he shouldn’t have seen. What meets him instead is his reflection in the window. He sees a wide-eyed man, unsure of his own limbs, staring back at him. Desperate for something to take his mind off things, he calls out, “I’m taking the dog for a walk.”
Despite harbouring the hopes that the walk clears his head, his thoughts seem to race even quicker under the thick blanket of the stars.
It's quite odd to know something deep down in the marrow of his bones, and yet when it's suddenly a reality, it's gone. He still thinks something good slipped through his fingers, not just all at once but also equally over the course of decades.
Years of misunderstandings from both sides mar his past and make it impossible to look back without questioning every single second shared between him and Tim.
He stops walking.
Maybe Alex should be cross with Tim for taking cues from late nights or weak moments and running with them, but he isn’t, because, just like Tim, Alex does want this. Or, rather, he wants what they used to have, and that knowledge sits far too close to home for comfort.
Except, Alex needs them to actually be on the same page about it, and not just assume and assume, as Tim had done. No, Alex can't just let the little things linger until they're so precious in their meaning that one might hold them dear. They ought to be with intent and not just cruel interpretations.
Oh, fuck.
His eyes track Loky, her fur making her but an adumbration in the dark. The innocent little creature sniffs along the ground, following an invisible trail around different patches of grass. She walks with a springy gait, perfectly at ease in her life.
For lack of a better conversational partner, Alex asks, “Did I hurt him?”
Loky turns her snout to him, her face wears an unreadable expression — because she is a dog and Alex is a stupid, tired human. He sees himself reflected in her dark eyes. His face looks positively haunted, with shadows carving into his flesh and guilt tugging his eyebrows down. Alex’s heart beats ungentle against his lungs, constricted within ribs and muscles and foolishness.
Back when they used to live together, Alex had been different.
“And Rachel thought I knew,” he tells Loky as she sits down, her tail occasionally twitching about.
“Did I know?”
For a moment, the dog looks from side to side as if checking that they're alone. And then, almost hysterical, Alex expects Loky to tell him to knock it off or something. He thinks maybe Loky sees things differently, and Tim used him for emotional gratification, but then Loky puts her head down and sniffs the ground again.
Alex holds his breath. Should he be cross with Tim and Rachel?
As he lets out a sigh, the dog stands up again to follow her trail to a bush. She is done with the conversation.
Yeah, Alex thinks and remembers, Loky is a dog, and he is clinging to God knows what to help his brain process the situation.
Around him, the trees sway gently in the night breeze, but as Alex looks up, their branches turn into demon fingers. They're pointing and laughing at his misery.
Miffed, he finds a stick — one of their own! — and throws it for Loky.
In the eerie light, her head whips around at an odd angle to follow the movement, but seconds pass before she trots off to get the stick.
Alex feels like a right tit initiating play when his dog doesn't care for it. Surely, the length of the day is matted heavily to Loky’s fur as well, but despite that, she brings the stick back to him.
Instinctively, Alex knows not to throw it again and gives her a treat instead.
It occurs to him that Tim’s wants and needs should be knowledge that is just as deeply rooted in his brain as Loky’s are. To be fair, they are, but somehow, it's impossible to remember when he last applied himself to them.
When Loky tugs at the leash, Alex feels himself shift the clouds in his mind aside. He ignores the trees and their whispers and marches on back home.
That is, with one last glance thrown over his shoulder.
London's light pollution clings to Chesham; its brightness is unbearable even at night. To Alex, it just feels like a mockery, lighting the way to Tim's flat. Except, he can't just go over and ring the bell to be face-to-face with his best friend. Sam Campbell, lodging there while Tim is away, would be opening the door, and Fatberg would be peeking out from the living room. Nothing Alex could say would ever reach the right person.
Tim won’t be back in England for another day.