Author: Indy Baggins Title: Enter Pairing: Mainly this is about Greg but also Wayne/Jeff, Clive, Drew/OMC, Dan, Greg/Ryan. Rating: R Summary: An unfortunate history of Greg and doors. Author’s comments: For Emma, who gave me the prompt of “Five times Greg wishes he’d knocked”. Beta by the wonderful Cae. I feel like I should warn you people for the brief moment of Drew!porn, but yeah... *shrugs* I couldn't help myself. Enjoy! ;) The 9th of September 2002, 9.23 pm, His own dressing room door. Greg had meant to celebrate a show well done, was on the way to do so, when he remembered his jacket in his dressing room and turned back to get it. Opening the door, (he might even have been whistling a tune, before it died on his lips,) he saw Wayne first. Wayne lying back on the couch, shoulders crushing the jacket (carelessly thrown over there before the show, it was his couch anyway) into suede wrinkles. Wayne’s pants (they had made fun of those pants earlier that night) in a careless dark kaki heap on the floor, the metal of the belt buckle catching in the bright light. There were soft, breathless moans in the air, and the wet sound of lips and a tongue caressing a dick, popping in and out of a mouth. Greg felt his stomach turn. Greg’s eyes traced Wayne’s dark legs down, surprisingly hairy, unsurprisingly limber, crossed over pale shoulders, towards Jeff’s dark, spiky hair, being assaulted under Wayne’s fingers. (“What!?” he thought, and then “Hell”) Wayne’s eyes were half-lidded, and the content, exuberant smirk on his lips real. Greg couldn’t see Jeff’s eyes, but his lips were red, wet and glistering, wide open as they took Wayne’s dick in again, slowly. (“Fucking bastard”) He closed the door silently. (And never wore that jacket again.) The 28th of December 1989, 3.49 am, Technicians’ entrance to the studio. It was late, he was drunk (after-the-fact Christmas party, Tony brought some mean gin) and somehow he had thought it would have been a good idea to sober up in the studios somewhere. Hell, he hadn’t been thinking clearly at all really, and when he found himself waking up in a deserted hallway at three in the morning it certainly wasn’t the strangest place he had ever woken up so he shrugged it off easily. Only, there was music. A vague, faint sound, ebbing and flowing through the cold, soundless hallway. His ass was cold and numb for sitting on it so long, his head pounding steadily, his mouth tasting like cotton balls and vomit, acid and sour. He got up slowly, waited for the floor to stop tilting, and the hallway to stop sounding like an over-tired music-box, but only the first happened. Awake now, intrigued, he started walking: heavy, clumsy steps towards the calm, beautiful sound. The back-stage area was quite dark at night, no windows to let in the pale moonlight, wires like dark snakes pinned to the ground, almost tripping him. Lamps and chairs and papers spread everywhere, walls in odd places, and still, the sound. The door to the stage was half-hinged but still heavy as he pushed it open, and he had to re-orient himself a bit as he looked around. It was cold there, the large space (chairs, cameras, the desk) not heated, not at night, not in the dead middle of winter. He could hear the music bright and clear now, the notes not like a gorgeous, perfect crescendo but with too-long pauses in-between, faintly sweet, almost bitter-sounding to his tired mind. Whoever was playing the piano was doing it in the pitch-dark and tentatively, like fingers learning the skin of a new lover, it made him swallow. Taking one step more, he bumped the first row of chairs with his hip, and the sound stopped abruptly, the hard wooden cover of the piano keys being dropped with a thump, the rushed sound of someone getting up. Trying to follow, Greg stepped over the stage, past the piano, but made it into the hallway only in time to see Clive rushing towards the door, pulling on his jacket, letting it bang shut behind him. It took Greg weeks to meet his eyes again. The 2nd of April 2004, 01.35 pm, Drew’s office door. The door was faintly translucent, made out of the type of matted glass he supposed once had been stylish, and now it either was so again (retro) or Drew had not cared enough to have it changed, the only sign that it was even his the large black letters spelling “Drew Carey, executive producer”. He had wanted to ask him to come along to a late lunch. Chip had said something along the lines of “hey where’s Drew” and of course he had offered to go and get him, and as he opened the door he thought the little fucker must have known, because oh god. Drew was bent over the desk facing the door. His face was flushed bright red, his eyes squinted shut, knuckles a mottled white where they gripped the edge of the desk, mouth open in an almost comical rendition of “oh”. There was a perfectly toned young guy fucking Drew from behind, yelling things such as “go cowboy” and “oh I’m riding you now!” leather chaps on his legs (little else), and there were metal chains going from Drew’s pierced nipples to the guy’s hands, who was pulling them rhythmically as he moved in and out to gasps from Drew. Greg carefully turned around and closed the door behind him, tried to get himself under control, then realized he couldn’t and started laughing so hard the tears fell from his eyes. Somehow he had imagined something different for his first day at the tapings of Green Screen, but then again, maybe not. The 8th of July 1996, 10.01 pm, Backstage toilet stall door. He just had to go. That was all he had wanted really. He had burst into the toilets, oblivious to the soft sounds of tears, had proceeded to a stall and opened the door. No one could blame him for that, (honestly). But still, it was on that occasion that Greg found Dan Patterson, head in his hands, crying his eyes out in a bathroom stall. And he had tried to leave (oh god had he tried). He had taken a couple steps back, even said something along the lines of “Sorry man” but Dan’s hand had reached out, attached itself to Greg’s sleeve, and he had been stuck. He could see right away that a large part of Dan’s face was slowly turning into an unsettling shade of blue, and that he was bleeding a little from an ominous looking bruise by his eyebrow, but that seemed to be the least of the man’s concerns. He had stopped crying right away (even Dan seemed to get that that was simply not-done,) instead bombarding Greg with a series of rhetorical questions. “Do you think I am a good boss? I try to be a good boss…” (Greg awkwardly patted Dan’s back.) “I only try to do what’s best for the show… I do!” (Greg nodded and looked behind him, hoping someone would come to his rescue, cursing the fact that he didn’t just wait until they were at the bar to go). A good ten minutes later (Greg had mentally counted all the floor tiles, had seen Dan’s bruise change color even more and had realized said toilet was almost out of toilet paper) Dan concluded with a hearty “It’s show business, I don’t need to be liked… Right?” and tried to hug him (“Thanks Greg!”), made somewhat awkward by the fact that Dan was still sitting and Greg standing, thus landing his face somewhere near Greg’s stomach. Right then Greg started praying no one would come around (because damn, he would never live it down) and finally, finally Dan untangled his arms, Greg advised him to “put some ice on that” and ran for his dear life. It was only when he found Mike in the bar, cradling his fist in his lap with somewhat of a satisfied gleam in his eyes that he heard what had really happened. He liked Dan even less afterwards. The 14th of April 2007, 9.58 am, Ryan’s hotel room door. He had meant to knock, and he sort of had, only it was more of a push of his hand and the door had opened on its own accord, revealing a dark small hallway and a couple paces into the room, Ryan. Ryan was back-lit by the window, a soft sun already shining outside. He was wearing nothing but a white hotel towel wrapped around his waist, (little drops of water still skimming over his back) and was eyeing Greg curiously. Greg felt his mouth go dry. He hadn’t seen Ryan that close to naked in years and he could sense the difference, the once sharply-clear defined lines of ribs, hipbones, collarbones a little softer, his back bent a little more, his face understanding where it once was taunting. But it was still Ryan, and Greg could feel his body respond, heartbeat hammering steadily in his chest, a flush spreading over his cheeks, breaths of air suddenly not coming so easy (oh fuck). He could see Ryan was trying to laugh it off, chuckling easily. It was so typically Ryan that it startled him even more, and he almost moved but for the corners of Ryan’s mouth, smiling and highlighted by the morning sun, and then the line of his neck, and the spot right by his ear where there was another errant drop of water, falling down to rest on a shoulder as Ryan moved unconsciously. He wanted to lick that drop away. As the moment dragged on, Ryan seemed to feel the tension, slowly straightening his shoulders (the drop rolled over his spine to the edge of his towel, free-fall), face serious. Greg took a step back. He knew his voice sounded harsh, his mumbled “sorry,” just overwhelmed, and he knew Ryan knew just why as he met his eyes and they looked naked. Yearning. Staggering, he took another step backwards. (Some doors weren’t meant to be opened.)