FIC: If We Were Anybody, Entourage, Vince/Eric
So, I pick up yet another fandom, all the while saying, wait, I don't need anything else! But they sneak up on me.
Title: If We Were Anybody
Fandom: Entourage
Pairing: Vince/Eric
Rating: R, I guess
Warnings: Flying Wendy's Frostee
Length: 9,300 words. Complete.
Series: Yes, this is the start of the Here's Us Together series of stories.
Spoilers: Huh. Not that many. Mostly written when I had only seen Season 1.
Summary: The thing between Vince and Eric has rules.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, and my intention is not to make any money.
If We Were Anybody
The thing between Eric and Vince had rules. Eric liked this. He liked the idea of order being imposed. He’d had rules in every relationship he’d ever been in, from his mother on down. With Vince, the stakes were higher, so the rules were more absolute. Eric didn’t write them down anywhere, but he kept track. Even after things were over, he could have quoted the rules as quick as he could come up with his home address in Queens, the license plate number of the first car he’d ever outright owned, or the first line he’d ever heard Vince say on the big screen.
Rule number one: No one could know.
They figured this out in high school.
Friday night. Vince picked Eric up from work in his step-brother Matty’s Z-28. It had T-tops and subwoofers that took up half the backseat, and Matty wouldn’t let anyone but Vince touch it (and then, only in town, because Vince had failed his driver’s test once already and would never get more than a provisional permit). He only let Vince have it when he was out at his girl Carmella’s place in Brooklyn, with the agreement that Vince would pick him up in the morning so he didn’t have to schlep back on the subway. Both boys thought the car was the height of cool, and Eric didn’t even care that Matty had dropped out of high school to work in meat packing just to be able to afford it. The air conditioner didn’t work and there was a short in the front that meant the windshield wipers wouldn’t run, but Matty had put his money into the sound system and the cherry-red paint job. To Eric’s mind, Matty knew what mattered.
Vince waiting outside of Sbarro’s in that car was picture perfect. Eric was trying to impress a girl named Rebecca at the time, through his usual combination of hard work and earnest attention, and he knew that having a flashy best friend like Vince didn’t hurt the deal at all. He was sixteen years old and in love with the world.
That night, he said good-night to Rebecca and walked out to the car, not hurrying, no big deal to have the big red car waiting, the music pulsing in hard, delicious waves out onto the greasy summer sidewalk. He slid into the driver’s seat and grinned at Vince, who grinned back and then waved, past Eric, at Rebecca.
“She looks sweet,” Vince said.
“Yeah,” Eric said, watching her slide away in the side view mirror. He wondered if they should have offered her a ride, but by the time they turned the corner, he’d forgotten. “I brought you a slice.”
“I brought you a joint.”
Vince passed it over, and Eric lit up. A year later, he’d give up pot for fourteen months when Sbarro’s started random drug tests, but right then, nothing sounded better than a soft-edged evening with Vince. “No Turtle?”
“His fucking mom, man,” Vince said, shaking his head. “Something about his grandma coming to town? I don’t know. She’s gotta lighten up.”
Eric exhaled in a bitter swish. “She’ll come around,” he said. Turtle’s family threw lavish celebrations every time anyone in the family did anything, and Turtle was required to go to each and every event. He had at least eight hundred thousand cousins, each of whom had fifteen birthdays a year. Long story short: Turtle hardly ever got out of the house on weekends, which, as of the start of high school, had become an exquisite drag. “You want to hit my place?”
“Nah,” Vince said. “We got the car, I figured we’d just cruise for a while.”
“Sounds all right to me.” Eric let his hand dangle out the window, felt the wind rush through his fingers. It was almost cool, with the sun down for a few hours now. Enough fresh air might get some of the oregano and acid tomato smells out of his hair. There was no saving the uniform shirt, which had been bleached to smoothness and still had orange grease stains all over the sleeves.
They drove up to a little community park where they sometimes bought weed, and Vince parked at the edge. They lit a second joint, their fingers tangling smoothly with each pass. Vince was talking about his family, how his step-father’s buddy was maybe going to move in with them for a while. Eric knew what that meant: someone else would have to move out, probably Matty. He saw the night for what it was, a good-bye to the car, another upheaval in Vince’s already chaotic life.
“I’m so fucking ready to get out,” Vince said, leaning back against the door. He tried to pass Eric the last tiny stub of the joint, but Eric waved it back, let Vince have it all.
“L.A., you mean?” They were a year away from graduation, and they hadn’t talked too much about it, at least not in a serious way. Vince always had big schemes, big dreams, but nothing Eric had heard sounded like a real plan.
“Yeah. Did I tell you, I got a callback from that director, for the short thing at NYU?”
“Yeah? That’s cool, man. What’s that mean?”
Vince explained it, his hands waving in front of him in a complicated butterfly pattern that made Eric snicker. He reached forward and put his hands over Vince’s just to make him stop, so he could listen undistracted. Vince didn’t seem to notice, just finished his explanation.
“I think I could do it,” he said, finally. “It wouldn’t pay anything, but it’d be a screen credit, at least.”
“That’s gotta mean something,” Eric agreed. Vince turned his hands around and gripped Eric’s wrists, pulled until Eric leaned forward. “Huh-uh,” he said, the gearshift pressing already against his ribs. “No good here.”
“OK,” Vince said, and he slithered, skinny-quick, into the backseat. There was maybe three feet of space between the subwoofers. Eric rolled his eyes, but knew Vince wouldn’t see it in the dark. His heart was pounding, just like every time they did this, which had only been a handful of times since the first time they’d jerked each other off at the beginning of middle school. Eric didn’t think it meant anything. Just two guys, high and happy, in the back of a car. Just two kids messing around. Everybody messed around.
He climbed into the back much less gracefully, landing with one leg on the floorboard and one still bent up toward the front seat, his head and hands landing in various embarrassing places around Vince’s lap. Vince laughed high and fast and was no help at all as Eric tried to untangle himself.
There was no one else in the world that Eric would let laugh at him. No one else in the world that he liked to see smile so much, and maybe that should have told him something right there. But he untwisted and pushed the passenger’s seat forward, found enough space to kneel in, and leaned up and undid Vince’s fly. That stopped the laughing real quick. Eric took Vince’s dick out and just looked at it, held it for a second before he started to stroke. It made Eric hard to watch Vince getting hard. He was close, so close he could lean in and taste it, if he wanted to, but he didn’t. They hadn’t gone that far; that was a big line to cross. Eric just watched, eyes going from Vince’s dick to his face and back, and he liked the way that Vince’s head rolled around on the seat back. He liked the way Vince’s hands clutched at the edges of the speakers, and he really liked the soft growling noise Vince made when he came. Eric worked himself for a minute, then came, too, and his head fell briefly to Vince’s knee.
“Don’t get any on the seat,” Vince muttered, his own hand coming down to help Eric try and clean things up. They used the leftover napkins in the bag from Sbarro’s, then opened the car door, stepped outside into the cooling breeze.
Eric leaned against the car and stretched out his hamstrings. Vince hauled himself onto the hood and sat there, arms back, staring up at the amber sky. Eric edged close, his elbow against Vince’s knee. “Whaddya see up there, huh?”
“I really want that part, E,” Vince said, and he looked down. He smiled, a soft smile with real longing in it.
“Hey, you’ll get it,” Eric said. “Of course you’ll get it.”
“Yeah, you think?”
Eric elbowed Vince in the thigh. “I think, dumbass. You’re great at this stuff. You’re made for the big screen.”
Vince grinned his big flashy grin. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. He slid down off the car and stretched, then said, “God, I need more food. Let’s, you think we can still get a burger at Max’s?”
“I think we can do anything you want,” Eric said, and Vince slung an arm around his shoulders.
“Anything?” he asked, and then he kissed him, a nice open hungry kiss, and Eric kissed back and put his hands on Vince’s waist. Vince pressed him up against the car and kept kissing him, and Eric thought maybe this wasn’t the norm for everybody, maybe this went beyond messing around, because all he could think was fuck, yes, he wanted more.
He may have said it, because Vince laughed a little and pulled back, and Eric saw his mouth open a second before something yellow came flying at them. He ducked, instinctively, but didn’t miss getting hit with a flood of cold brown liquid and hard, sharp ice.
“Fucking faggots!” he heard, and he looked over Vince’s shoulder to see a heavy blue Cadillac rolling by, two beefy guys hanging out the side windows. A crushed yellow Wendy’s drink cup laid on the ground beside them.
“Hey, fuck you!” Eric yelled back. He felt Vince jerk against him and looked up and gasped, seeing the whole side of Vince’s head covered in thick, bright red, Vince’s eyes clamped shut.
“Vince, Jesus,” Eric said, reaching up, and Vince shook his head.
“It’s all right,” he said, touching the side of his eye, then his temple, before drawing his fingers back. “Ketchup, I think.”
Eric nodded. The car had pulled up to the next corner and was turning around. “Fuck,” he said, pulling away from Vince. “We gotta go.”
“What?”
Vince’s eyes were wide, and he was still touching the side of his face. Eric threw the door open and pushed him in, then scrambled to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel, turned the key, and peeled out. The Cadillac was headed for them, and Eric was terrified for a moment that it might try to ram them or trap them somehow. He jammed the automatic window button up and wished they hadn’t left the tops off. Another Wendy’s cup smashed against the windshield, this time smearing ice cream, and the impact snapped Vince back to reality fast.
“What the fuck?” he shouted, turning around. “Jesus Christ, those motherfuckers!”
“Are you all right?” Eric asked. His hands were shaking on the steering wheel, and he could barely see the street through the Frostee on the window. He took the next left and checked his mirror, expecting the Caddy to be right behind. No sign.
Vince turned toward him. When Eric glanced over, his face was a mess, his hair dripping soda and ketchup. “They thought - they thought we were -“
“We were making out against the car, Vince,” Eric snapped. “They thought right about that.”
“The car,” Vince said, and he groaned. “Oh, shit, E, pull over.”
Eric didn’t stop until they were ten randomly chosen turns away, and then he picked the most brightly lit 7-11 lot that he could find. They both climbed out to look at the damage. Between them, they had 23 dollars, and they spent it all on car cleaning products and two rolls of paper towels. Soda would eat the paint, if left too long, and Vince didn’t have to say what Matty would do if the seats were cola-sticky and the window ice cream coated the next day.
Once the car was done, they took turns cleaning up in the bathroom. Eric’s hair was sticky but really, his clothes weren’t that much worse for the wear. He was used to coming home with splatters and stains everywhere. It looked like a bad day at the office for him.
Vince had caught the brunt of it. His jeans and white T-shirt had dark patches on his left side from the cola and red splatters on the right from the ketchup. Eric guessed the shirt would be a total loss. His right eye also had a narrow pink swell next to it. Eric wanted to touch it but had an idea that was no longer allowed.
“Barbecue sauce,” Vince said, touching his face. “I think it was one of those little plastic containers.”
Eric nodded. “Gonna have a bruise.”
Vince shrugged. He sat in the car, in the driver’s seat, and faced forward. “If anyone asks,” he said, “we were screwing around playing basketball, all right?”
“We pissed off some guys, they took it out on us and the car?”
Vince nodded. “Yeah,” he said, starting the car. “Sounds good.”
For two weeks they didn’t talk about it. Then Vince showed up at Eric’s place on a Saturday night, fifteen minutes before he was supposed to leave for a date with Rebecca. They sat on the stoop in front of the house, not touching, not even sitting on the same step.
“I don’t think they were right about us,” Vince said, staring out at the street. His shoulders were hunched forward, his shoulder blades tiny rises beneath a worn green tee.
Eric didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Nah, of course not,” he said. He’d thought about that blue Caddy every day since then, wondered how well the guys had seen them, if they were kids from their own school or not. He’d convinced himself they weren’t, that they were older guys, drunk, driving too fast, not thinking, not observant. It was how he got through the day. “What do they know, right?”
“Right, fuck ‘em.” This time, Vince looked back. “Just messing around.”
Eric nodded. It surprised him that hearing Vince say the words made his stomach hurt a little, but he kept nodding, and things went back to normal for them. Eric took Rebecca to a movie that night, and afterward they went back to her place and made out on the couch while her mother slept in the next room over. Nothing more happened, because the window behind the couch made Eric feel jumpy, but more would, later. Things would be fine.
The night before Vince left for L.A., the first time, the time when Eric didn’t go along, was when Rule Two was made. Rule Two, very simply: The best way for no one to know was to make sure there was nothing for them to know. To Eric, this translated as a “hands off” rule, especially after he’d realized, six months away from the Caddy incident, that it was probably more than messing around. He had a feeling Vince had realized it, too, because suddenly they spent a lot of time with chaperones: Turtle, when he could escape his family, or Vince’s brother Johnny, when Turtle wasn’t available. Johnny was back in town as an understudy in an off-off-Broadway revival of some play Vince had had the lead in as a sophomore in high school. They were constantly quoting lines to each other that meant nothing to Eric, or going on about staging or different set pieces. Eric started avoiding Vince altogether by picking up extra work at Sbarro’s, where he’d been promised an assistant manager’s spot as soon as he could graduate and start working full time.
Vince was set to leave town right after graduation, going back to L.A. with Johnny as soon as his stellar non-Broadway gig was up. Eric was sure that would be sooner than later, and as they edged up to graduation he tried to tell himself he was glad for it. Things between them were very weird and tense, and that wasn’t something Eric liked at all. He wasn’t a good actor, not like Vince, and he didn’t do a very good job of pretending that things were how they’d always been.
Vince met him after work on another Friday night. No car, just Vince sitting on the curb outside the restaurant, waiting, looking kind of small under his old surplus jacket.
“What, no Johnny Actor?” Johnny was still trying to get a name together, then; Eric’s favorite was Johnny Shazaam, because it sounded like a video game character and a porn star all at once.
Vince looked up. “I’m leaving next weekend,” he said.
Eric sat next to him and pulled out a cigarette. He offered one to Vince, but he turned it down. “After graduation?” he asked, lighting up.
“Maybe before the ceremony,” Vince said. “Johnny’s gonna get kicked off the play this week.”
“He said that?”
Vince snorted. “I went to a rehearsal, last week, no way he lasts out the weekend. Pretty sure he fucked the director’s girlfriend.”
“Nice,” Eric said on a long exhale of smoke. “He’s a class act.”
“Only act he’s got,” Vince said. He shrugged. “So he’s gonna want to leave, and I’m heading out with him. Turtle’s in, too. Gonna help us drive the old beast out there.”
Eric laughed. “You really think that thing will make it?”
“Matty had a look, said the engine can do it. And Turtle’s family is pitching in tires for his graduation present.” Vince shook his head. “His mom’s gonna have a fit if she doesn’t get to throw him a party.”
“What about your mom?” Eric asked.
Vince shrugged. “One less mouth at the table, one less kid underfoot. Not having a party is one less thing she’s gotta worry about, you know?”
“Sure.” Eric took a long, slow drag. “So what’s up, then? What are you doing here tonight, instead of hanging out with the guys?”
Vince was staring at the ground. “Look,” he said, his voice soft, “that night -“
“It’s fine, Vince, we don’t need to -“
“No,” he said, his voice firm, which made Eric glance around. “Look, they weren’t right, I mean, to call us - and I don’t think you are, or whatever, but it’s just - “ Vince stopped. His foot was twisting a hole into the concrete. “I kind of miss it,” he said, after a minute. “I hate that they fucked everything up with us. I hate that, E. And I’m about to leave for a while, maybe forever, and I don’t want things to be all fucked up.”
“Yeah,” Eric said. “Me, uh, me either. Or me too.” He laughed and stubbed out his cigarette on the curb. “Man, I’ve missed you, too, and not in small part because your brother is fucking crazy.”
“Don’t I know it,” Vince said. “You know he’s got that whole play memorized? And he keeps adding parts. Like he could improve on Arthur Miller.”
Eric laughed. “Listen, you hungry?”
Vince smiled. “Always hungry.”
They walked over to Max’s and had burger plates with fries and tall cherry sodas, and then afterward they walked back to the neighborhood instead of trying to catch a bus. When they stopped in front of Eric’s house, Vince ducked his head, glanced over at his own dark house at the end of the block, and then back at Eric.
“Could I crash with you, tonight?” he asked. “I’ve been on the couch all week at home, while Aunt Rita and her kids are here.”
“Yeah, sure,” Eric said. He led Vince up the steps and unlocked the door, and they eased into the entryway with practiced quiet. Eric’s room was the first on the left at the top of the stairs, with the buffer of the bathroom between him and his mom’s room on the other side. The light was off beneath her door.
Eric had a hand-me-down double bed that filled up most of the space in his room, set on a squeaky Sears frame that clunked with every big move. They both fit in it neatly, as they had for years; they’d always spent more time at Eric’s place than Vince’s, because even though there was less space, there were fewer people around. When Eric turned off the bedside light and lay back, he saw Vince leaning on his side, looking down at him.
“What?”
Vince swallowed, then licked his lips. “Can I?” he asked, looking down.
It was the only time he ever asked - maybe the only time in Vince’s life he’d had to, Eric thought later - and Eric loved him for it. He nodded, and then Vince leaned in and kissed him, and then pressed up against him, under the thin sheet. His mouth was desperate and wanting, this time, and Eric realized he’d been waiting and wanting just as much. He tried to say this, but Vince muttered, “Shh, shh,” against his lips, then pulled back and away and down. He crossed the line first, Eric thought swiftly as Vince’s mouth closed over the tip of his dick. It wasn’t a great blowjob - he’d had a few, by then, to compare it to - but it was still amazing, one of Vince’s hands steady and warm on his hip, the other rubbing up and down the shaft. Eric came too quickly, gripping Vince’s shoulders blindly, silently glad that he’d been locking his door at night since his mother had caught him jerking off when he was 13.
Vince crawled up next to him and rocked himself against Eric’s hip until Eric was conscious enough to lend a spit-slick hand to the process. He kissed Vince as he came, swallowing the tiny noises of pleasure he made.
“I need this,” Vince said, after, his breath barely a gasp in Eric’s ear. “I tried not to, E, I -“
“Me, too,” Eric whispered. “Look, we just get through this week, and then you go to L.A., and I’ll be here, and it won’t be a problem anymore.”
“When I come back to visit...”
“You can always stay here,” Eric said, his arm around Vince’s sweaty back.
It sounded like a good compromise, at the time. Once a year. People lived through worse, all the time. And really what Eric needed most was Vince’s voice on the phone, calls that came in the middle of the night because by the time Vince’s free nighttime minutes kicked in on the West Coast it was 1 a.m. in New York. Eric was taking night classes, by then, and he never had to be at the store before 10 a.m., so it was fine. It was fine, until Vince came back, and he was skinny and hungry and about to be famous, and Eric could see he was on the edge of pissing it all away. So he went back to L.A. with him, and that’s when Rule Three came out to play.
Rule Three: When it’s worth it, it’s worth it.
His first night out in L.A. they all stayed up the whole night, taking hits off a green glass bong and eating greasy microwave popcorn in Drama’s living room. At dawn, when Vince said, “You can crash with me, man, Turtle’s dead on that couch,” Eric wasn’t sure what to expect or what to even hope for. He’d heard all about Vince’s girls by then, the cavalcade of young actresses and waitresses and gym rats and party girls that he’d been doing like a hobby around his auditions. Besides, Drama’s room was just next door, and Eric had just finished a 3,000 mile drive. He was too tired to care when Vince turned out the light, lay down, and went right to sleep. He was in L.A., that was all that mattered.
They woke up at noon to Drama pounding on the door, yelling, “Lunch, you motherfuckers!”
“Only mother I’ve touched is yours!” Eric shouted back, not even opening his eyes. “Fuck the fuck off, man!”
“Fifteen minutes, Johnny, OK?” Vince yelled.
Eric sat up and shook his head, surprised at the bright sunshine streaming in the window and the heat already on his skin. He looked over at Vince, who was grinning in a broad, hungry way. “Man, it’s good to have you here,” Vince said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Vince’s hand was lightning quick, and his mouth was warm and his tongue expert, and Eric gasped and came way too fast. “Jesus, where’d you learn that?” he asked, trying to cover his embarrassment.
“I’m an actor,” Vince said, wiping his mouth, then standing up and stretching. His skin was glorious, caramel-colored everywhere. Eric didn’t want to know why he had no tan lines. “We’re paid to watch and learn.”
Eric cleaned up and went downstairs, and they headed out for lunch. “Man, the greatest sausage in the world,” Turtle said from the driver’s seat. “Like, spicy as all hell.”
“Better than Joey Pascone’s?”
Drama put a hand over his heart. “Don’t speak such blasphemy,” he said, in his big deep fake-Hamlet voice. “Those sausages, man. I dream about that stuff.”
Eric laughed. “I’d a known you had such a thing for it, I would’ve brought you some to suck on,” he said, and then felt his face turn red. Vince was laughing in the front seat, though, and so was Turtle, so Eric shook it off.
“Yeah, suck on this.” Drama cupped his groin, but it was a weak comeback, the whole thing quickly forgotten.
At lunch, Vince sat on Eric’s side in the booth, and his thigh was pressed up against Eric’s under the table. Eric wasn’t sure how to take that, or the way Vince kept snagging Eric’s food, or the way he slung his arm around Eric’s shoulders on the way out of the diner, saying, “Turtle’s got it, man, he handles the money.”
“Jesus, no wonder you’re broke,” Eric said, squinting as they stepped onto the street. He looked over at Vince. Vince was smiling like he’d won the lottery and the homecoming queen all on the same day. “So this is L.A.,” Eric said, putting his arm around Vince’s shoulders, too.
“You haven’t even seen the half of it,” Vince said, and flipped on his sunglasses and kept smiling.
That night, they went to a house party in Malibu. Turtle tried three times to explain how they knew about the party, but Eric couldn’t follow it. He didn’t think Turtle actually knew, and until they were actually stopped on the street, he was pretty sure they were going to show up at a vacant lot or an empty house or something. But the place was full of people, all of them either overdressed (the women, mostly in tiny tight dresses) or underdressed (the men, including Vince, mostly in wrinkled T-shirts and holey jeans). Eric took two steps inside and knew he didn’t want to be there. The music was loud, the crowd was annoying, he was the only one in khakis, and he knew no one but Turtle and Drama and Vince and didn’t want to know anyone else, either.
But three girls knew Vince just walking in the door, and then a bunch of guys stopped him, and somewhere along the way Turtle and Drama were lost to the bar so it was just Eric, standing at Vince’s shoulder, nodding like he could hear anything the other people were saying.
“No, no, I love your work, too, man,” Vince said. “I would totally - hey, have your guy call my guy, OK?” Eric turned his back so no one would see him laugh, and when Vince turned he poked Eric in the side with his elbow. “What?”
“I’ll have your people call my people,” Eric said. “I didn’t fucking know people actually said that.”
Vince smiled. “I have people,” he said. “I love people.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I love those people, in fact.” He pointed to two bright blondes in the corner, both in sleek halter-top black dresses, both waving in their direction.
“You know them?”
“Not yet,” Vince said, “but I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.” He took two steps into the crowd, then turned and lifted one shoulder. “You coming?” he asked.
Eric looked from Vince, this shiny Hollywood perfect Vince, to the friendly girls in the corner, then shook his head.
“Go ahead, I need a drink,” he said, and Vince shrugged and turned away. He didn’t look back, and Eric let the crush push him toward the kitchen. There, he found a beer in a tall bottle, not a familiar brand but one that would do the trick, and drank it in long swallows. He was leaning against the counter, working on his second, when Turtle walked in.
“Fucking Vince, man,” he said, shaking his head. “He got two without even trying.”
“People seem to know him,” Eric said.
“Know him? He’s famous, baby.” Turtle turned to wink at a girl who was reaching for a wine cooler. “Seriously, he’s big time. I know it seems crazy,” Turtle said, turning back to Eric, “but you get used to it.”
Eric looked around the kitchen. A girl in a red dress was sitting on the counter, a tall, muscular man standing between her legs, and with the slightest tip of his head Eric knew he’d see more of her than he’d ever seen, in daylight, from any girl in New York. Two guys were standing in the corner talking intensely, drinking wine, and smoking, their ashes falling to the hardwood floors without a thought. Somewhere behind him he could hear women giggling, a man singing, a shriek, the throbbing pulse of techno bass. This was Vince’s new world, and Eric knew he’d never fit comfortably here, but he also knew he’d never want to. He just wanted to be where Vince was.
Vince found him after an hour. He was sweaty and tousled, and Eric’s eyes felt sore just looking up at him. He was sitting on the steps to the backyard deck, watching a drunk blonde and her even drunker boyfriend try to find her wallet where she’d dropped it over the side of the two-story deck.
“Having a good time?” Vince asked, dropping a hand on Eric’s shoulder as he sat next to him.
Eric shrugged. “I’d ask you, but I think I know the answer.”
Vince smiled. “They were college girls,” he said. “Jesus, college, what do you think that’s like?”
“I took some classes,” Eric said.
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “We should maybe talk about stuff,” he said, and Vince laughed.
“Dude, I’m pretty fucking wasted,” Vince said, “so spell it out.”
“How do you want to play this?” Eric asked. He waved his hand between the two of them. “You know what I mean, dickhead.”
“Yeah. OK. Yeah,” Vince said. He closed his eyes, like he was really thinking, then opened them again. “I like girls,” he said.
Eric snorted. “Uh, hey, yeah, me too.”
“I mean. They’re fun. They’re pretty. They’re soft and - you know, girls.” He made an old-fashioned hourglass shape in the air.
“I’m familiar,” Eric said. “What are you saying?”
Vince shrugged, just one shoulder. “They take the edge off.” He turned and looked right at Eric, squinting a little. “Look, I have this job,” he said.
“You got another role?”
“No, I mean, this job,” Vince said, and he waved his hands around, gesturing to the party. “The girls are part of the job. The life.”
“I get that,” Eric said. “Vince, I’m not asking you to -“
“I would.” Vince’s hands fluttered down, and one rested on Eric’s thigh. “E, if you asked me to, right now, I would. We could do this full time, say fuck you to the rest of the world. It could work out.”
Eric glanced up at the flashing lights inside the house. He thought of Vince’s bright Hollywood smile, about the ease with which he traveled through the crowd. Everyone loved him, here. Things were going to be easy for him, for once, and all Eric wanted was a sideline seat. “It wouldn’t work as well,” Eric said. “You wouldn’t get everything you want.”
“Nobody ever does,” Vince said. He took his hand off Eric’s thigh and stood up, offered the same hand to pull Eric from the stairs. “Let’s go home, OK?”
They went back to the house without Turtle or Drama, and Eric followed Vince up to his bedroom. Vince locked the door, then sat on the bed next to Eric and kissed him slow and heavy.
“You still drunk?” Eric asked.
“No,” Vince said. “And I want you to fuck me.”
Eric felt his face flame. He backed up, or tried to, but Vince’s hands were sturdy on his biceps, and his eyes were steady on Eric’s. “Oh,” Eric said, and after a moment he nodded. Vince took the lead, dropped his pants and spread out backwards on the bed and drew Eric in close. They kissed for so long that Eric thought maybe they’d just do that, and that would be fine, but then Vince angled his hips up and Eric said, “Wait, wait.” He was always the one thinking of these things. He found moisturizer in Vince’s bathroom and, after a second’s thought about Vince’s evening so far, a condom, then went back and laid down next to him. Things were easier once Eric took over; that was always how it was, Vince got things started and then Eric made sure it was going to work out.
After, he laid next to Vince, feeling dull and lightheaded, and Vince turned over and pushed close to Eric and pressed wet lazy kisses against his neck. “Nothing’s ever going to make this go away,” Vince said. “E, you know?”
Eric nodded. He brushed his fingers through Vince’s hair, then slid his hand down Vince’s back. “Look, I think, here’s what we do. We - we just keep going. Like always. We try, like we used to, and we only do this when we have to. This way, we get to hang around. And when it gets too much -“
Vince nodded. “I’ll come find you,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He put one hand on Eric’s chest to push himself up. “Shake on that,” Vince said, his voice deep and official. Eric nodded, and met his hand, shook like they’d just agreed to a bet on a baseball game, instead of a gamble with their lives.
But they’d never had an everyday, every day romance. Rule three had existed forever. They’d snuck out, stayed past curfew, huddled in the back of the car or the quiet dark of Eric’s bedroom; they’d never risked more. Now, the life was bigger, and so the wait was longer. There was more to lose. Eric waited for Vince as long as he could, and then, when he went to him, it was six weeks, four months, a television season. When Vince came to him, it was post-production, it was post-vacation. It was one night, always, or a fast afternoon, hours stolen from a schedule that Eric kept and stuck to.
Other rules - little rules, sub-rules, amendments, Eric thought of them - were established along the way. Never on big nights. Premieres, parties, awards ceremonies, even if they weren’t for Vince, were public events. Those were nights where Vince belonged to the crowd, where his image was paramount, where Eric was on the job. Those nights involved women, wine, and paparazzi, and Eric often brought his own dates, too. Too many eyes, too many cameras, too many people watching. The times between started to drag out longer, and their times together became richer, harder, more desperate, but never dangerous. Never risky. Eric wouldn’t allow that, because of the last rule.
The last rule was the same as the first - no one could know - but it brought its own reasons. No one could know because the life was more important. The life was more important. Eric told himself this often, sometimes every day. Sometimes he could go a week without thinking of it. They were that settled in. They were that used to things being a secret. In-between times, they were still close, and that was what mattered. They were together all the time.
A weekday. Nothing else going on. Vince had just finished the final looping on Park Place, which marked the end of three months of intensive filming, mostly on set in L.A. It would be a great movie. Eric knew it, had known it from the first day they’d started filming. It would also be the first Vincent Chase movie where he played what Eric thought of as a real grown up: a man with a wife, kids, the whole bit. It would be a great movie, but it had been exhausting every day, even for Eric, and he was glad it was over, glad for some time off.
Vince came into his room, in the morning, while Eric was shaving. “I want to get out of town,” he said. He leaned against the counter and looked down, his back to the mirror, so Eric watched the curve of his neck reflected. “Like, not California. Seattle.”
“Yeah?”
“Tonight,” Vince said, and he glanced over, just once, and that was enough for Eric. He got it right away. It had been four months, since the day after the party at Topher Grace’s place, when Turtle and Drama had been hung-over all day and Eric had snuck into Vince’s room and pinned him to the bed still unmade from last night’s girl.
“I’ll set it up.”
It couldn’t be that night, though, because Turtle was at loose ends and would want to tag along, so Eric scheduled the trip for Thursday night, when there was another big party on the beach. He told the guys they were going up to Tahoe for the night to see a new director.
“Yeah?” Drama leaned forward over a plate of scrambled egg whites and organic hash browns. “You looking at a new project?”
“It’s E’s thing,” Vince said, slouched back against the booth next to Eric. He looked more relaxed already; Eric couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the tension in him before now. Usually he spotted the build up. But the movie had been so fucking draining.
“I liked a script,” Eric said, shrugging. His shoulder brushed Vince’s.
“Gonna miss a great party,” Turtle said. “Fuckin’ hot chicks everywhere.”
“More for us,” Drama said, and Vince laughed.
They talked about driving, but it was a seventeen hour trip and that felt like a waste of a day. So Eric called Ari to get the flight arranged, not because he thought he could trust him but because Ari had just as much to lose.
“Trip to Crunchyland? Why the fuck you want to go up there? You going to open a Starbucks franchise? I’m not saying that’d be a bad move for you, step up from pizza -“
“Just can you get the fucking plane or do I have to book it in Vin’s name?” Eric asked.
“Do I want to know what you’re doing in Seattle that you can’t do under your real name? That answer is no, my friend,” he said, and hung up. Fifteen minutes later Lloyd called back to say that their plane would leave Van Nuys at 10 p.m. “Ari says to wear a hat,” he said, and then hung up.
It was raining when they arrived. They bought cheap green rain ponchos from a vendor at the airport and took a cab to a downtown hotel. Eric offered his own credit card to secure the room while Vince hung back, by the payphones, hood still drawn up. They took the elevator to the eleventh floor, a regular room with a King-sized bed that overlooked a mall next door.
“Look, E,” Vince said, standing at the window and looking down. “A movie theater.”
Eric stood behind him, put his hands on Vince’s waist. The rain slickers made funny sucking noises when he pressed close. Vince’s skin was damp and warm when Eric kissed his neck; when he turned his mouth was hot. Vince started to back him toward the bed, but Eric paused.
“Lemme pull the shades,” he said. He did, and when he turned back, Vince had stripped out of his poncho and his T-shirt and was standing by the bed, droplets of water streaming from his hair to his toned, perfect shoulders. Eric swallowed. It was like this every time. He felt he should be immune to Vince’s body by now; he’d seen it so many times, in so many situations, on set, on screen, lounging around the house, jerking around in the pool with the other guys, even a few times with girls. It hadn’t even changed that much, over the years; he was still stringy-thin between projects, still more wire than muscle. But it was different, this moment, every time it happened, this moment when Vince was before him and that body that Eric spent so much time protecting and promoting, that body was real and all for him. It was humbling and frightening all at once. His hands stalled at the edge of his poncho.
“Come on,” Vince said, stepping closer, his hands covering Eric’s, and then his mouth covering Eric’s. Eric closed his eyes and the body wasn’t there, anymore, it was Vince, just Vince. They were just two guys together in this room, like they had once been two guys together in a car in Queens, hiding from the same things. He took off his shirt, helped Vince take off his jeans and shorts, lost his own somewhere in the process. By the time he really started to pay attention again, Vince was lying between his legs and they were kissing and rubbing in exactly the right way. They hadn’t done this, just friction and heat, for a long time. There was never time anymore to linger and do the normal, small stuff, and Eric sighed and concentrated on kissing Vince and holding him. He didn’t have to think about the rhythm, because that was perfect, as always, without even trying.
They showered and Eric changed back into his damp jeans. Vince couldn’t be troubled to put on anything more than a pair of worn cotton pants, so Eric went downstairs to get food alone, because he couldn’t risk a room service waiter seeing Vince lounging on the messed-up bed in just pajama bottoms. He took the food back up and they ate sitting on the bed, watching the late night talk shows, and then Eric gave Vince a blowjob, came himself in the process, and they went to sleep pressed up against each other.
In the morning, Vince let Eric fuck him. Then they showered and put on clean clothes and the same ponchos, and Vince slid a bandana over his hair and put on a pair of tiny, blue-tinted glasses. They hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Outside the rain was light but the poncho was a great disguise, and Eric wished it would rain more in California. They walked to a coffee shop and bought drinks that would have been twice as expensive in L.A., and Vince got one with whipped cream and a real fucking cherry on top.
“Out-of-towners,” the barista said, when Eric commented on the price. “First time here?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
The guy had strong forearms and bright white teeth, and he smiled blindingly at Eric. Eric thought he should be immune to this, as well, after four years in Hollywood, but he was on vacation. A nice-looking guy could catch his eye. “Heading to the market?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, we thought we might,” he said.
Vince leaned up close to the counter, head angled down. His voice was deep and syrupy when he talked. “We’re tourists,” he explained, his arm pressed against Eric’s, his hand curling around Eric’s wrist. “Anything you’d recommend?”
The guy winked. “Honey, all kinds of recommendations,” he said. “But try Capitol Hill.” He slid Eric’s coffee across the counter. “And the market’s just down the street. Walk straight, you’ll find it.”
“Thanks,” Eric said, and Vince said it too, though in more of a purr. “What was that?” Eric asked as they stepped outside.
“I can play tourist,” Vince said, walking close to him.
“And what, jealous boyfriend?”
“I’m a very good actor,” Vince said.
Eric looked over. “I’ve never doubted it.”
The market was downhill and straight ahead, just as the barista had said. They smelled dough frying from a block away, and stopped at a stand to buy a paper cone filled with donut holes. The vendor didn’t even look at them, and Eric felt relieved. Free. “We’re so under the radar it’s like there isn’t even radar,” he said.
“I think that’s true,” Vince said. “Did I tell you? Seattle. We could be anybody.”
They didn’t hold hands - they’d never done that - but when Eric got powdered sugar on his nose Vince wiped it off, rubbed his chin and the edge of his mouth with his thumb, and for a moment Eric thought Vince might kiss him. He turned away with a rough thanks, quickly, and headed toward a crowded fish stand.
They wove through crowds of people - tourists, locals, old and young - and gazed at the booths like they would have as kids, just looking, not buying. Vince stopped at a small stand where a woman in a woven hemp sarape was selling framed watercolors of Seattle.
“I like this,” he said, picking up an oblong picture. It was a view of the city with a sketch of blue just beneath it, waterline, tall buildings, a threat of rain above. It wasn’t a beautiful painting but it was sentimentally done, and the asking price -- $65 - was reasonable. “This would look nice at home. In the upstairs hall?”
Eric pretended to study the painting while really, he was looking at the saleswoman. She paid them polite attention, her eyes darting between them, and he knew that to her, they were just a couple discussing home décor. He wanted to leave before that changed. Eric shook his head and set the picture back down. He thanked the woman and steered Vince back into the crowd. “Tahoe?” he said, very quietly, and Vince nodded, the light dawning, and they moved on.
They had lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the water, and Eric slipped the hostess twenty bucks to seat them outside, even though it was really starting to rain. They sat up against the side of the building and shared food, Vince’s pasta good until the rain made the sauce almost too soupy to eat, Eric’s clam chowder gone before the water could really touch it. They took a ferry ride in the afternoon and sat topside, and Vince sat very close even though they were the only two on a long, damp bench.
“I think my underwear may never dry out,” Eric said, and Vince laughed and slipped his arm around Eric’s waist.
“So let’s go back,” he said, and Eric’s shoulders tensed.
“To L.A.?”
“To the hotel,” Vince said, still laughing. “You can dry your underwear with the hair dryer, then take me to a movie.”
They took a cab back to the hotel though it wasn’t far, and in the room they both crowded into the shower and turned the water up hot. Vince returned the blowjob and shook off Eric’s attempt to help him out. “Movie,” he said. “With popcorn.”
The rain had stopped, but there was a nice chill in the air, so they stopped at Niketown and bought Vince a hooded sweatshirt. He pulled it on and suddenly looked seventeen years old, again, and Eric’s stomach flipped at the idea that he’d be carded when they bought tickets at the theater.
There was no problem. They got a bucket of buttered popcorn, two huge drinks, and a mess of napkins, then slid in five minutes late for the new Sean Penn thriller that everyone in town was talking about, that they’d both already seen once before. But that night, Vince’d had Claire or Clarissa or somebody with him, and Eric had left three times to return phone calls to Ari about setting up a meeting the next day. Tonight they sat in the back row and there was only one other couple in the theater, midway down in the central, good-viewing seats. Eric slipped his hand into Vince’s pants after the opening credits rolled, and Vince laughed at first and then went very quiet and started thrusting. This was what it would have been like, Eric thought, if they’d never come out to L.A. This thing between them would have been just as risky but more frequent, easier, fewer people to hide from in a bigger world. They would have been in dark theaters in Queens, anonymous and wanting.
“We could be anybody,” Eric whispered against the side of Vince’s face, twisting his hand just the way he knew Vince liked. Eric grabbed the stack of paper napkins a half-second before Vince came, and he cleaned him up quickly, re-zipped him, and watched Vince’s face. He was beautiful, his eyes wide, rolling at the ceiling, head tilted back, mouth loose and wet. Eric put his hand on the side of Vince’s face and was surprised when Vince turned to him and put an arm around Eric’s chest and buried his face in Eric’s shoulder. Eric rubbed his fingers through Vince’s hair and felt his heart pounding and his ribcage shuddering. It scared him, what he could do to Vince, what Vince could get him to do. He kissed the top of Vince’s head. “It’s OK,” he said. “It’s OK, man.”
Vince stayed close to him for a while, until Act Two began, and then he stirred and pulled back into his own seat and hunched up. Eric passed him the popcorn, and Vince took it and set it on the ground on the other side of his seat. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice hard and flat. “I want to go.”
They left quietly and Vince kept his hood up and drawn, so Eric couldn’t see his eyes. At the street, Eric stood next to him, looked down at their hotel, then back at the mall. “You want to get something to eat?” he asked.
“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” Vince said.
Eric nodded until his brain caught up to his ears. “OK,” he said. There was nothing else he could say. He had his own whys.
“It’s too hard, E,” Vince said, and he looked over and his eyes were wet. It had started to rain again. “It’s getting fucking impossible.”
“Yeah,” Eric said. He looked away from Vince, because that was too hard, as well. Cars whizzed past in water-spattering lines. “Look, we should get inside, somewhere,” he said. He didn’t have to look to see Vince nodding.
They went back to the hotel. Eric went to the bar to get food while Vince went to the room, and he was still at the bar an hour later when Vince came back down. He was wearing the sweatshirt, still, but he had the hood down, the bandanna off, and he smelled like hotel soap. Eric shook his head and looked down at his glass. It was only his second, or fourth. And maybe one had been a double. He told Vince this, and Vince just nodded.
“Then I’m behind,” he said, and he signaled the bartender. The guy came over and Eric watched him squint at Vince, the precursor to recognition, as Vince asked for the bottle.
“What are you doing down here?” Eric asked. He thought he was hissing, whispering, but he couldn’t really tell.
“You disappeared.” Vince shrugged. The bartender dropped off a bottle of expensive scotch and two glasses. Eric had been drinking the house stuff, cheap but effective. Vince poured with a heavy hand. “To us,” he said, lifting his glass. Eric lifted his, too, or tried, but it was heavy and it slipped from his grasp and to the floor. He stared down at it, at the slide of the liquor on the carpet, watched the stain already fading into the dark bar floor.
“I want it to be over, too,” he said, not looking up. “Don’t you think I do?”
“Come on,” Vince said. He put his arm around Eric’s shoulders, then under his arms, helped him off the stool. “Up we go.”
He passed out in bed and woke up the next morning with Vince sitting beside him, on top of the covers, dressed, drinking in-room coffee.
“There’s some photographers downstairs,” he said. “The bartender tipped somebody off.”
“Fuck.” Eric put his head under the pillow and closed his eyes, counted to thirty, the longest he was ever allowed to freak out. Then he lifted the pillow again and sat up slowly, his back to Vince. “You got any aspirin?”
Vince found some in his bag. Eric drank a bottle of orange juice out of the mini fridge, then threw up. He felt better. The aspirin helped a little. A shower helped more. Then he sat at the table by the windows, the curtains still drawn, and called Shauna.
“What could they know?” she asked.
“There’s one bed,” Eric said. “We were trying to save money.”
“Motherfuckers,” she said in a sigh. “I’ll loan you the money, next time, all right? Or sell Turtle if you have to. And tell me at least you didn’t have maid service?”
“No, no one’s been in,” Eric said. He was that smart, at least.
“And have you been out?”
“Sure,” he said. He thought about Vince’s hand curling around his at the coffee shop, thought about his own hand on Vince’s cock the night before, and winced. “Look, just, can you control this or not?”
“You do exactly what I say,” she said, “and get on the next plane.”
A bellhop led them to a side entrance. Eric carried the bags and Vince wore the sweatshirt. They caught a cab out to the airport. It was hideously expensive and Eric thought about that on the ride instead of how far away Vince was sitting on the bench seat.
Eric called a car to pick them up from the airport in L.A. Back at the house, Turtle and Drama were sitting on the couch, playing Wii. “How was the director?” Drama asked.
“Canceled,” Vince said, and sat beside him. He looked up at Eric and his face was blank. “Fucking waste of time.”
“That sucks, man,” Drama said.
“’Cuz dude, you missed some hotties at the party!” Turtle twisted around to face Eric, and he tried to smile but he’d never been an actor like Vince.
He waved Turtle off and walked back through the house and up to his room, and only then did he realize he was holding both his and Vince’s bags. He slung them both onto the bed and opened his, then Vince’s, because sorting out their clothes was something he could do, at least. Vince’s bag was a square rolling suitcase, and underneath the balled up, wet clothes he found a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper. He didn’t have to open it to know what it was: the painting of the harbor and the skyline. Vince must have gone out that morning and picked it up. He’d probably paid by credit, probably had his picture taken, probably made everything a thousand times worse. “Fucking Vince,” he said, and slid the painting, still wrapped, under his bed, then laid down and closed his eyes. No more rules, he thought, but he didn’t feel free at all.
(The End)
Except: There's a following story, now: Get It Together.
Title: If We Were Anybody
Fandom: Entourage
Pairing: Vince/Eric
Rating: R, I guess
Warnings: Flying Wendy's Frostee
Length: 9,300 words. Complete.
Series: Yes, this is the start of the Here's Us Together series of stories.
Spoilers: Huh. Not that many. Mostly written when I had only seen Season 1.
Summary: The thing between Vince and Eric has rules.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, and my intention is not to make any money.
If We Were Anybody
The thing between Eric and Vince had rules. Eric liked this. He liked the idea of order being imposed. He’d had rules in every relationship he’d ever been in, from his mother on down. With Vince, the stakes were higher, so the rules were more absolute. Eric didn’t write them down anywhere, but he kept track. Even after things were over, he could have quoted the rules as quick as he could come up with his home address in Queens, the license plate number of the first car he’d ever outright owned, or the first line he’d ever heard Vince say on the big screen.
Rule number one: No one could know.
They figured this out in high school.
Friday night. Vince picked Eric up from work in his step-brother Matty’s Z-28. It had T-tops and subwoofers that took up half the backseat, and Matty wouldn’t let anyone but Vince touch it (and then, only in town, because Vince had failed his driver’s test once already and would never get more than a provisional permit). He only let Vince have it when he was out at his girl Carmella’s place in Brooklyn, with the agreement that Vince would pick him up in the morning so he didn’t have to schlep back on the subway. Both boys thought the car was the height of cool, and Eric didn’t even care that Matty had dropped out of high school to work in meat packing just to be able to afford it. The air conditioner didn’t work and there was a short in the front that meant the windshield wipers wouldn’t run, but Matty had put his money into the sound system and the cherry-red paint job. To Eric’s mind, Matty knew what mattered.
Vince waiting outside of Sbarro’s in that car was picture perfect. Eric was trying to impress a girl named Rebecca at the time, through his usual combination of hard work and earnest attention, and he knew that having a flashy best friend like Vince didn’t hurt the deal at all. He was sixteen years old and in love with the world.
That night, he said good-night to Rebecca and walked out to the car, not hurrying, no big deal to have the big red car waiting, the music pulsing in hard, delicious waves out onto the greasy summer sidewalk. He slid into the driver’s seat and grinned at Vince, who grinned back and then waved, past Eric, at Rebecca.
“She looks sweet,” Vince said.
“Yeah,” Eric said, watching her slide away in the side view mirror. He wondered if they should have offered her a ride, but by the time they turned the corner, he’d forgotten. “I brought you a slice.”
“I brought you a joint.”
Vince passed it over, and Eric lit up. A year later, he’d give up pot for fourteen months when Sbarro’s started random drug tests, but right then, nothing sounded better than a soft-edged evening with Vince. “No Turtle?”
“His fucking mom, man,” Vince said, shaking his head. “Something about his grandma coming to town? I don’t know. She’s gotta lighten up.”
Eric exhaled in a bitter swish. “She’ll come around,” he said. Turtle’s family threw lavish celebrations every time anyone in the family did anything, and Turtle was required to go to each and every event. He had at least eight hundred thousand cousins, each of whom had fifteen birthdays a year. Long story short: Turtle hardly ever got out of the house on weekends, which, as of the start of high school, had become an exquisite drag. “You want to hit my place?”
“Nah,” Vince said. “We got the car, I figured we’d just cruise for a while.”
“Sounds all right to me.” Eric let his hand dangle out the window, felt the wind rush through his fingers. It was almost cool, with the sun down for a few hours now. Enough fresh air might get some of the oregano and acid tomato smells out of his hair. There was no saving the uniform shirt, which had been bleached to smoothness and still had orange grease stains all over the sleeves.
They drove up to a little community park where they sometimes bought weed, and Vince parked at the edge. They lit a second joint, their fingers tangling smoothly with each pass. Vince was talking about his family, how his step-father’s buddy was maybe going to move in with them for a while. Eric knew what that meant: someone else would have to move out, probably Matty. He saw the night for what it was, a good-bye to the car, another upheaval in Vince’s already chaotic life.
“I’m so fucking ready to get out,” Vince said, leaning back against the door. He tried to pass Eric the last tiny stub of the joint, but Eric waved it back, let Vince have it all.
“L.A., you mean?” They were a year away from graduation, and they hadn’t talked too much about it, at least not in a serious way. Vince always had big schemes, big dreams, but nothing Eric had heard sounded like a real plan.
“Yeah. Did I tell you, I got a callback from that director, for the short thing at NYU?”
“Yeah? That’s cool, man. What’s that mean?”
Vince explained it, his hands waving in front of him in a complicated butterfly pattern that made Eric snicker. He reached forward and put his hands over Vince’s just to make him stop, so he could listen undistracted. Vince didn’t seem to notice, just finished his explanation.
“I think I could do it,” he said, finally. “It wouldn’t pay anything, but it’d be a screen credit, at least.”
“That’s gotta mean something,” Eric agreed. Vince turned his hands around and gripped Eric’s wrists, pulled until Eric leaned forward. “Huh-uh,” he said, the gearshift pressing already against his ribs. “No good here.”
“OK,” Vince said, and he slithered, skinny-quick, into the backseat. There was maybe three feet of space between the subwoofers. Eric rolled his eyes, but knew Vince wouldn’t see it in the dark. His heart was pounding, just like every time they did this, which had only been a handful of times since the first time they’d jerked each other off at the beginning of middle school. Eric didn’t think it meant anything. Just two guys, high and happy, in the back of a car. Just two kids messing around. Everybody messed around.
He climbed into the back much less gracefully, landing with one leg on the floorboard and one still bent up toward the front seat, his head and hands landing in various embarrassing places around Vince’s lap. Vince laughed high and fast and was no help at all as Eric tried to untangle himself.
There was no one else in the world that Eric would let laugh at him. No one else in the world that he liked to see smile so much, and maybe that should have told him something right there. But he untwisted and pushed the passenger’s seat forward, found enough space to kneel in, and leaned up and undid Vince’s fly. That stopped the laughing real quick. Eric took Vince’s dick out and just looked at it, held it for a second before he started to stroke. It made Eric hard to watch Vince getting hard. He was close, so close he could lean in and taste it, if he wanted to, but he didn’t. They hadn’t gone that far; that was a big line to cross. Eric just watched, eyes going from Vince’s dick to his face and back, and he liked the way that Vince’s head rolled around on the seat back. He liked the way Vince’s hands clutched at the edges of the speakers, and he really liked the soft growling noise Vince made when he came. Eric worked himself for a minute, then came, too, and his head fell briefly to Vince’s knee.
“Don’t get any on the seat,” Vince muttered, his own hand coming down to help Eric try and clean things up. They used the leftover napkins in the bag from Sbarro’s, then opened the car door, stepped outside into the cooling breeze.
Eric leaned against the car and stretched out his hamstrings. Vince hauled himself onto the hood and sat there, arms back, staring up at the amber sky. Eric edged close, his elbow against Vince’s knee. “Whaddya see up there, huh?”
“I really want that part, E,” Vince said, and he looked down. He smiled, a soft smile with real longing in it.
“Hey, you’ll get it,” Eric said. “Of course you’ll get it.”
“Yeah, you think?”
Eric elbowed Vince in the thigh. “I think, dumbass. You’re great at this stuff. You’re made for the big screen.”
Vince grinned his big flashy grin. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. He slid down off the car and stretched, then said, “God, I need more food. Let’s, you think we can still get a burger at Max’s?”
“I think we can do anything you want,” Eric said, and Vince slung an arm around his shoulders.
“Anything?” he asked, and then he kissed him, a nice open hungry kiss, and Eric kissed back and put his hands on Vince’s waist. Vince pressed him up against the car and kept kissing him, and Eric thought maybe this wasn’t the norm for everybody, maybe this went beyond messing around, because all he could think was fuck, yes, he wanted more.
He may have said it, because Vince laughed a little and pulled back, and Eric saw his mouth open a second before something yellow came flying at them. He ducked, instinctively, but didn’t miss getting hit with a flood of cold brown liquid and hard, sharp ice.
“Fucking faggots!” he heard, and he looked over Vince’s shoulder to see a heavy blue Cadillac rolling by, two beefy guys hanging out the side windows. A crushed yellow Wendy’s drink cup laid on the ground beside them.
“Hey, fuck you!” Eric yelled back. He felt Vince jerk against him and looked up and gasped, seeing the whole side of Vince’s head covered in thick, bright red, Vince’s eyes clamped shut.
“Vince, Jesus,” Eric said, reaching up, and Vince shook his head.
“It’s all right,” he said, touching the side of his eye, then his temple, before drawing his fingers back. “Ketchup, I think.”
Eric nodded. The car had pulled up to the next corner and was turning around. “Fuck,” he said, pulling away from Vince. “We gotta go.”
“What?”
Vince’s eyes were wide, and he was still touching the side of his face. Eric threw the door open and pushed him in, then scrambled to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel, turned the key, and peeled out. The Cadillac was headed for them, and Eric was terrified for a moment that it might try to ram them or trap them somehow. He jammed the automatic window button up and wished they hadn’t left the tops off. Another Wendy’s cup smashed against the windshield, this time smearing ice cream, and the impact snapped Vince back to reality fast.
“What the fuck?” he shouted, turning around. “Jesus Christ, those motherfuckers!”
“Are you all right?” Eric asked. His hands were shaking on the steering wheel, and he could barely see the street through the Frostee on the window. He took the next left and checked his mirror, expecting the Caddy to be right behind. No sign.
Vince turned toward him. When Eric glanced over, his face was a mess, his hair dripping soda and ketchup. “They thought - they thought we were -“
“We were making out against the car, Vince,” Eric snapped. “They thought right about that.”
“The car,” Vince said, and he groaned. “Oh, shit, E, pull over.”
Eric didn’t stop until they were ten randomly chosen turns away, and then he picked the most brightly lit 7-11 lot that he could find. They both climbed out to look at the damage. Between them, they had 23 dollars, and they spent it all on car cleaning products and two rolls of paper towels. Soda would eat the paint, if left too long, and Vince didn’t have to say what Matty would do if the seats were cola-sticky and the window ice cream coated the next day.
Once the car was done, they took turns cleaning up in the bathroom. Eric’s hair was sticky but really, his clothes weren’t that much worse for the wear. He was used to coming home with splatters and stains everywhere. It looked like a bad day at the office for him.
Vince had caught the brunt of it. His jeans and white T-shirt had dark patches on his left side from the cola and red splatters on the right from the ketchup. Eric guessed the shirt would be a total loss. His right eye also had a narrow pink swell next to it. Eric wanted to touch it but had an idea that was no longer allowed.
“Barbecue sauce,” Vince said, touching his face. “I think it was one of those little plastic containers.”
Eric nodded. “Gonna have a bruise.”
Vince shrugged. He sat in the car, in the driver’s seat, and faced forward. “If anyone asks,” he said, “we were screwing around playing basketball, all right?”
“We pissed off some guys, they took it out on us and the car?”
Vince nodded. “Yeah,” he said, starting the car. “Sounds good.”
For two weeks they didn’t talk about it. Then Vince showed up at Eric’s place on a Saturday night, fifteen minutes before he was supposed to leave for a date with Rebecca. They sat on the stoop in front of the house, not touching, not even sitting on the same step.
“I don’t think they were right about us,” Vince said, staring out at the street. His shoulders were hunched forward, his shoulder blades tiny rises beneath a worn green tee.
Eric didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Nah, of course not,” he said. He’d thought about that blue Caddy every day since then, wondered how well the guys had seen them, if they were kids from their own school or not. He’d convinced himself they weren’t, that they were older guys, drunk, driving too fast, not thinking, not observant. It was how he got through the day. “What do they know, right?”
“Right, fuck ‘em.” This time, Vince looked back. “Just messing around.”
Eric nodded. It surprised him that hearing Vince say the words made his stomach hurt a little, but he kept nodding, and things went back to normal for them. Eric took Rebecca to a movie that night, and afterward they went back to her place and made out on the couch while her mother slept in the next room over. Nothing more happened, because the window behind the couch made Eric feel jumpy, but more would, later. Things would be fine.
The night before Vince left for L.A., the first time, the time when Eric didn’t go along, was when Rule Two was made. Rule Two, very simply: The best way for no one to know was to make sure there was nothing for them to know. To Eric, this translated as a “hands off” rule, especially after he’d realized, six months away from the Caddy incident, that it was probably more than messing around. He had a feeling Vince had realized it, too, because suddenly they spent a lot of time with chaperones: Turtle, when he could escape his family, or Vince’s brother Johnny, when Turtle wasn’t available. Johnny was back in town as an understudy in an off-off-Broadway revival of some play Vince had had the lead in as a sophomore in high school. They were constantly quoting lines to each other that meant nothing to Eric, or going on about staging or different set pieces. Eric started avoiding Vince altogether by picking up extra work at Sbarro’s, where he’d been promised an assistant manager’s spot as soon as he could graduate and start working full time.
Vince was set to leave town right after graduation, going back to L.A. with Johnny as soon as his stellar non-Broadway gig was up. Eric was sure that would be sooner than later, and as they edged up to graduation he tried to tell himself he was glad for it. Things between them were very weird and tense, and that wasn’t something Eric liked at all. He wasn’t a good actor, not like Vince, and he didn’t do a very good job of pretending that things were how they’d always been.
Vince met him after work on another Friday night. No car, just Vince sitting on the curb outside the restaurant, waiting, looking kind of small under his old surplus jacket.
“What, no Johnny Actor?” Johnny was still trying to get a name together, then; Eric’s favorite was Johnny Shazaam, because it sounded like a video game character and a porn star all at once.
Vince looked up. “I’m leaving next weekend,” he said.
Eric sat next to him and pulled out a cigarette. He offered one to Vince, but he turned it down. “After graduation?” he asked, lighting up.
“Maybe before the ceremony,” Vince said. “Johnny’s gonna get kicked off the play this week.”
“He said that?”
Vince snorted. “I went to a rehearsal, last week, no way he lasts out the weekend. Pretty sure he fucked the director’s girlfriend.”
“Nice,” Eric said on a long exhale of smoke. “He’s a class act.”
“Only act he’s got,” Vince said. He shrugged. “So he’s gonna want to leave, and I’m heading out with him. Turtle’s in, too. Gonna help us drive the old beast out there.”
Eric laughed. “You really think that thing will make it?”
“Matty had a look, said the engine can do it. And Turtle’s family is pitching in tires for his graduation present.” Vince shook his head. “His mom’s gonna have a fit if she doesn’t get to throw him a party.”
“What about your mom?” Eric asked.
Vince shrugged. “One less mouth at the table, one less kid underfoot. Not having a party is one less thing she’s gotta worry about, you know?”
“Sure.” Eric took a long, slow drag. “So what’s up, then? What are you doing here tonight, instead of hanging out with the guys?”
Vince was staring at the ground. “Look,” he said, his voice soft, “that night -“
“It’s fine, Vince, we don’t need to -“
“No,” he said, his voice firm, which made Eric glance around. “Look, they weren’t right, I mean, to call us - and I don’t think you are, or whatever, but it’s just - “ Vince stopped. His foot was twisting a hole into the concrete. “I kind of miss it,” he said, after a minute. “I hate that they fucked everything up with us. I hate that, E. And I’m about to leave for a while, maybe forever, and I don’t want things to be all fucked up.”
“Yeah,” Eric said. “Me, uh, me either. Or me too.” He laughed and stubbed out his cigarette on the curb. “Man, I’ve missed you, too, and not in small part because your brother is fucking crazy.”
“Don’t I know it,” Vince said. “You know he’s got that whole play memorized? And he keeps adding parts. Like he could improve on Arthur Miller.”
Eric laughed. “Listen, you hungry?”
Vince smiled. “Always hungry.”
They walked over to Max’s and had burger plates with fries and tall cherry sodas, and then afterward they walked back to the neighborhood instead of trying to catch a bus. When they stopped in front of Eric’s house, Vince ducked his head, glanced over at his own dark house at the end of the block, and then back at Eric.
“Could I crash with you, tonight?” he asked. “I’ve been on the couch all week at home, while Aunt Rita and her kids are here.”
“Yeah, sure,” Eric said. He led Vince up the steps and unlocked the door, and they eased into the entryway with practiced quiet. Eric’s room was the first on the left at the top of the stairs, with the buffer of the bathroom between him and his mom’s room on the other side. The light was off beneath her door.
Eric had a hand-me-down double bed that filled up most of the space in his room, set on a squeaky Sears frame that clunked with every big move. They both fit in it neatly, as they had for years; they’d always spent more time at Eric’s place than Vince’s, because even though there was less space, there were fewer people around. When Eric turned off the bedside light and lay back, he saw Vince leaning on his side, looking down at him.
“What?”
Vince swallowed, then licked his lips. “Can I?” he asked, looking down.
It was the only time he ever asked - maybe the only time in Vince’s life he’d had to, Eric thought later - and Eric loved him for it. He nodded, and then Vince leaned in and kissed him, and then pressed up against him, under the thin sheet. His mouth was desperate and wanting, this time, and Eric realized he’d been waiting and wanting just as much. He tried to say this, but Vince muttered, “Shh, shh,” against his lips, then pulled back and away and down. He crossed the line first, Eric thought swiftly as Vince’s mouth closed over the tip of his dick. It wasn’t a great blowjob - he’d had a few, by then, to compare it to - but it was still amazing, one of Vince’s hands steady and warm on his hip, the other rubbing up and down the shaft. Eric came too quickly, gripping Vince’s shoulders blindly, silently glad that he’d been locking his door at night since his mother had caught him jerking off when he was 13.
Vince crawled up next to him and rocked himself against Eric’s hip until Eric was conscious enough to lend a spit-slick hand to the process. He kissed Vince as he came, swallowing the tiny noises of pleasure he made.
“I need this,” Vince said, after, his breath barely a gasp in Eric’s ear. “I tried not to, E, I -“
“Me, too,” Eric whispered. “Look, we just get through this week, and then you go to L.A., and I’ll be here, and it won’t be a problem anymore.”
“When I come back to visit...”
“You can always stay here,” Eric said, his arm around Vince’s sweaty back.
It sounded like a good compromise, at the time. Once a year. People lived through worse, all the time. And really what Eric needed most was Vince’s voice on the phone, calls that came in the middle of the night because by the time Vince’s free nighttime minutes kicked in on the West Coast it was 1 a.m. in New York. Eric was taking night classes, by then, and he never had to be at the store before 10 a.m., so it was fine. It was fine, until Vince came back, and he was skinny and hungry and about to be famous, and Eric could see he was on the edge of pissing it all away. So he went back to L.A. with him, and that’s when Rule Three came out to play.
Rule Three: When it’s worth it, it’s worth it.
His first night out in L.A. they all stayed up the whole night, taking hits off a green glass bong and eating greasy microwave popcorn in Drama’s living room. At dawn, when Vince said, “You can crash with me, man, Turtle’s dead on that couch,” Eric wasn’t sure what to expect or what to even hope for. He’d heard all about Vince’s girls by then, the cavalcade of young actresses and waitresses and gym rats and party girls that he’d been doing like a hobby around his auditions. Besides, Drama’s room was just next door, and Eric had just finished a 3,000 mile drive. He was too tired to care when Vince turned out the light, lay down, and went right to sleep. He was in L.A., that was all that mattered.
They woke up at noon to Drama pounding on the door, yelling, “Lunch, you motherfuckers!”
“Only mother I’ve touched is yours!” Eric shouted back, not even opening his eyes. “Fuck the fuck off, man!”
“Fifteen minutes, Johnny, OK?” Vince yelled.
Eric sat up and shook his head, surprised at the bright sunshine streaming in the window and the heat already on his skin. He looked over at Vince, who was grinning in a broad, hungry way. “Man, it’s good to have you here,” Vince said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Vince’s hand was lightning quick, and his mouth was warm and his tongue expert, and Eric gasped and came way too fast. “Jesus, where’d you learn that?” he asked, trying to cover his embarrassment.
“I’m an actor,” Vince said, wiping his mouth, then standing up and stretching. His skin was glorious, caramel-colored everywhere. Eric didn’t want to know why he had no tan lines. “We’re paid to watch and learn.”
Eric cleaned up and went downstairs, and they headed out for lunch. “Man, the greatest sausage in the world,” Turtle said from the driver’s seat. “Like, spicy as all hell.”
“Better than Joey Pascone’s?”
Drama put a hand over his heart. “Don’t speak such blasphemy,” he said, in his big deep fake-Hamlet voice. “Those sausages, man. I dream about that stuff.”
Eric laughed. “I’d a known you had such a thing for it, I would’ve brought you some to suck on,” he said, and then felt his face turn red. Vince was laughing in the front seat, though, and so was Turtle, so Eric shook it off.
“Yeah, suck on this.” Drama cupped his groin, but it was a weak comeback, the whole thing quickly forgotten.
At lunch, Vince sat on Eric’s side in the booth, and his thigh was pressed up against Eric’s under the table. Eric wasn’t sure how to take that, or the way Vince kept snagging Eric’s food, or the way he slung his arm around Eric’s shoulders on the way out of the diner, saying, “Turtle’s got it, man, he handles the money.”
“Jesus, no wonder you’re broke,” Eric said, squinting as they stepped onto the street. He looked over at Vince. Vince was smiling like he’d won the lottery and the homecoming queen all on the same day. “So this is L.A.,” Eric said, putting his arm around Vince’s shoulders, too.
“You haven’t even seen the half of it,” Vince said, and flipped on his sunglasses and kept smiling.
That night, they went to a house party in Malibu. Turtle tried three times to explain how they knew about the party, but Eric couldn’t follow it. He didn’t think Turtle actually knew, and until they were actually stopped on the street, he was pretty sure they were going to show up at a vacant lot or an empty house or something. But the place was full of people, all of them either overdressed (the women, mostly in tiny tight dresses) or underdressed (the men, including Vince, mostly in wrinkled T-shirts and holey jeans). Eric took two steps inside and knew he didn’t want to be there. The music was loud, the crowd was annoying, he was the only one in khakis, and he knew no one but Turtle and Drama and Vince and didn’t want to know anyone else, either.
But three girls knew Vince just walking in the door, and then a bunch of guys stopped him, and somewhere along the way Turtle and Drama were lost to the bar so it was just Eric, standing at Vince’s shoulder, nodding like he could hear anything the other people were saying.
“No, no, I love your work, too, man,” Vince said. “I would totally - hey, have your guy call my guy, OK?” Eric turned his back so no one would see him laugh, and when Vince turned he poked Eric in the side with his elbow. “What?”
“I’ll have your people call my people,” Eric said. “I didn’t fucking know people actually said that.”
Vince smiled. “I have people,” he said. “I love people.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I love those people, in fact.” He pointed to two bright blondes in the corner, both in sleek halter-top black dresses, both waving in their direction.
“You know them?”
“Not yet,” Vince said, “but I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.” He took two steps into the crowd, then turned and lifted one shoulder. “You coming?” he asked.
Eric looked from Vince, this shiny Hollywood perfect Vince, to the friendly girls in the corner, then shook his head.
“Go ahead, I need a drink,” he said, and Vince shrugged and turned away. He didn’t look back, and Eric let the crush push him toward the kitchen. There, he found a beer in a tall bottle, not a familiar brand but one that would do the trick, and drank it in long swallows. He was leaning against the counter, working on his second, when Turtle walked in.
“Fucking Vince, man,” he said, shaking his head. “He got two without even trying.”
“People seem to know him,” Eric said.
“Know him? He’s famous, baby.” Turtle turned to wink at a girl who was reaching for a wine cooler. “Seriously, he’s big time. I know it seems crazy,” Turtle said, turning back to Eric, “but you get used to it.”
Eric looked around the kitchen. A girl in a red dress was sitting on the counter, a tall, muscular man standing between her legs, and with the slightest tip of his head Eric knew he’d see more of her than he’d ever seen, in daylight, from any girl in New York. Two guys were standing in the corner talking intensely, drinking wine, and smoking, their ashes falling to the hardwood floors without a thought. Somewhere behind him he could hear women giggling, a man singing, a shriek, the throbbing pulse of techno bass. This was Vince’s new world, and Eric knew he’d never fit comfortably here, but he also knew he’d never want to. He just wanted to be where Vince was.
Vince found him after an hour. He was sweaty and tousled, and Eric’s eyes felt sore just looking up at him. He was sitting on the steps to the backyard deck, watching a drunk blonde and her even drunker boyfriend try to find her wallet where she’d dropped it over the side of the two-story deck.
“Having a good time?” Vince asked, dropping a hand on Eric’s shoulder as he sat next to him.
Eric shrugged. “I’d ask you, but I think I know the answer.”
Vince smiled. “They were college girls,” he said. “Jesus, college, what do you think that’s like?”
“I took some classes,” Eric said.
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “We should maybe talk about stuff,” he said, and Vince laughed.
“Dude, I’m pretty fucking wasted,” Vince said, “so spell it out.”
“How do you want to play this?” Eric asked. He waved his hand between the two of them. “You know what I mean, dickhead.”
“Yeah. OK. Yeah,” Vince said. He closed his eyes, like he was really thinking, then opened them again. “I like girls,” he said.
Eric snorted. “Uh, hey, yeah, me too.”
“I mean. They’re fun. They’re pretty. They’re soft and - you know, girls.” He made an old-fashioned hourglass shape in the air.
“I’m familiar,” Eric said. “What are you saying?”
Vince shrugged, just one shoulder. “They take the edge off.” He turned and looked right at Eric, squinting a little. “Look, I have this job,” he said.
“You got another role?”
“No, I mean, this job,” Vince said, and he waved his hands around, gesturing to the party. “The girls are part of the job. The life.”
“I get that,” Eric said. “Vince, I’m not asking you to -“
“I would.” Vince’s hands fluttered down, and one rested on Eric’s thigh. “E, if you asked me to, right now, I would. We could do this full time, say fuck you to the rest of the world. It could work out.”
Eric glanced up at the flashing lights inside the house. He thought of Vince’s bright Hollywood smile, about the ease with which he traveled through the crowd. Everyone loved him, here. Things were going to be easy for him, for once, and all Eric wanted was a sideline seat. “It wouldn’t work as well,” Eric said. “You wouldn’t get everything you want.”
“Nobody ever does,” Vince said. He took his hand off Eric’s thigh and stood up, offered the same hand to pull Eric from the stairs. “Let’s go home, OK?”
They went back to the house without Turtle or Drama, and Eric followed Vince up to his bedroom. Vince locked the door, then sat on the bed next to Eric and kissed him slow and heavy.
“You still drunk?” Eric asked.
“No,” Vince said. “And I want you to fuck me.”
Eric felt his face flame. He backed up, or tried to, but Vince’s hands were sturdy on his biceps, and his eyes were steady on Eric’s. “Oh,” Eric said, and after a moment he nodded. Vince took the lead, dropped his pants and spread out backwards on the bed and drew Eric in close. They kissed for so long that Eric thought maybe they’d just do that, and that would be fine, but then Vince angled his hips up and Eric said, “Wait, wait.” He was always the one thinking of these things. He found moisturizer in Vince’s bathroom and, after a second’s thought about Vince’s evening so far, a condom, then went back and laid down next to him. Things were easier once Eric took over; that was always how it was, Vince got things started and then Eric made sure it was going to work out.
After, he laid next to Vince, feeling dull and lightheaded, and Vince turned over and pushed close to Eric and pressed wet lazy kisses against his neck. “Nothing’s ever going to make this go away,” Vince said. “E, you know?”
Eric nodded. He brushed his fingers through Vince’s hair, then slid his hand down Vince’s back. “Look, I think, here’s what we do. We - we just keep going. Like always. We try, like we used to, and we only do this when we have to. This way, we get to hang around. And when it gets too much -“
Vince nodded. “I’ll come find you,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He put one hand on Eric’s chest to push himself up. “Shake on that,” Vince said, his voice deep and official. Eric nodded, and met his hand, shook like they’d just agreed to a bet on a baseball game, instead of a gamble with their lives.
But they’d never had an everyday, every day romance. Rule three had existed forever. They’d snuck out, stayed past curfew, huddled in the back of the car or the quiet dark of Eric’s bedroom; they’d never risked more. Now, the life was bigger, and so the wait was longer. There was more to lose. Eric waited for Vince as long as he could, and then, when he went to him, it was six weeks, four months, a television season. When Vince came to him, it was post-production, it was post-vacation. It was one night, always, or a fast afternoon, hours stolen from a schedule that Eric kept and stuck to.
Other rules - little rules, sub-rules, amendments, Eric thought of them - were established along the way. Never on big nights. Premieres, parties, awards ceremonies, even if they weren’t for Vince, were public events. Those were nights where Vince belonged to the crowd, where his image was paramount, where Eric was on the job. Those nights involved women, wine, and paparazzi, and Eric often brought his own dates, too. Too many eyes, too many cameras, too many people watching. The times between started to drag out longer, and their times together became richer, harder, more desperate, but never dangerous. Never risky. Eric wouldn’t allow that, because of the last rule.
The last rule was the same as the first - no one could know - but it brought its own reasons. No one could know because the life was more important. The life was more important. Eric told himself this often, sometimes every day. Sometimes he could go a week without thinking of it. They were that settled in. They were that used to things being a secret. In-between times, they were still close, and that was what mattered. They were together all the time.
A weekday. Nothing else going on. Vince had just finished the final looping on Park Place, which marked the end of three months of intensive filming, mostly on set in L.A. It would be a great movie. Eric knew it, had known it from the first day they’d started filming. It would also be the first Vincent Chase movie where he played what Eric thought of as a real grown up: a man with a wife, kids, the whole bit. It would be a great movie, but it had been exhausting every day, even for Eric, and he was glad it was over, glad for some time off.
Vince came into his room, in the morning, while Eric was shaving. “I want to get out of town,” he said. He leaned against the counter and looked down, his back to the mirror, so Eric watched the curve of his neck reflected. “Like, not California. Seattle.”
“Yeah?”
“Tonight,” Vince said, and he glanced over, just once, and that was enough for Eric. He got it right away. It had been four months, since the day after the party at Topher Grace’s place, when Turtle and Drama had been hung-over all day and Eric had snuck into Vince’s room and pinned him to the bed still unmade from last night’s girl.
“I’ll set it up.”
It couldn’t be that night, though, because Turtle was at loose ends and would want to tag along, so Eric scheduled the trip for Thursday night, when there was another big party on the beach. He told the guys they were going up to Tahoe for the night to see a new director.
“Yeah?” Drama leaned forward over a plate of scrambled egg whites and organic hash browns. “You looking at a new project?”
“It’s E’s thing,” Vince said, slouched back against the booth next to Eric. He looked more relaxed already; Eric couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the tension in him before now. Usually he spotted the build up. But the movie had been so fucking draining.
“I liked a script,” Eric said, shrugging. His shoulder brushed Vince’s.
“Gonna miss a great party,” Turtle said. “Fuckin’ hot chicks everywhere.”
“More for us,” Drama said, and Vince laughed.
They talked about driving, but it was a seventeen hour trip and that felt like a waste of a day. So Eric called Ari to get the flight arranged, not because he thought he could trust him but because Ari had just as much to lose.
“Trip to Crunchyland? Why the fuck you want to go up there? You going to open a Starbucks franchise? I’m not saying that’d be a bad move for you, step up from pizza -“
“Just can you get the fucking plane or do I have to book it in Vin’s name?” Eric asked.
“Do I want to know what you’re doing in Seattle that you can’t do under your real name? That answer is no, my friend,” he said, and hung up. Fifteen minutes later Lloyd called back to say that their plane would leave Van Nuys at 10 p.m. “Ari says to wear a hat,” he said, and then hung up.
It was raining when they arrived. They bought cheap green rain ponchos from a vendor at the airport and took a cab to a downtown hotel. Eric offered his own credit card to secure the room while Vince hung back, by the payphones, hood still drawn up. They took the elevator to the eleventh floor, a regular room with a King-sized bed that overlooked a mall next door.
“Look, E,” Vince said, standing at the window and looking down. “A movie theater.”
Eric stood behind him, put his hands on Vince’s waist. The rain slickers made funny sucking noises when he pressed close. Vince’s skin was damp and warm when Eric kissed his neck; when he turned his mouth was hot. Vince started to back him toward the bed, but Eric paused.
“Lemme pull the shades,” he said. He did, and when he turned back, Vince had stripped out of his poncho and his T-shirt and was standing by the bed, droplets of water streaming from his hair to his toned, perfect shoulders. Eric swallowed. It was like this every time. He felt he should be immune to Vince’s body by now; he’d seen it so many times, in so many situations, on set, on screen, lounging around the house, jerking around in the pool with the other guys, even a few times with girls. It hadn’t even changed that much, over the years; he was still stringy-thin between projects, still more wire than muscle. But it was different, this moment, every time it happened, this moment when Vince was before him and that body that Eric spent so much time protecting and promoting, that body was real and all for him. It was humbling and frightening all at once. His hands stalled at the edge of his poncho.
“Come on,” Vince said, stepping closer, his hands covering Eric’s, and then his mouth covering Eric’s. Eric closed his eyes and the body wasn’t there, anymore, it was Vince, just Vince. They were just two guys together in this room, like they had once been two guys together in a car in Queens, hiding from the same things. He took off his shirt, helped Vince take off his jeans and shorts, lost his own somewhere in the process. By the time he really started to pay attention again, Vince was lying between his legs and they were kissing and rubbing in exactly the right way. They hadn’t done this, just friction and heat, for a long time. There was never time anymore to linger and do the normal, small stuff, and Eric sighed and concentrated on kissing Vince and holding him. He didn’t have to think about the rhythm, because that was perfect, as always, without even trying.
They showered and Eric changed back into his damp jeans. Vince couldn’t be troubled to put on anything more than a pair of worn cotton pants, so Eric went downstairs to get food alone, because he couldn’t risk a room service waiter seeing Vince lounging on the messed-up bed in just pajama bottoms. He took the food back up and they ate sitting on the bed, watching the late night talk shows, and then Eric gave Vince a blowjob, came himself in the process, and they went to sleep pressed up against each other.
In the morning, Vince let Eric fuck him. Then they showered and put on clean clothes and the same ponchos, and Vince slid a bandana over his hair and put on a pair of tiny, blue-tinted glasses. They hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Outside the rain was light but the poncho was a great disguise, and Eric wished it would rain more in California. They walked to a coffee shop and bought drinks that would have been twice as expensive in L.A., and Vince got one with whipped cream and a real fucking cherry on top.
“Out-of-towners,” the barista said, when Eric commented on the price. “First time here?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
The guy had strong forearms and bright white teeth, and he smiled blindingly at Eric. Eric thought he should be immune to this, as well, after four years in Hollywood, but he was on vacation. A nice-looking guy could catch his eye. “Heading to the market?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, we thought we might,” he said.
Vince leaned up close to the counter, head angled down. His voice was deep and syrupy when he talked. “We’re tourists,” he explained, his arm pressed against Eric’s, his hand curling around Eric’s wrist. “Anything you’d recommend?”
The guy winked. “Honey, all kinds of recommendations,” he said. “But try Capitol Hill.” He slid Eric’s coffee across the counter. “And the market’s just down the street. Walk straight, you’ll find it.”
“Thanks,” Eric said, and Vince said it too, though in more of a purr. “What was that?” Eric asked as they stepped outside.
“I can play tourist,” Vince said, walking close to him.
“And what, jealous boyfriend?”
“I’m a very good actor,” Vince said.
Eric looked over. “I’ve never doubted it.”
The market was downhill and straight ahead, just as the barista had said. They smelled dough frying from a block away, and stopped at a stand to buy a paper cone filled with donut holes. The vendor didn’t even look at them, and Eric felt relieved. Free. “We’re so under the radar it’s like there isn’t even radar,” he said.
“I think that’s true,” Vince said. “Did I tell you? Seattle. We could be anybody.”
They didn’t hold hands - they’d never done that - but when Eric got powdered sugar on his nose Vince wiped it off, rubbed his chin and the edge of his mouth with his thumb, and for a moment Eric thought Vince might kiss him. He turned away with a rough thanks, quickly, and headed toward a crowded fish stand.
They wove through crowds of people - tourists, locals, old and young - and gazed at the booths like they would have as kids, just looking, not buying. Vince stopped at a small stand where a woman in a woven hemp sarape was selling framed watercolors of Seattle.
“I like this,” he said, picking up an oblong picture. It was a view of the city with a sketch of blue just beneath it, waterline, tall buildings, a threat of rain above. It wasn’t a beautiful painting but it was sentimentally done, and the asking price -- $65 - was reasonable. “This would look nice at home. In the upstairs hall?”
Eric pretended to study the painting while really, he was looking at the saleswoman. She paid them polite attention, her eyes darting between them, and he knew that to her, they were just a couple discussing home décor. He wanted to leave before that changed. Eric shook his head and set the picture back down. He thanked the woman and steered Vince back into the crowd. “Tahoe?” he said, very quietly, and Vince nodded, the light dawning, and they moved on.
They had lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the water, and Eric slipped the hostess twenty bucks to seat them outside, even though it was really starting to rain. They sat up against the side of the building and shared food, Vince’s pasta good until the rain made the sauce almost too soupy to eat, Eric’s clam chowder gone before the water could really touch it. They took a ferry ride in the afternoon and sat topside, and Vince sat very close even though they were the only two on a long, damp bench.
“I think my underwear may never dry out,” Eric said, and Vince laughed and slipped his arm around Eric’s waist.
“So let’s go back,” he said, and Eric’s shoulders tensed.
“To L.A.?”
“To the hotel,” Vince said, still laughing. “You can dry your underwear with the hair dryer, then take me to a movie.”
They took a cab back to the hotel though it wasn’t far, and in the room they both crowded into the shower and turned the water up hot. Vince returned the blowjob and shook off Eric’s attempt to help him out. “Movie,” he said. “With popcorn.”
The rain had stopped, but there was a nice chill in the air, so they stopped at Niketown and bought Vince a hooded sweatshirt. He pulled it on and suddenly looked seventeen years old, again, and Eric’s stomach flipped at the idea that he’d be carded when they bought tickets at the theater.
There was no problem. They got a bucket of buttered popcorn, two huge drinks, and a mess of napkins, then slid in five minutes late for the new Sean Penn thriller that everyone in town was talking about, that they’d both already seen once before. But that night, Vince’d had Claire or Clarissa or somebody with him, and Eric had left three times to return phone calls to Ari about setting up a meeting the next day. Tonight they sat in the back row and there was only one other couple in the theater, midway down in the central, good-viewing seats. Eric slipped his hand into Vince’s pants after the opening credits rolled, and Vince laughed at first and then went very quiet and started thrusting. This was what it would have been like, Eric thought, if they’d never come out to L.A. This thing between them would have been just as risky but more frequent, easier, fewer people to hide from in a bigger world. They would have been in dark theaters in Queens, anonymous and wanting.
“We could be anybody,” Eric whispered against the side of Vince’s face, twisting his hand just the way he knew Vince liked. Eric grabbed the stack of paper napkins a half-second before Vince came, and he cleaned him up quickly, re-zipped him, and watched Vince’s face. He was beautiful, his eyes wide, rolling at the ceiling, head tilted back, mouth loose and wet. Eric put his hand on the side of Vince’s face and was surprised when Vince turned to him and put an arm around Eric’s chest and buried his face in Eric’s shoulder. Eric rubbed his fingers through Vince’s hair and felt his heart pounding and his ribcage shuddering. It scared him, what he could do to Vince, what Vince could get him to do. He kissed the top of Vince’s head. “It’s OK,” he said. “It’s OK, man.”
Vince stayed close to him for a while, until Act Two began, and then he stirred and pulled back into his own seat and hunched up. Eric passed him the popcorn, and Vince took it and set it on the ground on the other side of his seat. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice hard and flat. “I want to go.”
They left quietly and Vince kept his hood up and drawn, so Eric couldn’t see his eyes. At the street, Eric stood next to him, looked down at their hotel, then back at the mall. “You want to get something to eat?” he asked.
“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” Vince said.
Eric nodded until his brain caught up to his ears. “OK,” he said. There was nothing else he could say. He had his own whys.
“It’s too hard, E,” Vince said, and he looked over and his eyes were wet. It had started to rain again. “It’s getting fucking impossible.”
“Yeah,” Eric said. He looked away from Vince, because that was too hard, as well. Cars whizzed past in water-spattering lines. “Look, we should get inside, somewhere,” he said. He didn’t have to look to see Vince nodding.
They went back to the hotel. Eric went to the bar to get food while Vince went to the room, and he was still at the bar an hour later when Vince came back down. He was wearing the sweatshirt, still, but he had the hood down, the bandanna off, and he smelled like hotel soap. Eric shook his head and looked down at his glass. It was only his second, or fourth. And maybe one had been a double. He told Vince this, and Vince just nodded.
“Then I’m behind,” he said, and he signaled the bartender. The guy came over and Eric watched him squint at Vince, the precursor to recognition, as Vince asked for the bottle.
“What are you doing down here?” Eric asked. He thought he was hissing, whispering, but he couldn’t really tell.
“You disappeared.” Vince shrugged. The bartender dropped off a bottle of expensive scotch and two glasses. Eric had been drinking the house stuff, cheap but effective. Vince poured with a heavy hand. “To us,” he said, lifting his glass. Eric lifted his, too, or tried, but it was heavy and it slipped from his grasp and to the floor. He stared down at it, at the slide of the liquor on the carpet, watched the stain already fading into the dark bar floor.
“I want it to be over, too,” he said, not looking up. “Don’t you think I do?”
“Come on,” Vince said. He put his arm around Eric’s shoulders, then under his arms, helped him off the stool. “Up we go.”
He passed out in bed and woke up the next morning with Vince sitting beside him, on top of the covers, dressed, drinking in-room coffee.
“There’s some photographers downstairs,” he said. “The bartender tipped somebody off.”
“Fuck.” Eric put his head under the pillow and closed his eyes, counted to thirty, the longest he was ever allowed to freak out. Then he lifted the pillow again and sat up slowly, his back to Vince. “You got any aspirin?”
Vince found some in his bag. Eric drank a bottle of orange juice out of the mini fridge, then threw up. He felt better. The aspirin helped a little. A shower helped more. Then he sat at the table by the windows, the curtains still drawn, and called Shauna.
“What could they know?” she asked.
“There’s one bed,” Eric said. “We were trying to save money.”
“Motherfuckers,” she said in a sigh. “I’ll loan you the money, next time, all right? Or sell Turtle if you have to. And tell me at least you didn’t have maid service?”
“No, no one’s been in,” Eric said. He was that smart, at least.
“And have you been out?”
“Sure,” he said. He thought about Vince’s hand curling around his at the coffee shop, thought about his own hand on Vince’s cock the night before, and winced. “Look, just, can you control this or not?”
“You do exactly what I say,” she said, “and get on the next plane.”
A bellhop led them to a side entrance. Eric carried the bags and Vince wore the sweatshirt. They caught a cab out to the airport. It was hideously expensive and Eric thought about that on the ride instead of how far away Vince was sitting on the bench seat.
Eric called a car to pick them up from the airport in L.A. Back at the house, Turtle and Drama were sitting on the couch, playing Wii. “How was the director?” Drama asked.
“Canceled,” Vince said, and sat beside him. He looked up at Eric and his face was blank. “Fucking waste of time.”
“That sucks, man,” Drama said.
“’Cuz dude, you missed some hotties at the party!” Turtle twisted around to face Eric, and he tried to smile but he’d never been an actor like Vince.
He waved Turtle off and walked back through the house and up to his room, and only then did he realize he was holding both his and Vince’s bags. He slung them both onto the bed and opened his, then Vince’s, because sorting out their clothes was something he could do, at least. Vince’s bag was a square rolling suitcase, and underneath the balled up, wet clothes he found a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper. He didn’t have to open it to know what it was: the painting of the harbor and the skyline. Vince must have gone out that morning and picked it up. He’d probably paid by credit, probably had his picture taken, probably made everything a thousand times worse. “Fucking Vince,” he said, and slid the painting, still wrapped, under his bed, then laid down and closed his eyes. No more rules, he thought, but he didn’t feel free at all.
(The End)
Except: There's a following story, now: Get It Together.