Fifty sentence fics (Greg/Clive)
Ty
Hi, I’ve been building up quite a backlog of unposted fic on the old harddrive, so thought I’d post this - a challenge fic of fifty sentences based on fifty words chosen at random by the old scalliwag nutellahostage. There is a narrative of sorts that runs throughout all 50 sentences, but they can be read independently as well. Greg/Clive, for a change ;) And an overall rating of 17+ I’d say, for some racier ones toward the end.
Comments and concrit are loved!
1. Repel:
Like two oppositely charged magnets, they distanced each other through banter and wit, until moments when one pole would slip around, and there would be no force that could part them.
2. Screwdriver
Every time they argued or bantered or laughed together, something inside Clive twisted another turn tighter.
3. Deciduous
Clive knew it was a mistake, that if he ever allowed anything to happen between them it would be intense and messy and above all fast, and by the time the trees were replacing the leaves they had trodden underfoot, hand in hand, it was long over and Clive heart would never bud again.
4. Trenchant
Greg didn’t stop to think about his insults, most of the time, just fired them out sharp and hard as he could, indiscriminately; and it wasn’t until he saw Clive’s face, unguarded and hurt, as a result of one of his jokes, that for the first time ever he regretted something he had said.
5. Hopeless
Clive tried hard not to think about things that he could never have, not just things that he would have to work for but things that were irrevocably out of reach, and cocky Americans with provoking eyes and wicked tongues definitely fell under that remit.
6. Stepladder
Greg offered to hold the ladder far too readily, and Clive realised why when he felt Greg’s eyes on him with every step.
7. Discord
Clive watched Greg’s mobile face react to Josie’s every nuance as she sang, his eyes sparkling and lips smiling, not smirking, and Richard’s beautiful accompaniment sounded suddenly ugly and false.
8. Atavistic
There were days when Clive made Greg feel like a schoolboy, naughty and shamed and simply not good enough, and there were days when he revelled in it, bickering with Clive like pulling the hair of the pretty girl sitting in front.
9. Lust
Clive wondered if a quick shag would really be all that bad, in the grand scheme of things, to just get Greg out of his system, until he remembered the tightness within his chest whenever they laughed together, and sadly recalled that it wasn’t that simple.
10. Photograph
In the promo shots for the upcoming season, they all huddled together in a mass of comedic improvisational camaraderie, and as his arm hugged Greg in a little tighter, his chin nearly resting on Greg’s shoulder, Clive couldn’t help but think how right it felt.
11. Insider
Mike knew Greg well enough to know when something was up, but as he gradually catalogued the pining looks and frowning silences whenever Clive had left the room, he was a good enough friend to say nothing.
12. Coaster
It was a little thing that broke the storm that had long been gathering, a misplaced glass, a hurled coaster, an argument that soon got physical, in every sense, and when it was over neither cared much about the wet ring staining the varnished table top.
13. Charming
On their first official ‘date’ upon which Clive had insisted, although to anyone who asked it was just a casual dinner between friends, Greg was surprised to find a slow blush climbing its way into his cheeks, as Clive showed just how much a gentleman he could be.
14. Salsa
Clive rarely danced, and Greg had known, as he pranced around with the pretty woman in his arms, feeling Clive’s gaze searing into him, that that night Clive would leave possessive marks on his body - and so he danced on.
15. Figurehead
At the awards ceremony, Clive had had his wife in tow, stunning in black, and when Greg had slipped a promising hand up Clive’s thigh in the bathroom, the Brit had pushed him away with a strength and silent fury which had astounded him.
16. Dubious
Clive did in fact believe Greg when he made his three word declaration, offhandedly and laughing at himself even as he spoke, but it wouldn’t do to let Greg know that.
17. Battlefield
Jennifer clattered the dishes loudly as she cleared them away, angrily shrugging off Clive’s offer of assistance, so he sat useless and guilty at the table, making a concerted effort not to look longingly at the phone.
18. Swelling
Leaning against the fence, Clive watched the red swathes of material inflate and stretch until the balloon was taut, almost full to bursting, a tidy emblem for his own feelings.
19. Overblown
There were many things Greg delighted in doing to Clive, but making him gasp, shuddering with need beneath Greg’s mouth, had to be way up there.
20. Inconstant
“Well at least this time you’re keeping your story straight,” were Jen’s last words before she rang off, and Greg hates that this time, of all the prior similar instances, he feels guilty.
21. Didactic
Clive had one particular tone which drove Greg insane, not in the good way, and he enjoyed inventing creative ways to shut the older man up.
22. Shallow
Greg dreamt that Clive was a well, and sounded the same deep and sonorous note each time he dropped a stone into the depths; he awoke with a sudden desire to skip pebbles across a shallow pond.
23. Byword
Their friends weren’t blind or stupid, and although they kindly pretended to be both, ‘banter’ became a verbal shorthand that made Clive flush and Greg smirk.
24. Indigestion
It had been a long day, and it wasn’t until Clive was at home, savouring a paper, a whisky and the silence, that the import of Greg’s gaze, usually so persistent, so intent, so arousing, this time so entirely lacking, registered.
25. Supremo
Dan was no blinder than anyone else, and he noticed the increased tension between Clive and Greg, but frankly as long as it didn’t interfere with the show, even making it flow a little more quickly, without the need for constant wordplay breaks, he didn’t really care either way.
26. Challenge
Too afraid and too refined to call him on his recent lack of interest, Clive sat miserably in the corner of the pub and watched Greg laugh with Mike and Ryan, wording all the confrontations he would never voice.
27. Cashmere
His wife’s scarf, draped casually over the back of the sofa, was soft between Greg’s fingers, but solid, permanent, in a way the drink Clive was pressing into his hand, his presence in this house, this life, could never be.
28. Totalitarian
They had argued, and Greg had called him on his controlling, pedantic, irrevocably British attitude; the word he had chosen had been ‘Nazi,’ and Clive had felt an appropriately genocidal eruption of hate spring within him.
29. Lengthways
They had fucked, and Greg used the word advisedly, for any tenderness there was between them was more in the tentative hand Clive rested on his shoulder as they lay together, exhausted, than in anything they had done before.
30. Fecundity
Jennifer simply lay the small white stick on the table before him, a blue bar drawing lines through his life, making choice after choice for him in seconds.
31. Bistro
The place is a dive, the food is shit, the coffee mud, and as Greg toys with a chipped mug and looks sceptically at Clive across the dirty table, he knows exactly why they’re here, because Clive wouldn’t be seen dead in such a place at any other time.
32. Diverge
It was surprisingly easy to stay seated when Greg went outside for a smoke, to talk to other friends in preference, to be always watching him walk away.
33. Spectre
The heated water cascading down him, Greg lightly touches his body, leaning in to the phantom caresses he can no longer deny, and letting the flowing water wipe any other wetness from his face.
34. Unpredictable
Wordlessly backing him into the wall, Greg devours his mouth, and as Clive, helpless, kisses back, he remembers that he always loved Greg’s ability to make him do things he really shouldn’t.
35. Scherzo
The jokes were bitter on the show these days, and when Clive murmured "how is gravity to clothe itself if jest goes about in dark veils?" Greg, who once would have mocked him lightly for such snobbish erudity, simply turned away with a sneer.
36. Dime
Greg found the old coin nestling at the bottom of his wallet, Roosevelt’s patrician profile ignoring him as he caressed the raised lines and flipped it once or twice - no specific choice in mind, simply a desire to have choice taken out of his hands.
37. Morsel
Clive found himself making jokes and comments both onstage and off that were wide open for the taking, Greg’s derision being better than his indifference.
38. Cunning
Clive made the old ‘cunning linguist’ joke, to groans and rolled eyes, but when it ended with a frantic and dominant Greg tugging roughly at the remnants of his hair while he suckled frantically at Greg’s cock, he wondered if the punchline of this particular joke was on him.
39. Zeppelin
Ripping aside the sides of Greg’s unbuttoned shirt, desperate for heated flesh beneath, Clive stopped short at a t-shirt, cowled figure beneath a band name, and remembered wiping the result of their exertions from Greg’s stomach with a similar shirt years previously - his questing fingers froze and he met Greg’s understanding gaze with pained regret, wondering where the time had gone.
40. Attrition
They had both said ‘no’ so many times, and proceeded to proceed despite all, that it seemed hypocritical these days, and no words were uttered at all as Clive pressed Greg into the wall and ravished his willing body with as much desperate desire as he ever had.
41. Infuse
Greg idly pressed the spoon-back against the teabag bobbing gently in his drink, and thought about the subtleties of tea, and all the other ways in which Clive had adjusted his palate.
42. Lithium
Clive had discussed Stephen’s illness with him only once, late and slightly drunk, and Stephen had explained that while the lows were crippling, he wouldn’t lose the highs in favour of grey banality for anything; watching Greg dress, looking anywhere but at him, Clive appreciated his point.
43. Reincarnate
The same stage, only plusher, better lit, glitzy in a way the British set was incapable of being, Clive frowned at the suspicion that, while the show was being reanimated and made-over, he himself was nothing but a spectre.
44. Nullify
Greg wanted to deny all that was, and had been between them, it was as simple and brutal as that, to make a new start, presumably, and somehow Clive couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but numb at the thought.
45. Drank
Jen wanted to go out to dinner, the boys wanted to celebrate the commissioning of the American show in proper style, but Greg wanted nothing more than the repetition of bottle of mouth as he attempted to drown his internal calculations of how far each passing minute took Clive from the States.
46. Signal
So late when his plane got in that Clive simply drove himself from the airport rather than ask Jennifer to wait or endure a cabbie’s patter, he didn’t realise that he had been stationary, staring blankly at the tricolour play of lights, until a car pulled up behind and blared an angry horn.
47. Rampant
Turns out it took lions rather than the proverbial horses to drag Greg away, three of them, stretched along a football jersey worn by some stranger in the street; that night he packed a small bag and left the country.
48. Ministry
Jennifer never let on how much she suspected, but in the weeks following his return she was tender, kind, warm and grounding when he needed her, blissfully absent when not, and Clive, perversely, had never loved her better.
49. Exponential
It had begun slowly, a transcontinental relationship of wordplay and wit, but it had slithered and spiralled and ultimately shattered into something neither of them controlled, and Greg’s hands shook as he dialled the familiar number.
50. Reconsider
Greg had flown thousands of miles for him, surely, now, he could return the gesture - Clive reached out and pressed his fingers to Greg’s cheek.
A/N: #35 - the quote is from Robert Schumann on Chopin’s scherzos - movements within a piece of music intended to be a ‘joke’, though Chopin’s were ‘dark and dramatic’..