#73 fic: vomit, maybe
Title: vomit, maybe
Fandom: The Social Network RPF, Actor RPF, Inception RPF, The Amazing Spider-Man RPF
Characters/Pairings: Ellen Page/Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield/Emma Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page/Carey Mulligan, Ryan Gosling
Rating: R for swearing
Word Count: 4,650
Warnings: People being douchey and (in Ellen's case) heartless; numerous references to throwing up
Summary: AU in which Ellen Page steals hearts because she hasn't got one of her own. Everybody always likes to confuse Jesse and Michael Cera but they're actually nothing alike. Michael's a sweet guy who tries his best to be nice and mostly succeeds. Jesse, on the other hand, is a cheap fuck.
Notes: Huge thanks to forochel and illuvium for reading and enabling this troll-y endeavour. Also, I've been meaning to write heart-stealing Ellen Page for ages but never settled on the exact tone for it until I stumbled upon this amazing fic by pr_scatterbrain, in which Rooney Mara is rich, horrible, and exceedingly well-dressed. READ IT. And finally, music! This is what my housemates recommended when I asked them for douchey/classy songs: Kaiser Chiefs - Everything Is Average Nowadays; The Virgins - Rich Girls. Also on AO3
1.
"Why steal actors' hearts?" Jesse asks.
Ellen shrugs. It's actually a great question, because actors' hearts are quite often a terrible choice. They seldom fit right and never last longer than a week outside of their bodies. It's worse than renting a movie because when DVDs are overdue all that happens is that you get fined. When hearts are overdue, people die.
Ellen doesn't die when she's not got a heart because she never had one to begin with. She does get crabby and hungry and prone to saying cutting things, though.
"But you're always crabby and hungry and prone to saying cutting things," Jesse points out. "It's a constant state of being for you."
"Oh, go away," Ellen tells him, because he's made a salient point. It makes her itch a little when he gets things right.
2.
Everybody always likes to confuse Jesse and Michael Cera but they're actually nothing alike. Michael's a sweet guy who tries his best to be nice and mostly succeeds. Jesse, on the other hand, is a cheap fuck. He leaves halfway through cast dinners so he doesn't have to foot his own bill and he steals clothes from film sets rather than buying them. Also, he's really easy. At least, he was with Ellen and she hadn't even needed to fiddle with his heart or anything.
"What do you do with it? Do you use it? What about the extras? You can't use five hearts at the same time," says Jesse. He pauses, blinks. "Or can you?"
Jesse's also kind of annoying sometimes, with his whole anxiety shtick and his endless questions. Maybe that's why Ellen keeps him around; she's contrary like that. Also, she likes his face and everything attached to it.
"Sometimes I keep it in my chest, but there are different things you can do."
"Like reconfigure - like change a person's heart?" Jesse looks more intrigued than disturbed by this.
"Well, I could, if I wanted to," Ellen replies. She thinks back to the couples who've somehow fallen into step with each other after she'd made some judicious replacements, and the many more who fell away from each other. "Aren't you afraid?"
"Afraid of what?" Jesse glances around the room, suddenly nervous.
"Afraid I'm going to take yours and change it," Ellen says.
Jesse tilts his head slightly to one side and regards her speculatively. "Haven't you?"
3.
"Sooo," says Joseph Gordon-Levitt, clearly wasted out of his mind and therefore hitting on random people. "Do you want to, I don't know-"
"No, dude, but thanks," Ellen replies, and helps herself. She likes him because he can be such an egotistical douchecanoe; it's pretty great. Once, around the time they were filming Inception, he had spent an entire hour talking about how like, brilliant and transcendental his open-collaborative production company was. Ellen had leaned in and snatched his heart at the exact moment when he had started talking about one of his groupies and that surge of Joe's pride had felt amazing in her chest.
Today Joe's just horny and kind of a mess and that feels good too; good enough that Ellen shivers a little as she steps away from him. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Jesse skulking by the Vanity Fair ice sculpture. He said he'd help her keep track of who she has stolen from so she can put everything back in its proper place later, but right now he looks like he's just ogling Monica Bellucci.
Joe blinks, looking slightly disoriented for a moment before his body forgets the loss. When he glances down at Ellen again there is a slight blankness in his expression, imperceptible to anyone but Ellen. And then he grins and winks - muscle memory - and wanders on his way.
4.
Andrew and Emma are not Ellen's fault. It was certainly not her hare-brained idea to switch up their hearts and then put them back in again just to see how madly in love they would fall. That was all Ryan.
"Reynolds?" asks Jesse.
"No, Gosling," Ellen says. "He thought it would be funny."
"Oh." Jesse purses his lips. "So he's- he's like you, then?"
"Well, sort of, except that he does have a heart, only he's hidden it somewhere," replies Ellen. It's a pretty good strategy, apart from the lingering possibility that what he's hidden might get lost.
"Could you steal it?" Jesse asks.
"Sure," says Ellen. "I just need to know where it is."
"Do you?"
"Think about where I put my hearts when I have too many."
Jesse looks round at his cats on the sofa and then back at Ellen.
She nods. "He's got a dog named George."
Jesse is actually pretty upset about the whole Andrew-and-Emma thing; it's pretty obvious. The only thing Ellen's not sure about is whether it's because he's got the hots for Andrew or Emma, or both.
In all honesty, Ellen doesn't give a fuck. She tells Jesse as much.
"You're heartless," says Jesse, in a rather poor choice of words.
Ellen laughs. "Tell me something new."
5.
Andrew and Emma have a housewarming party when they finish decorating their new place. They live in a loft and have lots of chic vintage furniture and polaroids arranged tastefully on the walls. Jesse goes so he can stand around being passive aggressive. Ellen comes along as his plus one so she can play the field, in a manner of speaking.
"Your place is so great I could throw up," Ellen tells Emma without the faintest trace of irony.
Jesse, in the meantime, is giving Andrew an awkward half-hug that is as sad as it is telling. Not that Andrew really notices, of course, because Jesse is essentially a sad and awkward human being all the time. But Ellen knows. Ellen can tell. She's held his heart in her hand to tide her over drought periods so many times that it would be impossible not to.
"Have you met Carey?" asks Emma.
"I don't believe I have," Ellen replies, turning towards Carey Mulligan with her most charming smile.
Ellen can be nice when she wants to. It's just easier not to be. This is why she usually surrounds herself with people with no social skills and questionable morals.
At first Carey seems just a little bit too sweet-and-lovely for Ellen's taste, but then Ellen observes her looking at the pictures of Andrew and Emma at Disneyland.
"These are adorable," Carey tells Emma. There's just enough of a hint of oh my god shoot me now in the way she says it to make Ellen revise her opinion.
And later, when enough people have arrived and Andrew's seemingly endless Sonic Youth playlist is blasting at full volume from his geeky high-end speakers, Ellen takes the opportunity to lean in towards Carey. Carey laughs and steps into Ellen's space, close enough that they're orbiting each other to the slow strains of Superstar.
"Is this the Carpenters?" asks Carey, a smile playing on her lips.
"You're cute," Ellen replies, meaning it.
There is something about Carey's heart that makes Ellen think involuntarily of Jesse. As she takes it she leans in to kiss Carey and when she pulls away she realises that that something is heartbreak.
6.
The next day she feels so bad for Jesse that she hits him in the arm with a rolled-up Newsweek.
She doesn't offer to change Jesse's heart to make things feel a little bit better. She had, once before, and Jesse had rejected her flat out. He's a masochist along with everything else, it's so ridiculous. Ellen wishes she'd thrown up in one of the pot plants on Andrew and Emma's balcony like she'd originally intended to before she had gotten side-tracked by Carey.
"Shall I buy you dinner?" Ellen asks, partly because she's still wearing Carey's heart and it's making her just a bit more empathetic.
"You're terrifying when you're nice," Jesse informs her, but he doesn't say no. The cheap fuck.
7.
Kristen and Rob are Ellen's fault. Not the part with the cheating and the media shitstorm - seriously, does she come off as that horrible? - but the part before.
So in a sense she understands where Ryan is coming from when he fiddles with Emma and Andrew. Because Kristen and Rob are cesspits of self-hatred and inertia and Ellen had been curious to see what would happen. And then stuff happened and it was really fucking boring and Ellen moved on to other things, like doing the voiceover for a documentary about bees and making it onto a list of future A-list stars.
"Okay and why do you need Kristen's number?" asks Jesse.
"Do you even have Kristen's number?" asks Ellen.
They're at a Mexican restaurant, one of those faux casual dining places in LA that people go to in order to be seen. Ellen's agent has an Excel spreadsheet of these places and this one comes under 'quiet dinner with friends'. It had been a choice between this and the Italian diner labelled 'dating rumours'. Ellen and Alia go to 'dating rumours' all the time just to see if anyone ever takes their photograph.
Jesse snaps his fingers in front of Ellen's face. "If I did have Kristen's number, what would you do with it?"
"Rude," Ellen says, and kicks him viciously under the table. "Hey, is that Miley Cyrus and a Hemsworth?"
"There're only two Hemsworths, how hard is it to tell them apart?"
"As if you can," Ellen replies. "And anyway ASkars told me there's a third one called Noel."
"I think that's the Gallagher brothers," says Jesse. "And can you please stop calling him that? It makes you sound like Perez Hilton."
"He likes it," Ellen says defiantly. "Actually, no, I just lied. I don't think he even knows I call him that. And how the fuck do you know who Perez Hilton is?"
"Justin showed me once on his laptop."
"Bartha?"
"Timberlake."
"Oh," says Ellen, suddenly hungry. "You have some very famous friends."
"He's kind of an asshole, you'll like him," Jesse tells her. "Now shall we go say hi to Miley and Unknown Hemsworth?"
Unknown Hemsworth is actually Liam but Ellen calls him Noel five times on purpose. He's nothing special, just nice and well-meaning. Miley's heart, on the other hand, is gorgeous and confused and arrogant and anxious all at the same time.
"Was it a good dinner? A romantic dinner?" shout the paparazzi as they shove their cameras in Ellen's face on the way out.
"The best," says Ellen, drunk with Miley's heart and halfway-good but overpriced margaritas. She can hear Jesse stumbling along behind her in the crowd.
"Are you with Jesse Eisenberg?" asks another paparazzi. "What about Alexander Skarsgard?"
"They're both great but Jesse's a better lay," Ellen tells him genially. "Now fuck off and let me get to my car."
"Am I really a better lay?" asks Jesse as they climb into Ellen's Fiat Panda.
Ellen shrugs. "You're more fucked up," she replies, and slams the door.
"Oh," says Jesse. "Thanks."
They drive back to Jesse's. In the morning there is no news about them because Miley Cyrus and Noel-or-Liam Hemsworth are engaged to be married.
8.
She has a coffee with Joe in Toronto so she can give him his heart back. Also, she kind of wants to meet Bruce Willis.
"Who is this?" asks Joe, looking at Jesse. He makes it sound like he's saying what instead of who.
"This is Jesse," says Ellen, and offers no further explanation.
"Hi," says Jesse.
"Okay," says Joe, clearly not impressed. Perhaps this is because Jesse is wearing a ratty blue flannel shirt that might or might not belong to Ellen.
"Do go on," Jesse tells him graciously.
Joe gives Jesse a look of slight incredulity; Ellen takes this opportunity to replace his heart. Joe is wracked by a series of coughs, deep and chesty, like a drowning man newly rescued. And then he straightens up, blinks a couple of times, and launches back into his rant about how Kristen Stewart was cramping his style at the TIFF.
"Yes, Joe, that's terrible," Ellen tells him, slamming her fist on the table. "Fuck all those people who decided that you can't attend a film festival dressed in see-through Zuhair Murad with flowers blooming over your junk."
"You know," says Joe, "I can't ever tell if you're being serious or not." He's giving Ellen that signature boyish/sheepish grin that has earned him his millions. It's kind of like the Jesse Eisenberg face of surprise/fear (which has also earned Jesse considerable sums of money), except more douchetastic and attractive.
"There's a party at Soho House tonight," says Ellen, "are you going?" By that she means, tell me the names of all the young, trendy, fucked-up people who are going to be there.
"KStew is," Joe replies morosely. "With JLaw. They're bffs now."
Jesse nods. "I like how you just unironically refer to them by their gossip website names. Is that a thing?"
"I want to be bffs with JLaw," says Ellen, before Joe can work out how to respond to that. "Is Emily going?"
"Deschanel?"
"Blunt."
"Oh, both of them are," Joe tells her. "Are you?"
"Um, vomit," says Ellen, making a face.
"That means probably," Jesse translates.
There is a pause.
"Hey," says Joe finally, "were you in Superbad?"
9.
That night Ellen has the hearts of Jennifer Lawrence, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Michael Pitt. Jesse has a lot of Grey Goose and is prevented only by good manners from throwing up a little bit while Jude Law is talking to him.
"Are you dating him or something?" asks Kristen Wiig. (Kristen Stewart, in the meantime, is skulking in a corner with Keira Knightley. Neither of them are making actual conversation.)
"Um, vomit," says Ellen uncertainly.
"Oh my god," says Kristen Wiig.
"It's more like a friends with benefits arrangement," Ellen clarifies. "Jesse's kind of really easy."
"Thanks," says Jesse, who is standing right next to Ellen. He points at Kristen's right eye. "Your eyelash is all goopy."
Joe isn't there, apparently because he ran into Zooey while pretending to admire Pissarro at the Art Gallery of Ontario. They've been having a thing since they met on the set of Manic. Neither Ellen nor Ryan Gosling had anything to do with that.
"Hey," says Ellen suddenly, "do you think you could go steal a couple bottles of vodka?"
Jesse shrugs. "Why not?"
"Okay, cool." Ellen would do it herself if she weren't wearing a rather inconvenient dress for it. It's the green Yigal Azrouël from the Inception premiere that she never returned to her stylist. No bottles of vodka will fit down the front. "I'm going to go over to see if Keira Knightley will slow dance with me."
The slow dancing with girls is kind of a thing, for Ellen. Also, Keira looks super luminous and vaguely annoyed. It's a winning combination.
"You're cute," Ellen tells Keira.
"Thanks," Keira replies.
Kristen is also there, her arms folded across her chest. She's like a discontented shark, all fidgety and irritable. Ellen suddenly can't decide who she wants to slow dance with more.
"Are you going to Andrew and Emma's party on Saturday?" is what Ellen says instead. It's a total lie; Andrew and Emma have movie night and popcorn in their pyjamas on Saturday evenings.
Keira frowns. "I didn't hear about that," she says sourly.
"Yeah, it's a secret," Ellen replies. "You guys should totally come."
"Are you going?" asks Kristen.
"Obviously," Ellen replies. "It's bring your own booze, though."
"Oh." Kristen wrinkles her nose.
"Yeah, I know," says Ellen. "They're cheap fucks."
10.
"Why weren't we invited to Andrew and Emma's secret party?" asks Jesse.
They're drinking the stolen vodka in the living room of Ellen's high school sweetheart, who is apparently now a CPA at KPMG Toronto, whatever that means. Said sweetheart is not home but Ellen's great at picking locks.
Jesse looks like he's about to cry at any point. Alcohol does that to him.
"Tell me, is it Emma or Andrew that you have the hots for?" Ellen asks him. "Or is it both?"
"Um."
"Also, Carey Mulligan needs to be at this party," Ellen continues. "I've still got her heart."
"It was Emma, but only a little bit," says Jesse. He takes another shot of vodka. "And then Andrew, a lot."
Ellen looks at him. He's so stupid and sad. "Poor baby."
"This carpet is really great," Jesse murmurs, rolling over so he can rub his hands over it.
Ellen's got someone's heart in her chest and two more in her sequinned clutch; it's more than enough to make her inclined to wriggle over and kiss Jesse on the cheek.
"Oh," says Jesse. "You have feelings today. I like it when you have feelings."
"You're so easy," Ellen tells him, and kisses him again, properly. He tastes like vodka. Ellen can't really feel her fingers.
"OH MY GOD," someone shrieks.
Ellen looks up to see a horrified Korean couple standing at the door.
"Is this not apartment 3A?"
11.
It turns out that they are in apartment 4A, the Korean couple are the CPAs, and Ellen's high school sweetheart doesn't even live in Toronto any more.
Joe comes to bail them out at the police station.
"You're both idiots," he says, after they are let off with a warning. "Also, are you going to Andrew and Emma's party?"
12.
"Fucked-up is an acquired taste," Ellen muses. "A lot of actors are fucked up."
"My head hurts," says Jesse.
One of Jesse's cats, the one that's wearing Jennifer Lawrence's heart, makes a disgusting sound and hacks up a furball.
13.
On Saturday, they arrive at Andrew and Emma's party when it's already in full swing. Andrew still looks totally perplexed and Emma clearly misapplied her eyeliner in her haste to get presentable. Everyone who feels like they're anyone has turned up in an effort to act like they were in on the secret guest list. They've also all brought their own booze because the bit about Emma and Andrew being cheap fucks has also circulated remarkably well.
"Oh my god," says Jesse, sounding ill. "They invited everyone else. And there's Andrew. Coming towards us."
"I don't actually know what's going on," says Andrew. "Everyone just turned up."
"Have some vodka," Ellen tells Andrew, holding out half a bottle. "A b.y.o. party, seriously? You guys are cheap fucks. I'm joking. Actually, no, I'm not."
Andrew rubs a hand over his face. "How do I get everyone to go away?"
Ellen shrugs and goes off to the balcony. Carey is standing there, deep in conversation with James Franco.
"Oh, hi Ellen," says Carey when she catches sight of Ellen. She is adorable as always. Ellen cannot say the same about James Franco.
"I'm James Franco," says James Franco, running a hand through his greasy hair.
"I know," Ellen tells him, "you gave me heartburn once. It sucked." She turns to Carey. "You're still cute."
Carey smiles. "Is that the only line you use?"
"It's the truth," Ellen replies. "We should hang out, sometime." She should take Carey to 'dating rumours' to try their antipasto platter for two. Or 'moved in together'; they have these great yuzu-avocado jumbo prawns.
"Sure," says Carey, beaming. "Call me." Ellen gives her back her heart.
She runs into Ryan (Gosling, not Reynolds) on her way to the living room. Ellen didn't even know he was back from Thailand.
"Hey, Ellen Page." He's wearing a horizontally-striped neon tank top and cutoffs paired with this season's Fratelli Rosseti loafers, it's so terrible it's actually great.
"What's up, Ryan Gosling?"
"Nothing much," says Ryan. He's entirely chill and it unnerves Ellen a little. "Returning a heart?"
"Several, as a matter of fact," Ellen replies.
"Well, don't let me keep you." The corners of Ryan's eyes crinkle as he smiles. Ryan is probably the only decent person that Ellen can stand being with for an extended period of time. They've also never called each other anything but 'Ellen Page' and 'Ryan Gosling'.
"Will you be seeing Michael anytime soon?" asks Ellen.
"Peña?"
"No, Pitt."
Ryan nods and holds out his hand. "Sure. You have something of his?"
Ellen gives Ryan Michael Pitt's heart. It's a strange feeling, parting with a heart - in some way it's a weight off her chest (no pun intended), and yet there's also the uncomfortable sensation that feels like loss.
"I heard you're hanging with Jesse Eisenberg these days," says Ryan. "Jesse has a good heart, you should take care of it."
"I just vomited a little bit in my mouth," Ellen replies amiably, and walks away.
14.
Ellen finally locates Jesse in the kitchen, being conversed at by Ezra Miller and (someone who is probably) Elizabeth Olsen. He is wearing the Jesse Eisenberg face of surprise/fear and when he catches sight of Ellen he does a full-body flail of help me, please.
"…and it's like, a sort of… gastronomical ennui," Ezra Miller is saying. "Where should I go for dinner? One day I just asked Google, you know, and I did like, a quiz online, and it told me to get a pizza."
"Guys, guys," says Ellen, reaching over and grabbing Jesse's arm. "I'll just… borrow Jesse, okay."
"Hey…" Elizabeth Olsen says slowly. "You said your name was Michael."
Seriously, Ellen thinks, what is wrong with young Hollywood these days.
"I think Emma and Andrew are having a fight, by the way," Jesse says, sounding miserable. "Because Andrew thinks Emma told Taylor Swift that they were having a pyjama party and it was misconstrued. And Emma thinks Andrew said something to Robert Pattinson."
"Look how many fucks I give," Ellen replies. "Have you seen Jennifer Lawrence?"
"Yes, but you left her heart with my cat," says Jesse. "I also wish you would give more of a fuck."
When Jesse feels hurt he gets this angry, hard expression that people think is acting but is actually just his face. He looks like that now, and it's making Ellen itch.
"Yeah, well," says Ellen. "I wish I gave more of a fuck too."
15.
Jesse vanishes after that, which is just tiring because it's not as if Ellen can let him go off and be miserable by himself. Well, technically she can (and has before), but she also needs his house keys so she can get access to all the hearts she's left lounging about his living room.
Someone tells Ellen that Jesse's gone out onto the balcony but when she gets there the she finds only Amanda Seyfried in an Yves Saint Laurent lace-back crepe jumpsuit, glamorously lighting a cigarette.
"He said he was going home," Amanda tells Ellen. "Sorry, I totally propositioned him, it's been a crazy night."
"Whatever," says Ellen. There's a part of her that should probably be pissed off about this, but the thing about switching through a rapid succession of hearts is that there is never really a sense of what Ellen is feeling. Most of the time Ellen thinks this is a pretty sweet deal. Tonight she isn't quite sure.
"Sorry again," says Amanda. She's going through a sort of vampire phase with her colour palette and all. The plum lipstick is kind of working for her tonight.
"Jesse is kind of easy," Ellen replies by default.
Amanda shrugs a bony shoulder. "Yeah, well," she murmurs, taking a drag of her cigarette, "he said no."
16.
When Ellen gets to the ground floor of the apartment building, Andrew and Emma are having a massive argument at the lift lobby. It's the sort of fight Ellen's parents might have, half-screamed and mostly furiously whispered with a lot of throwing of hands in the air and pointing at each other.
Naturally, Ellen finds Jesse hiding behind the concierge table, wearing the Jesse Eisenberg face of surprise/fear for the second time that night.
She whips out her phone and takes a photograph. The flash makes Jesse's pupils glow white. "Cool. You look like a wallaby."
"What the fuck, Ellen," Jesse hisses. He points urgently in the direction of Andrew and Emma.
"What?" says Ellen. "They're totally making out."
It's a total lie, except that when Ellen and Jesse turn around, Andrew and Emma totally are.
"Um, vomit," Jesse says faintly.
Ellen takes a photograph.
17.
They make it out onto the street without Andrew and Emma noticing them, which is not particularly hard but still a significant achievement given Jesse's neuroses.
"So do you think they'll be okay?" Jesse asks.
"Do you think they've found the poop in the bathtub?" Ellen asks.
"What?" Jesse explodes.
"I'm joking. Actually, no, I'm not. Quinn Fabray told me about it but I didn't see it with my own eyes."
"Quinn who?"
"Not her real name," Ellen tells him. "Also I forgot that you don't watch TV. Are you still mad at me?"
"Um," says Jesse.
"-because I don't really care if you are," Ellen continues. "Except that I kind of do."
Jesse sighs. "I'm okay. Cosette propositioned me."
"Oh yeah," Ellen says, "she mentioned that."
"How many hearts are you down to?" asks Jesse.
"Just the one," replies Ellen. "Aaron Taylor-Johnson's. But it's not really enough."
"It's never really enough," says Jesse, "is it?"
"Nope. I forgot to get Sam Taylor-Wood's, too. In a way she's kind of got most of him already." If Ellen were wearing Carey's heart or - god forbid - Andrew's heart, she'd probably be a little weepy right now. But she's not. She feels cavernous, the lack of feeling pushing out at her skin from the inside.
"Do you want to share?" Jesse asks.
"You're cute," says Ellen. And yes, it's a line, but yes, she always means it. "Want to dance?" She's got the tone down pat over the years, together with the sort-of-ironic-but-not-ironic grin and half shrug.
"Oh," says Jesse. "I thought you only slow danced with girls. That was your thing."
Ellen smiles. "I lie a lot, haven't you noticed?"
"Yeah." Jesse nods, his movements jerky with nervousness. "Yeah, I've noticed."
"So," says Ellen, "I'm not going to ask twice."
Jesse shrugs. "Why not?" For a moment he's more luminous that Keira.
And so they lean in close together, Jesse's hands fumbling to rest at Ellen's waist, Ellen draping her arms round his neck. They sway slowly and soundlessly to the noise of night traffic and strains of Andrew's endless Sonic Youth playlist wafting down from the windows. Ellen can feel Jesse's heart racing in his chest. It's almost like sharing.
It's kind of enough.
18.
They go to 'dating rumours' and 'impending divorce' for dinner four times over the course of the next week. The one time the press picks up on it, they identify Jesse as "her Juno co-star". Jesse gets kind of upset. Ellen just laughs and continues photoshopping Joe's head onto Kristen Stewart's body.
"Fuck," is the first thing Joe says when Ellen answers the phone. "I'm hot in that Reem Acra."
"That's KStew's body, you dick," Ellen replies.
"Hi Joe," says Jesse, who is listening from the kitchen handset.
"What the fuck?" Joe snaps.
"Hi Jesse, I'm taking Carey to 'totally doing it' for dinner, by the way," says Ellen.
"Is 'totally doing it' the Indian place with the Michelin star?" asks Jesse. "Or the performance art pet café?"
"What the fuck is a performance art pet café?" Joe demands.
Jesse's shrug is almost audible over the phone. "Ryan told me about it."
"Phillippe?"
"Gosling."
"Maybe we should try it."
"Oh my god," Joe says with dawning realisation, "you're with Superbad."
"I just threw up a little bit in my mouth," Jesse replies amiably, and hangs up.
In the background, the cat wearing Bruce Willis' heart does a flying leap across the room.
The End
A/N: I actually do have about 13.5 hours of Sonic Youth in my itunes library because a friend thought I might like them. I'm not sure how suitable they are as a party playlist, though.
Fandom: The Social Network RPF, Actor RPF, Inception RPF, The Amazing Spider-Man RPF
Characters/Pairings: Ellen Page/Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield/Emma Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page/Carey Mulligan, Ryan Gosling
Rating: R for swearing
Word Count: 4,650
Warnings: People being douchey and (in Ellen's case) heartless; numerous references to throwing up
Summary: AU in which Ellen Page steals hearts because she hasn't got one of her own. Everybody always likes to confuse Jesse and Michael Cera but they're actually nothing alike. Michael's a sweet guy who tries his best to be nice and mostly succeeds. Jesse, on the other hand, is a cheap fuck.
Notes: Huge thanks to forochel and illuvium for reading and enabling this troll-y endeavour. Also, I've been meaning to write heart-stealing Ellen Page for ages but never settled on the exact tone for it until I stumbled upon this amazing fic by pr_scatterbrain, in which Rooney Mara is rich, horrible, and exceedingly well-dressed. READ IT. And finally, music! This is what my housemates recommended when I asked them for douchey/classy songs: Kaiser Chiefs - Everything Is Average Nowadays; The Virgins - Rich Girls. Also on AO3
1.
"Why steal actors' hearts?" Jesse asks.
Ellen shrugs. It's actually a great question, because actors' hearts are quite often a terrible choice. They seldom fit right and never last longer than a week outside of their bodies. It's worse than renting a movie because when DVDs are overdue all that happens is that you get fined. When hearts are overdue, people die.
Ellen doesn't die when she's not got a heart because she never had one to begin with. She does get crabby and hungry and prone to saying cutting things, though.
"But you're always crabby and hungry and prone to saying cutting things," Jesse points out. "It's a constant state of being for you."
"Oh, go away," Ellen tells him, because he's made a salient point. It makes her itch a little when he gets things right.
2.
Everybody always likes to confuse Jesse and Michael Cera but they're actually nothing alike. Michael's a sweet guy who tries his best to be nice and mostly succeeds. Jesse, on the other hand, is a cheap fuck. He leaves halfway through cast dinners so he doesn't have to foot his own bill and he steals clothes from film sets rather than buying them. Also, he's really easy. At least, he was with Ellen and she hadn't even needed to fiddle with his heart or anything.
"What do you do with it? Do you use it? What about the extras? You can't use five hearts at the same time," says Jesse. He pauses, blinks. "Or can you?"
Jesse's also kind of annoying sometimes, with his whole anxiety shtick and his endless questions. Maybe that's why Ellen keeps him around; she's contrary like that. Also, she likes his face and everything attached to it.
"Sometimes I keep it in my chest, but there are different things you can do."
"Like reconfigure - like change a person's heart?" Jesse looks more intrigued than disturbed by this.
"Well, I could, if I wanted to," Ellen replies. She thinks back to the couples who've somehow fallen into step with each other after she'd made some judicious replacements, and the many more who fell away from each other. "Aren't you afraid?"
"Afraid of what?" Jesse glances around the room, suddenly nervous.
"Afraid I'm going to take yours and change it," Ellen says.
Jesse tilts his head slightly to one side and regards her speculatively. "Haven't you?"
3.
"Sooo," says Joseph Gordon-Levitt, clearly wasted out of his mind and therefore hitting on random people. "Do you want to, I don't know-"
"No, dude, but thanks," Ellen replies, and helps herself. She likes him because he can be such an egotistical douchecanoe; it's pretty great. Once, around the time they were filming Inception, he had spent an entire hour talking about how like, brilliant and transcendental his open-collaborative production company was. Ellen had leaned in and snatched his heart at the exact moment when he had started talking about one of his groupies and that surge of Joe's pride had felt amazing in her chest.
Today Joe's just horny and kind of a mess and that feels good too; good enough that Ellen shivers a little as she steps away from him. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Jesse skulking by the Vanity Fair ice sculpture. He said he'd help her keep track of who she has stolen from so she can put everything back in its proper place later, but right now he looks like he's just ogling Monica Bellucci.
Joe blinks, looking slightly disoriented for a moment before his body forgets the loss. When he glances down at Ellen again there is a slight blankness in his expression, imperceptible to anyone but Ellen. And then he grins and winks - muscle memory - and wanders on his way.
4.
Andrew and Emma are not Ellen's fault. It was certainly not her hare-brained idea to switch up their hearts and then put them back in again just to see how madly in love they would fall. That was all Ryan.
"Reynolds?" asks Jesse.
"No, Gosling," Ellen says. "He thought it would be funny."
"Oh." Jesse purses his lips. "So he's- he's like you, then?"
"Well, sort of, except that he does have a heart, only he's hidden it somewhere," replies Ellen. It's a pretty good strategy, apart from the lingering possibility that what he's hidden might get lost.
"Could you steal it?" Jesse asks.
"Sure," says Ellen. "I just need to know where it is."
"Do you?"
"Think about where I put my hearts when I have too many."
Jesse looks round at his cats on the sofa and then back at Ellen.
She nods. "He's got a dog named George."
Jesse is actually pretty upset about the whole Andrew-and-Emma thing; it's pretty obvious. The only thing Ellen's not sure about is whether it's because he's got the hots for Andrew or Emma, or both.
In all honesty, Ellen doesn't give a fuck. She tells Jesse as much.
"You're heartless," says Jesse, in a rather poor choice of words.
Ellen laughs. "Tell me something new."
5.
Andrew and Emma have a housewarming party when they finish decorating their new place. They live in a loft and have lots of chic vintage furniture and polaroids arranged tastefully on the walls. Jesse goes so he can stand around being passive aggressive. Ellen comes along as his plus one so she can play the field, in a manner of speaking.
"Your place is so great I could throw up," Ellen tells Emma without the faintest trace of irony.
Jesse, in the meantime, is giving Andrew an awkward half-hug that is as sad as it is telling. Not that Andrew really notices, of course, because Jesse is essentially a sad and awkward human being all the time. But Ellen knows. Ellen can tell. She's held his heart in her hand to tide her over drought periods so many times that it would be impossible not to.
"Have you met Carey?" asks Emma.
"I don't believe I have," Ellen replies, turning towards Carey Mulligan with her most charming smile.
Ellen can be nice when she wants to. It's just easier not to be. This is why she usually surrounds herself with people with no social skills and questionable morals.
At first Carey seems just a little bit too sweet-and-lovely for Ellen's taste, but then Ellen observes her looking at the pictures of Andrew and Emma at Disneyland.
"These are adorable," Carey tells Emma. There's just enough of a hint of oh my god shoot me now in the way she says it to make Ellen revise her opinion.
And later, when enough people have arrived and Andrew's seemingly endless Sonic Youth playlist is blasting at full volume from his geeky high-end speakers, Ellen takes the opportunity to lean in towards Carey. Carey laughs and steps into Ellen's space, close enough that they're orbiting each other to the slow strains of Superstar.
"Is this the Carpenters?" asks Carey, a smile playing on her lips.
"You're cute," Ellen replies, meaning it.
There is something about Carey's heart that makes Ellen think involuntarily of Jesse. As she takes it she leans in to kiss Carey and when she pulls away she realises that that something is heartbreak.
6.
The next day she feels so bad for Jesse that she hits him in the arm with a rolled-up Newsweek.
She doesn't offer to change Jesse's heart to make things feel a little bit better. She had, once before, and Jesse had rejected her flat out. He's a masochist along with everything else, it's so ridiculous. Ellen wishes she'd thrown up in one of the pot plants on Andrew and Emma's balcony like she'd originally intended to before she had gotten side-tracked by Carey.
"Shall I buy you dinner?" Ellen asks, partly because she's still wearing Carey's heart and it's making her just a bit more empathetic.
"You're terrifying when you're nice," Jesse informs her, but he doesn't say no. The cheap fuck.
7.
Kristen and Rob are Ellen's fault. Not the part with the cheating and the media shitstorm - seriously, does she come off as that horrible? - but the part before.
So in a sense she understands where Ryan is coming from when he fiddles with Emma and Andrew. Because Kristen and Rob are cesspits of self-hatred and inertia and Ellen had been curious to see what would happen. And then stuff happened and it was really fucking boring and Ellen moved on to other things, like doing the voiceover for a documentary about bees and making it onto a list of future A-list stars.
"Okay and why do you need Kristen's number?" asks Jesse.
"Do you even have Kristen's number?" asks Ellen.
They're at a Mexican restaurant, one of those faux casual dining places in LA that people go to in order to be seen. Ellen's agent has an Excel spreadsheet of these places and this one comes under 'quiet dinner with friends'. It had been a choice between this and the Italian diner labelled 'dating rumours'. Ellen and Alia go to 'dating rumours' all the time just to see if anyone ever takes their photograph.
Jesse snaps his fingers in front of Ellen's face. "If I did have Kristen's number, what would you do with it?"
"Rude," Ellen says, and kicks him viciously under the table. "Hey, is that Miley Cyrus and a Hemsworth?"
"There're only two Hemsworths, how hard is it to tell them apart?"
"As if you can," Ellen replies. "And anyway ASkars told me there's a third one called Noel."
"I think that's the Gallagher brothers," says Jesse. "And can you please stop calling him that? It makes you sound like Perez Hilton."
"He likes it," Ellen says defiantly. "Actually, no, I just lied. I don't think he even knows I call him that. And how the fuck do you know who Perez Hilton is?"
"Justin showed me once on his laptop."
"Bartha?"
"Timberlake."
"Oh," says Ellen, suddenly hungry. "You have some very famous friends."
"He's kind of an asshole, you'll like him," Jesse tells her. "Now shall we go say hi to Miley and Unknown Hemsworth?"
Unknown Hemsworth is actually Liam but Ellen calls him Noel five times on purpose. He's nothing special, just nice and well-meaning. Miley's heart, on the other hand, is gorgeous and confused and arrogant and anxious all at the same time.
"Was it a good dinner? A romantic dinner?" shout the paparazzi as they shove their cameras in Ellen's face on the way out.
"The best," says Ellen, drunk with Miley's heart and halfway-good but overpriced margaritas. She can hear Jesse stumbling along behind her in the crowd.
"Are you with Jesse Eisenberg?" asks another paparazzi. "What about Alexander Skarsgard?"
"They're both great but Jesse's a better lay," Ellen tells him genially. "Now fuck off and let me get to my car."
"Am I really a better lay?" asks Jesse as they climb into Ellen's Fiat Panda.
Ellen shrugs. "You're more fucked up," she replies, and slams the door.
"Oh," says Jesse. "Thanks."
They drive back to Jesse's. In the morning there is no news about them because Miley Cyrus and Noel-or-Liam Hemsworth are engaged to be married.
8.
She has a coffee with Joe in Toronto so she can give him his heart back. Also, she kind of wants to meet Bruce Willis.
"Who is this?" asks Joe, looking at Jesse. He makes it sound like he's saying what instead of who.
"This is Jesse," says Ellen, and offers no further explanation.
"Hi," says Jesse.
"Okay," says Joe, clearly not impressed. Perhaps this is because Jesse is wearing a ratty blue flannel shirt that might or might not belong to Ellen.
"Do go on," Jesse tells him graciously.
Joe gives Jesse a look of slight incredulity; Ellen takes this opportunity to replace his heart. Joe is wracked by a series of coughs, deep and chesty, like a drowning man newly rescued. And then he straightens up, blinks a couple of times, and launches back into his rant about how Kristen Stewart was cramping his style at the TIFF.
"Yes, Joe, that's terrible," Ellen tells him, slamming her fist on the table. "Fuck all those people who decided that you can't attend a film festival dressed in see-through Zuhair Murad with flowers blooming over your junk."
"You know," says Joe, "I can't ever tell if you're being serious or not." He's giving Ellen that signature boyish/sheepish grin that has earned him his millions. It's kind of like the Jesse Eisenberg face of surprise/fear (which has also earned Jesse considerable sums of money), except more douchetastic and attractive.
"There's a party at Soho House tonight," says Ellen, "are you going?" By that she means, tell me the names of all the young, trendy, fucked-up people who are going to be there.
"KStew is," Joe replies morosely. "With JLaw. They're bffs now."
Jesse nods. "I like how you just unironically refer to them by their gossip website names. Is that a thing?"
"I want to be bffs with JLaw," says Ellen, before Joe can work out how to respond to that. "Is Emily going?"
"Deschanel?"
"Blunt."
"Oh, both of them are," Joe tells her. "Are you?"
"Um, vomit," says Ellen, making a face.
"That means probably," Jesse translates.
There is a pause.
"Hey," says Joe finally, "were you in Superbad?"
9.
That night Ellen has the hearts of Jennifer Lawrence, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Michael Pitt. Jesse has a lot of Grey Goose and is prevented only by good manners from throwing up a little bit while Jude Law is talking to him.
"Are you dating him or something?" asks Kristen Wiig. (Kristen Stewart, in the meantime, is skulking in a corner with Keira Knightley. Neither of them are making actual conversation.)
"Um, vomit," says Ellen uncertainly.
"Oh my god," says Kristen Wiig.
"It's more like a friends with benefits arrangement," Ellen clarifies. "Jesse's kind of really easy."
"Thanks," says Jesse, who is standing right next to Ellen. He points at Kristen's right eye. "Your eyelash is all goopy."
Joe isn't there, apparently because he ran into Zooey while pretending to admire Pissarro at the Art Gallery of Ontario. They've been having a thing since they met on the set of Manic. Neither Ellen nor Ryan Gosling had anything to do with that.
"Hey," says Ellen suddenly, "do you think you could go steal a couple bottles of vodka?"
Jesse shrugs. "Why not?"
"Okay, cool." Ellen would do it herself if she weren't wearing a rather inconvenient dress for it. It's the green Yigal Azrouël from the Inception premiere that she never returned to her stylist. No bottles of vodka will fit down the front. "I'm going to go over to see if Keira Knightley will slow dance with me."
The slow dancing with girls is kind of a thing, for Ellen. Also, Keira looks super luminous and vaguely annoyed. It's a winning combination.
"You're cute," Ellen tells Keira.
"Thanks," Keira replies.
Kristen is also there, her arms folded across her chest. She's like a discontented shark, all fidgety and irritable. Ellen suddenly can't decide who she wants to slow dance with more.
"Are you going to Andrew and Emma's party on Saturday?" is what Ellen says instead. It's a total lie; Andrew and Emma have movie night and popcorn in their pyjamas on Saturday evenings.
Keira frowns. "I didn't hear about that," she says sourly.
"Yeah, it's a secret," Ellen replies. "You guys should totally come."
"Are you going?" asks Kristen.
"Obviously," Ellen replies. "It's bring your own booze, though."
"Oh." Kristen wrinkles her nose.
"Yeah, I know," says Ellen. "They're cheap fucks."
10.
"Why weren't we invited to Andrew and Emma's secret party?" asks Jesse.
They're drinking the stolen vodka in the living room of Ellen's high school sweetheart, who is apparently now a CPA at KPMG Toronto, whatever that means. Said sweetheart is not home but Ellen's great at picking locks.
Jesse looks like he's about to cry at any point. Alcohol does that to him.
"Tell me, is it Emma or Andrew that you have the hots for?" Ellen asks him. "Or is it both?"
"Um."
"Also, Carey Mulligan needs to be at this party," Ellen continues. "I've still got her heart."
"It was Emma, but only a little bit," says Jesse. He takes another shot of vodka. "And then Andrew, a lot."
Ellen looks at him. He's so stupid and sad. "Poor baby."
"This carpet is really great," Jesse murmurs, rolling over so he can rub his hands over it.
Ellen's got someone's heart in her chest and two more in her sequinned clutch; it's more than enough to make her inclined to wriggle over and kiss Jesse on the cheek.
"Oh," says Jesse. "You have feelings today. I like it when you have feelings."
"You're so easy," Ellen tells him, and kisses him again, properly. He tastes like vodka. Ellen can't really feel her fingers.
"OH MY GOD," someone shrieks.
Ellen looks up to see a horrified Korean couple standing at the door.
"Is this not apartment 3A?"
11.
It turns out that they are in apartment 4A, the Korean couple are the CPAs, and Ellen's high school sweetheart doesn't even live in Toronto any more.
Joe comes to bail them out at the police station.
"You're both idiots," he says, after they are let off with a warning. "Also, are you going to Andrew and Emma's party?"
12.
"Fucked-up is an acquired taste," Ellen muses. "A lot of actors are fucked up."
"My head hurts," says Jesse.
One of Jesse's cats, the one that's wearing Jennifer Lawrence's heart, makes a disgusting sound and hacks up a furball.
13.
On Saturday, they arrive at Andrew and Emma's party when it's already in full swing. Andrew still looks totally perplexed and Emma clearly misapplied her eyeliner in her haste to get presentable. Everyone who feels like they're anyone has turned up in an effort to act like they were in on the secret guest list. They've also all brought their own booze because the bit about Emma and Andrew being cheap fucks has also circulated remarkably well.
"Oh my god," says Jesse, sounding ill. "They invited everyone else. And there's Andrew. Coming towards us."
"I don't actually know what's going on," says Andrew. "Everyone just turned up."
"Have some vodka," Ellen tells Andrew, holding out half a bottle. "A b.y.o. party, seriously? You guys are cheap fucks. I'm joking. Actually, no, I'm not."
Andrew rubs a hand over his face. "How do I get everyone to go away?"
Ellen shrugs and goes off to the balcony. Carey is standing there, deep in conversation with James Franco.
"Oh, hi Ellen," says Carey when she catches sight of Ellen. She is adorable as always. Ellen cannot say the same about James Franco.
"I'm James Franco," says James Franco, running a hand through his greasy hair.
"I know," Ellen tells him, "you gave me heartburn once. It sucked." She turns to Carey. "You're still cute."
Carey smiles. "Is that the only line you use?"
"It's the truth," Ellen replies. "We should hang out, sometime." She should take Carey to 'dating rumours' to try their antipasto platter for two. Or 'moved in together'; they have these great yuzu-avocado jumbo prawns.
"Sure," says Carey, beaming. "Call me." Ellen gives her back her heart.
She runs into Ryan (Gosling, not Reynolds) on her way to the living room. Ellen didn't even know he was back from Thailand.
"Hey, Ellen Page." He's wearing a horizontally-striped neon tank top and cutoffs paired with this season's Fratelli Rosseti loafers, it's so terrible it's actually great.
"What's up, Ryan Gosling?"
"Nothing much," says Ryan. He's entirely chill and it unnerves Ellen a little. "Returning a heart?"
"Several, as a matter of fact," Ellen replies.
"Well, don't let me keep you." The corners of Ryan's eyes crinkle as he smiles. Ryan is probably the only decent person that Ellen can stand being with for an extended period of time. They've also never called each other anything but 'Ellen Page' and 'Ryan Gosling'.
"Will you be seeing Michael anytime soon?" asks Ellen.
"Peña?"
"No, Pitt."
Ryan nods and holds out his hand. "Sure. You have something of his?"
Ellen gives Ryan Michael Pitt's heart. It's a strange feeling, parting with a heart - in some way it's a weight off her chest (no pun intended), and yet there's also the uncomfortable sensation that feels like loss.
"I heard you're hanging with Jesse Eisenberg these days," says Ryan. "Jesse has a good heart, you should take care of it."
"I just vomited a little bit in my mouth," Ellen replies amiably, and walks away.
14.
Ellen finally locates Jesse in the kitchen, being conversed at by Ezra Miller and (someone who is probably) Elizabeth Olsen. He is wearing the Jesse Eisenberg face of surprise/fear and when he catches sight of Ellen he does a full-body flail of help me, please.
"…and it's like, a sort of… gastronomical ennui," Ezra Miller is saying. "Where should I go for dinner? One day I just asked Google, you know, and I did like, a quiz online, and it told me to get a pizza."
"Guys, guys," says Ellen, reaching over and grabbing Jesse's arm. "I'll just… borrow Jesse, okay."
"Hey…" Elizabeth Olsen says slowly. "You said your name was Michael."
Seriously, Ellen thinks, what is wrong with young Hollywood these days.
"I think Emma and Andrew are having a fight, by the way," Jesse says, sounding miserable. "Because Andrew thinks Emma told Taylor Swift that they were having a pyjama party and it was misconstrued. And Emma thinks Andrew said something to Robert Pattinson."
"Look how many fucks I give," Ellen replies. "Have you seen Jennifer Lawrence?"
"Yes, but you left her heart with my cat," says Jesse. "I also wish you would give more of a fuck."
When Jesse feels hurt he gets this angry, hard expression that people think is acting but is actually just his face. He looks like that now, and it's making Ellen itch.
"Yeah, well," says Ellen. "I wish I gave more of a fuck too."
15.
Jesse vanishes after that, which is just tiring because it's not as if Ellen can let him go off and be miserable by himself. Well, technically she can (and has before), but she also needs his house keys so she can get access to all the hearts she's left lounging about his living room.
Someone tells Ellen that Jesse's gone out onto the balcony but when she gets there the she finds only Amanda Seyfried in an Yves Saint Laurent lace-back crepe jumpsuit, glamorously lighting a cigarette.
"He said he was going home," Amanda tells Ellen. "Sorry, I totally propositioned him, it's been a crazy night."
"Whatever," says Ellen. There's a part of her that should probably be pissed off about this, but the thing about switching through a rapid succession of hearts is that there is never really a sense of what Ellen is feeling. Most of the time Ellen thinks this is a pretty sweet deal. Tonight she isn't quite sure.
"Sorry again," says Amanda. She's going through a sort of vampire phase with her colour palette and all. The plum lipstick is kind of working for her tonight.
"Jesse is kind of easy," Ellen replies by default.
Amanda shrugs a bony shoulder. "Yeah, well," she murmurs, taking a drag of her cigarette, "he said no."
16.
When Ellen gets to the ground floor of the apartment building, Andrew and Emma are having a massive argument at the lift lobby. It's the sort of fight Ellen's parents might have, half-screamed and mostly furiously whispered with a lot of throwing of hands in the air and pointing at each other.
Naturally, Ellen finds Jesse hiding behind the concierge table, wearing the Jesse Eisenberg face of surprise/fear for the second time that night.
She whips out her phone and takes a photograph. The flash makes Jesse's pupils glow white. "Cool. You look like a wallaby."
"What the fuck, Ellen," Jesse hisses. He points urgently in the direction of Andrew and Emma.
"What?" says Ellen. "They're totally making out."
It's a total lie, except that when Ellen and Jesse turn around, Andrew and Emma totally are.
"Um, vomit," Jesse says faintly.
Ellen takes a photograph.
17.
They make it out onto the street without Andrew and Emma noticing them, which is not particularly hard but still a significant achievement given Jesse's neuroses.
"So do you think they'll be okay?" Jesse asks.
"Do you think they've found the poop in the bathtub?" Ellen asks.
"What?" Jesse explodes.
"I'm joking. Actually, no, I'm not. Quinn Fabray told me about it but I didn't see it with my own eyes."
"Quinn who?"
"Not her real name," Ellen tells him. "Also I forgot that you don't watch TV. Are you still mad at me?"
"Um," says Jesse.
"-because I don't really care if you are," Ellen continues. "Except that I kind of do."
Jesse sighs. "I'm okay. Cosette propositioned me."
"Oh yeah," Ellen says, "she mentioned that."
"How many hearts are you down to?" asks Jesse.
"Just the one," replies Ellen. "Aaron Taylor-Johnson's. But it's not really enough."
"It's never really enough," says Jesse, "is it?"
"Nope. I forgot to get Sam Taylor-Wood's, too. In a way she's kind of got most of him already." If Ellen were wearing Carey's heart or - god forbid - Andrew's heart, she'd probably be a little weepy right now. But she's not. She feels cavernous, the lack of feeling pushing out at her skin from the inside.
"Do you want to share?" Jesse asks.
"You're cute," says Ellen. And yes, it's a line, but yes, she always means it. "Want to dance?" She's got the tone down pat over the years, together with the sort-of-ironic-but-not-ironic grin and half shrug.
"Oh," says Jesse. "I thought you only slow danced with girls. That was your thing."
Ellen smiles. "I lie a lot, haven't you noticed?"
"Yeah." Jesse nods, his movements jerky with nervousness. "Yeah, I've noticed."
"So," says Ellen, "I'm not going to ask twice."
Jesse shrugs. "Why not?" For a moment he's more luminous that Keira.
And so they lean in close together, Jesse's hands fumbling to rest at Ellen's waist, Ellen draping her arms round his neck. They sway slowly and soundlessly to the noise of night traffic and strains of Andrew's endless Sonic Youth playlist wafting down from the windows. Ellen can feel Jesse's heart racing in his chest. It's almost like sharing.
It's kind of enough.
18.
They go to 'dating rumours' and 'impending divorce' for dinner four times over the course of the next week. The one time the press picks up on it, they identify Jesse as "her Juno co-star". Jesse gets kind of upset. Ellen just laughs and continues photoshopping Joe's head onto Kristen Stewart's body.
"Fuck," is the first thing Joe says when Ellen answers the phone. "I'm hot in that Reem Acra."
"That's KStew's body, you dick," Ellen replies.
"Hi Joe," says Jesse, who is listening from the kitchen handset.
"What the fuck?" Joe snaps.
"Hi Jesse, I'm taking Carey to 'totally doing it' for dinner, by the way," says Ellen.
"Is 'totally doing it' the Indian place with the Michelin star?" asks Jesse. "Or the performance art pet café?"
"What the fuck is a performance art pet café?" Joe demands.
Jesse's shrug is almost audible over the phone. "Ryan told me about it."
"Phillippe?"
"Gosling."
"Maybe we should try it."
"Oh my god," Joe says with dawning realisation, "you're with Superbad."
"I just threw up a little bit in my mouth," Jesse replies amiably, and hangs up.
In the background, the cat wearing Bruce Willis' heart does a flying leap across the room.
The End
A/N: I actually do have about 13.5 hours of Sonic Youth in my itunes library because a friend thought I might like them. I'm not sure how suitable they are as a party playlist, though.