Quotes Challenge

[maradao.livejournal.com]

I made the very stupid mistake of including all the guys and all the quotes together in the same story. Bad, bad error. Never again. If this is as painful for any of you to read as it is right now for me to think about, I apologize. *taps own head* Sleep now.


Title: The Guessing Game

Rating: R

Pairing: Just general slashiness.

Summary: Jeff throws a party. Drew proposes a game. Everyone gets drunk. Standard fare, really.

Disclaimer: The people belong to themselves; Whose Line belongs to other people. Anything that sounds like it’s under copyright probably is. I’m not making any money; I’m not out to defame anybody’s character or undermine the free market or anything like that. Just telling a story.



Colin says:

"You know, for as long as I can remember, I've had memories. Some good, some bad... some of them never actually happened, but that’s okay, too. This one, the one I’m about to tell, is one of those last ones...

***

"All right,” Jeff said, clapping both hands together. “I got everything for the party, I got the food, I got the beer, I got the baby oil... let’s start this thing!"

“Baby oil?” inquired Greg, sauntering into the kitchenette with a beer already in his hand and one eyebrow raised.

“For the indoor water slide,” Jeff explained, as though it should have been self-apparent. “I’ve got a bunch of garbage bags that we’re going put down in the hallway later, pour a couple of bottles of baby oil all over, and we’re in business -- you two did remember to bring an extra pair of shorts, right?”

From the bedroom doorway, Wayne nodded. “Got mine right here,“ he said, indicating the bag he came in with. Greg just quirked his eyebrow higher. “Um, Jeff? Hasn’t it occurred to you that the hotel management might come along and bust up this little theme park joy ride idea of yours?”

Jeff shrugged. “Not if nobody complains, and there’s nobody but us on this floor anyway. ‘Sides, Drew can buy them off.” Suddenly there came a knock at the door.

“That must be the rest of the guys,” Jeff said, opening the latch. “Hey, Drew! Colin! Brad! Did you bring more booze?”

“Most of it’s here,” said Colin, staggering under the weight of several paper bags and their clinking contents. “Ryan’s bringing up the rest.” Behind him, Drew walked in carrying only his laptop computer, and following him was Brad, trying to wedge a slide projector-type machine through the door without scraping either it or one of his hands off in the process.

Jeff turned to ask one of the others to help, but Wayne was gone, and Chip was in the middle of a beer and a story with Greg. "So I put on this accent like I’ve just swallowed a truck full of gravel, right, and, and this is the part, this is when I say, ‘Bachelor number two, if I were a drink I believe I would be a margarita because I am tall... and... salty... and I... always have tequila in me.’"

“I have just one thing to say to you -- to the two of you, actually.” Greg said, eyes darting between Chip and the incoming group from his perch on one of the kitchen barstools. “Why?”

“--And where did you find one of these things in the middle of Las Vegas, Drew?” Jeff asked, catching up the projector’s cord before Brad could trip over it. In the middle of everything, Chip squeezed past them, two more beers in hand, on his way out the door.

“Ask me no questions, Jeff,” Drew warned with a grin. “Just help us find a place to put this thing where -- well, I guess that works.” Brad had already unceremoniously dumped the heavy machine down on the edge of one of the beds. “If there’s room, we can move it onto the nightstand... That way it’ll be projecting the pictures up onto the wall by the tv.” He pointed out the arrangement to Jeff, who didn’t seem pleased at all.

“Aw, the pin-the-tail-on-Dan-Patterson game was going to go there.”

“Why wasn’t it hanging up?

“We couldn’t find anything to hang it up with. I sent Chip to go find some thumbtacks, but I guess he decided to get drunk first.” Jeff looked toward the doorway, and shrugged.

“Anybody know where Ryan went?” asked Brad from over by the bedside table, where he was running a cord from the projector to Drew’s laptop.

"Here I am.” Ryan entered with a bag full of liquor in one hand and a toolkit in the other.

“I ran into to Chip in the hallway, so I knew he needed a hammer,” he said by way of explanation. “Said he also needed a couple of nails and a good... screwdriver, I think it was,” he added as Colin brought a couple of mixed drinks from the kitchen. “Cheers,” he said, setting down both armloads and clinking glasses.

“Okay, everybody here?” Drew asked, counting heads.

“Everybody except Chip,” said Wayne from the kitchen. “I’ll go get him.” He jogged out just as everybody else came filing into the bedroom. As they passed the rectangle of light the projector beamed onto the opposite wall, Brad and Jeff made shadow bunnies out of their hands and started attacking each other.

“All right, guys, knock it off. I’ve got a little game here that you’re all going to love.”

“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that,” somebody muttered in an undertone.

“Ah, sit down and shut up, Bigfoot. This’ll be fun. Now, what this game involves is, I show a picture of something, and you guys have to guess what it is. It’s going to be really grainy and close-up at first, and if nobody gets it right, I’m going to keep zooming out little by little over here on the computer.” He walked over to the other side of the bed and sat himself at the table behind the laptop, even as a couple of guys could be heard snickering over his use of the word “zoom.”

“I’ll keep doing that until somebody guesses right, or until it’s obvious what you’re looking at. Oh, and the first one to guess what it is for each picture gets a hundred bucks.” That got an approving murmur from the assembly. “So are you all set?”

At that moment, Wayne returned, leading a plastered Chip. “Now we’re ready,” Ryan said, watching the two of them plop down on the bed where he and Colin were sitting. Greg, Jeff, and Brad had already settled on the other bed closer to Drew.

“Take it away, Mr. Carey,” Greg commanded.

Drew loaded the first image. Immediately several rather suggestive looking blobs appeared in a pool of light on the opposite wall.

Wayne craned as far sideways as he could, peering. “From here, it looks kinda like penguins...”

"Oh, we're watching animal porn!" Colin exclaimed happily, while next to him, a red-faced Ryan tried to keep from spewing his mouthful of drink.

“Nah...” chuckled Drew, watching everything from his seat behind the turned-away screen of the laptop. “Not even close.” He clicked the mouse, and immediately the image resolved into something resembling the shadow of an upside-down hand with several fingers missing.

“It’s a birdie!” chirped Brad.

“No! De plane, de plane!" Greg wheezed in his best Fantasy Island impression.

“It’s not the Invisible Man porking Wonder Woman again, is it?” sighed Ryan.

“Think Whose Line, guys,” Drew offered, and in return, a whole round of guesses were flung at him.

“It’s Dan Patterson on the Titanic!”

“It’s Jeff on water skis!"

“It’s Colin at the Playboy Mansion!”

“That’s pretty close,” chuckled Drew, though it wasn’t clear whose guess he was referring to.

"I hope it's me with my clothes on,” Colin said with some concern.

“No, no, I meant Greg.” The bespectacled one shot Drew an alarmed look. “You were the one who guessed Jeff, right?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” said Greg, wiping a hand across his forehead in exaggerated relief. “For a minute, I thought we were looking at me here.” He immediately brightened. “So I nailed this one? It's Jeff?”

“Yup, Jeff it is.” Drew clicked the mouse several times, and the deformed hand shape quickly took the shape of a familiar mop-top fringe above two arching eyebrows, two half-closed eyes.

“So these are all going to be pictures from the show?” Ryan asked as Greg cheered himself on with a little victory dance and everybody else sat and drank their drinks and ignored him.

“Pretty much," said Drew. “Some of them I took afterwards, during breaks or rehearsals... but they’re all on the set. All of them are people you know.” He loaded the next image. Just one blob this time, but a big one. It took up nearly the entire screen. Everyone cleared his throat, a few of them chuckled, but nobody seemed to want to say what they were thinking. Except for Brad, of course.

“Oh, it’s a picture of one of Kathy’s... Grand Tetons.” Brad slipped into his worst French accent. “...If you know what I mean.”

Ryan joined in without missing a beat. “I’d like to scale her twin peaks, if you know what I‘m talking about.” Both of them chuckled, then turned to stare expectantly at Colin.

Colin looked thoroughly embarrassed, but he’d already raised his hand to point in the vaguest possible way at the image on the wall. "Isn't that right beside Left... Noob?"

Everyone broke into disbelieving sniggers -- all except for Wayne, who kept shaking his head, trying to maintain a straight face.

“Hey, this just isn’t right, guys; I mean she isn’t here and...” He cut his eyes quickly to the image on the wall, and despite his best efforts, he couldn’t help laughing with the rest of them.

"Oh man... This is just... I feel so dirty!" He covered his face with both hands.

“You’re going to feel even dirtier in a minute,” said Drew in his most evil voice. He resolved the photo enough so that everyone could see what they were looking at was the backside of someone’s pants.

“Oh no!” Wayne groaned in realization.

“Oh yeah!” Brad said. “Should’ve known Drew would sneak a booty shot in there somewhere.”

“But why’s it so blurry?”

“Maybe the copy machine was shaking,” said Brad, right before Wayne lobbed a pillow at his face.

“--Or Wayne was,” said Colin, smiling in devious innocence at both Chip and Ryan. They nodded, and all three looked at Wayne. He only had a second’s warning before they lunged for him.

"Boy, Wayne sure has a tickly butt, huh?" Drew observed as the shrieking victim attempted to escape the flying fingers of his attackers.

“All right, okay, that’s enough! A hundred bucks for Wayne, just for putting up with three older guys who can’t keep their hands off him. Now, moving right along...” Drew was already busy with the next picture, so he didn’t see how Chip tried to get one last tickle in, thereby giving Wayne an excuse to casually snatch up the other pillow and knock him flat. “Okay, guys, here it comes...”

The next picture flashed up on the wall, followed by several seconds of absolute silence.

“That’s Ryan.”

Everyone on both beds turned as one to face Colin. He shrugged, turned to Drew. “It is, isn’t it?”

Drew returned the shrug and clicked the mouse several times in succession. The picture resolved quickly into one of Ryan’s characteristic grimaces. Under the cover of everybody talking and laughing and jeering at once, Ryan asked Colin something. Colin nodded. Ryan tilted his head, puzzled, so then Colin leaned over and whispered an explanation, causing Ryan to smile slightly.

“What’d he say?” Drew asked from across the room, looking from one face to the other. “Colin, what’d you just say?”

Instant silence. Ryan glanced down at his friend, and shrugged. "I said to Colin, did you really know that was me? He goes, yeah. I go, how did you know? He goes, I know your lips." Greg’s snort was audible, but Ryan and Colin pretended not to hear it.

“I don’t think we want to delve into that one, Drew.”

Drew looked as though he very much wanted to delve further into that statement, but the rest of the guys were looking antsy or close to passing out, so he let it slide. “I guess not. Moving on…”

A click, a flash, and another image replaced Ryan’s face. It looked like two blobs connected in the middle by something. Again, a moment of silence. Then more sniggers as Drew started pulling back and increasing the resolution.

“That looks so wrong.”

“Whoa, is that--”

“Yeah, it’s Greg!”

Greg squinted at the image, frowning. "Am I putting something in, or pulling something out?"

Ryan smirked. “Hey, Drew, you said we weren’t watching animal porn here.”

Drew shook his head, shoulders trembling with mirth. “Keep -- keep guessing, Greg.”

“Well, it’s obviously me, and I’m onstage, right? That looks like maybe your desk, so... oh, hey, that’s that crazy Uncle Sam hat. I’m in Scenes from a Hat.”

“But is he putting something in or pulling something out?” Ryan persisted.

“I’m probably about to go chucking that cap at your ass, Mr. Nosypants,” Greg remarked, primly taking a sip of his beer.

The next round of guesses went pretty quickly. It was clear to see, after Drew had zoomed in a few times, that the image was that of someone’s self-satisfied smile.

“Oh, it’s so obviously Br-- hey, wait a minute.” Greg turned to face the man behind the computer. “Didn’t you say you were gonna be giving us a hundred bucks for each guess we got right? Where’s my two hundred dollars, Drew?”


"If you get this right, I'll give you a million dollars, and I'll show you some lovin' like you've never seen!" Brad, very drunk by now, puckered up and aimed a kiss at Greg, who immediately turned his head and raised both hands.

“Oh, in that case, it’s definitely Chip.”

“And you are... absolutely right!” Drew clicked the mouse with a final flourish, and there in his full glory was a smiling picture of Chip; large as life and twice as beaming as the actual Chip, who was passed out somewhere between the bed and the wall at this point.

“Really?” Greg, for once, seemed honestly surprised. He turned a predatory grin at Brad, who was taking a while to process everything. “So what about that one million dollars’ worth of unbelievable lovin’, hm?”

Brad’s jaw dropped. “Oh no. No. Fuckin.’ Way.”

“Yes, way, Brad!” Jeff whooped.

As a cackling Greg pursued a rapidly departing Brad out into the hallway, cheered on with hoots and catcalls from the rest of the guys, Wayne turned to Jeff with a mischievous grin.

“So whaddya say... is it time to break out the baby oil and the slip’n slide now?”

*****