Noob!

[iskytheisk.livejournal.com]

 Hi from nervous-newbie! I have been admiring the wonderful quality of fic in this comm (and in the whose line fandom as a whole it seems!) so hesitantly offer my own efforts.  Please let me know what you think, whether you love it hate it, or are utterly indifferent, as comments most definitely are love! It's Clive/Greg, just a little story that jumped on me and held me at pun-point until I wrote it. It's therefore unbetaed, all mistakes are mine, is slightly odd and may be way OOC, I dunno. Extensive ramblings after the fic, if you like that sort of thing.

Title: Hoe-Down
Pairing: Clive/Greg
Rating: PG-13 to be safe
Disclaimer: I own nothing, the following is a work of fiction and not intended to genuinely depict the personal-life of the individuals involved in any way.

 
 It was one of those tapings that just didn’t seem to end, and Clive didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. The jokes, good and bad, the barbs, the cock-ups, the perfect one-liners, flowed and broke again and again and if there was an improv-heaven, or hell, then this was definitely it.

 

And every time he looked over to his players, his boys (and girl, but then Josie had always played like a boy), his crew, his masters and slaves, there was Greg, staring back at him. Smirking, as often as not, or grimacing, or just looking, with such intensity that Clive had, at times, to look away. No one else watched him like Greg did, pointed like a dog, listening to the rules of the games that he knew by heart, poised and primed and ready to snatch any scrap of weakness Clive gave to embarrass him, tease him, demolish him. Jokes he’d heard a thousand times before, about his neck, or lack thereof, his hair, ditto, his easy job, with everything written down, all the rules of improvisation. Ironic, eh?

 

So, hoedown now, one of many Clive is sure, Ryan is ansty as usual and if he doesn’t get in at least one ‘fuck’ that necessitates either a lame tv edit or a repeated version under the frowning presence of Dan, Clive will eat his scenes-from-a-hat-hat. Even Colin’s calming company beside his friend, the quiet joy he exudes to which Clive can always see Ryan turning may not be enough, with the atmosphere as it is tonight. Crackling, electric, improvtastic! Clive smiles at his own conceit and Greg casts a quizzical eyebrow quirk his way, that Clive chooses not to answer. He likes denying Greg, the more he does, the more the American pushes and something truly perverse in Clive wants to sing louder than Mike, better than Josie and cruder than Ryan every time Greg persists.

 

Richard has played four bars of the interminable ditty already and Greg hasn’t begun, still watching Clive out of the corner of his eye. Clive tries to contain the thrill that runs through him as he provokes,

“In your own time, Greg.”

Greg’s sarcastic brows twitch behind the rim of his glasses and it’s war.

“Sorry, Clive, I was just trying to think of something to rhyme with balding, no-necked square.”

The audience laugh and whoop cheerfully at this, as well they might, for tonight, Matthew, the hoedown topic was ‘sex’.

 

Clive permits a small close-mouthed smile but doesn’t reply. This drives Greg crazy, not knowing whether he’s embarrassed Clive or if he’s simply humouring him. Clive knows this and bites back retorts to Greg more often than he allows them, for the bright pleasure of Greg’s reaction.

 

Greg still hasn’t begun, and Richard’s smile is starting to look a little fixed as his fingers dance over the old combination. Fleetingly, Clive misses Tony; the unspoken communication between him and Richard had always been so amusing to watch. And when Tony had been on the show, he had been happy, if only for the taping. Clive had always wanted cheeky little Tony to be happy, even letting him win towards the end of the man’s appearances on the show; anything to dispel that darkly churning cloud he carried around with him, that not even the wealth of drugs Clive had seen him consume over the years could touch. That not even Richard could touch. 

 

Only the show could break through. The show that was so central for every one of them, every person to grace the ‘world’s worst step’ proving that they could, in the blinding glamour of studio lights, to the choppy waves of audience approval, be the world’s best.

 

Greg genuinely seems to be having difficulty, or he’s just really trying to piss Clive off. He’s succeeded with Ryan, it seems, who is bouncing in place and casting frustrated looks at Colin, who leans over and whispers something that makes Ryan grin, fiercely, through his expression.

Quietly, Clive murmurs a few words in verse form. “I sit behind the desk on the improv show ‘who’s line’; and many boys they come and go, but none can catch my eye…”

 

Greg’s eyebrows shoot up and a grin splits his face as he attends the words no one else seems to notice.

“Yeah, come on Clive,” he says, and suddenly everyone is staring at him and the room feels a degree or two hotter, “show us amateurs how it’s done!”

Clive lets himself grin wryly and nod.

“Only to save you further embarrassment, Greg,” he insists, and Greg simply tilts his head in that wonderfully sarky manner of his. Clive clamps down on the laugh forcing its way out of his throat (which is there, thank you very much, just hidden behind his high collar, his Windsor-knotted tie) and starts from the beginning, speaking in rhythm with Richard’s mechanical bars. He refuses to sing. Even for Greg.

 

“I sit behind the desk on the improv show ‘who’s line’,

And many boys they come and go, but none can catch my eye.

They dance and prance upon the stage and shake their respective arses,

But the arse I’ve always liked the best is a Yank who wears bad glasses!”

 

The audience are on their feet, applauding this ultimate dig combined with the expression of some improvisational skills from the implacable Clive Anderson. The players applaud too, varying expressions of eye-rolling amusement and admiration on their faces. Even Ryan doesn’t look angry any more.

And Greg. Greg is laughing like a loon and the sight makes Clive happier than he knows it strictly should.

“Hey Mike,” Greg calls down the line, “I think Clive has a crush on you!”

 

And everyone laughs and Clive joins in and ‘Whose Line is it Anyway’ continues in a blur of colour and laughter and brilliance and every comedian who has ever trod its red carpet is present and real and skilled and young and endlessly optimistic and Clive presides over all.

 

Until the lights have dimmed, the audience have left and the stage is bare. And still Clive sits, shuffling prompt cards through numb fingers while his legs are cramped under the desk by props. The only sound the cooling whine of the floods.

 

“Hey, baldie!”

 

Brash American accent, sarcastic and warm and inclusive.

 

“You coming or what? The bars close in five hours you know!”

 

And Clive Anderson stands and steps away from the desk, leaves the studio to cool and settle and echo with forgotten laughter.

 

 

 

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A/N

 

Not really sure where this came from, prob the culmination of watching far too many Whose Lines, reading too much fic, and suddenly realising just how damn slashy the relationship between Greg and Clive is (Greg and Drew too, for that matter, and I’d love to write a Greg pov about the two hosts, but don’t know the US version well enough…yet!)

 

It’s a bit…odd. Much more organic than my usual writing, both in terms of how easy it was to write (it took under an hour) and how the thoughts and images bleed into one another, through the medium of Clive’s mind. I hope this works and isn’t the most purple prose that’s trying and failing to be poetic that you’ve ever read! :/ 

 

The last line – is it too cheesy to be allowed to exist. Should I excise it and spread it on a baguette, washing it down with red wine?!

 

Wanted to get a few pairings in there – Ryan/Colin, Tony/Richard, but wanted to keep the underlying feeling that it was the show itself binding them all together, throughout the years and the problems and the petty arguments. Man that sounds cheesy! Pass the bucket Tony always threw up into, someone! ;)

Isk.