The Left Hand of Darkness, Entourage, Mild Adult Content

[justabi]

Title: The Left Hand of Darkness
Author: Abi
Rating: Mild Adult Content
Spoilers: None
Summary: At first he thinks it's indigestion.
Warning: I do not like warnings. THEY CHEAPEN US ALL. However, I am warning for something that is neither death nor non-con. If you must know what the warning is before you read this, click here, with the understanding that Turtle will think you are a fucking pussy.
Author's Notes: Written because loose_pages_sd said she'd pay money. She didn't, but she did squee a lot and offer to beta for me, so we'll call it even. dancinbutterfly wanted nothing to do with it, but did anyway, because she rocks. As ever roxymissrose was awesome in general and in particular a good friend to me right when I needed it. fashes thinks I like to see Vince suffer more than is expressly healthy, so I'm not even going to mention her contribution. Nah. Title taken from the novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. For Peanut.


The Left Hand of Darkness

At first he thinks it's indigestion. He's playing opposite Kate Winslet in The Truth About Nigel, a very Bridget Jones-esque romantic comedy as a character called Adrian Stadt, aka Nigel Jones, a gangly, but boyishly handsome movie star who goes under cover and gets a job at a bank in London to practice his accent for a movie, so of course the studio sends over a trainer/dietitian, who is both a sadist and flat out, batshit crazy, to starve him to death. He thinks it's pretty ironic that to be in a chick flick about body image he and Kate are both contractually obligated to drop twenty pounds, but he gave up trying to make sense out of Hollywood a long fucking time ago.

No liquor, no red meat, no fat, no carbs. He's pretty sure it isn't natural to live on fizzy water and ... grass (he and Turtle tried that when they first moved out to L.A., but that was at least grass, not wheat grass and Vince isn't so poor he can't even buy Ramen noodles anymore, so fuck that). The guy's got him eating one little chicken breast a day, more fiber than can seriously be considered healthy and guzzling gallons of this pretentious French mineral water in blue glass bottles that tickles his nose and costs a fucking fortune, so it's not like it's a huge fucking surprise that Vince has more gas than OPEC and heartburn that won't quit.

After the third time Vince totally accidentally burped in some TMZ camera guy's face on the street outside the set with Kate, Shauna screamed, “If you ever again so much as think of belching anywhere near a microphone when you are not being expressly paid to, so help me god, I will cut off your fucking balls. I get that you want your privacy while you fuck Leo's sloppy seconds or whatever, but you cannot afford to be so publicly fucking contemptuous of the media right now, Vincent! Jesus, do you want the studio to pull you? You have to be able to make nice with the media for this project, so for chrissake, just flip them off next time.” Fucking TMZ.

It would be totally funny, even with having to pee every ten seconds from the damn fizzy water, except for how about a month after the indigestion that's keeping him up at night starts, all those acidy little burps he has no control over turn into something a lot more inconvenient.

There's a thick, swirling knot of nausea tucked up underneath his rib cage all the fucking time now, which his sadistic “nutritionist” thinks is his body's natural way of purging the toxins of Vince's hedonistic lifestyle for which he proscribes salt and recommends an enema, and which his doctor seems to think is anxiety, for which she prescribes Ativan and recommends Tums. He's never really thought of himself as the panic attack type, but fuck if he doesn't feel anxious every time he walks into a restaurant, or sits down to breakfast, or hears the word tofu. Most of the time if he just lets out a belch or two (or ten - he's stopped even bothering to try to hold them in) he feels better, not good, but better, but every now and again, he'll open his mouth to burp and sure enough he'll burp alright, but two seconds later he'll be on his knees puking his guts out, sometimes three, four times a day.

After awhile he can mostly tell if he just needs to burp, or if he's going to hurl, but Johnny gives him these little disappointed looks every time Vince has to excuse himself to go throw up. Or pee, which, yeah, still doing constantly, too. Fizzy fucking water. If it was anyone else he'd call a spade a spade and write them off as an asshole, but because it's Johnny actually makes him feel bad. Never mind that if Johnny commiserates with him one more time about the stress of being a big time celebrity and the pressure to keep his girlish figure, Vince is aiming for Johnny's shoes next time he “decides” to “take the low road”. Turtle says manorexia is in this year and tells Vince to aim for the bowl better because he hates going all the way up to his room just to take a dump when there's a can on the main floor. Eric just says, “Shh, it's okay, baby,” while he holds back what little hair the stylists on Nigel have left him, wipes Vince's face with a wet washcloth, and brings Vince his pills.

The constant worried expression on E's face makes Vince want to slip him some Tums, and maybe a couple of the Ativan, too.

E makes an executive decision to pull Vince out of Nigel. As far as E's concerned if Vince's so stressed he can't go six hours without a fucking panic attack, he's too fucking stressed to do a movie. Vince can't bring himself to disagree, he's too fucking tired. After they get about two seconds of face time, Ari stops mid-rant about production grinding to a halt, and the damage this'll do to Vince's reputation, just sighs and sends them home. Vince hasn't been sleeping more than two hours at a time for months and he can't keep a damn thing down: he's exhausted and he knows it fucking shows. Eric fires the Marquee de Sade wannabe hack “nutritionist” personally.

Despite all the quality time Vince spends horking his guts out, he starts getting a gut, which makes all of no sense. Sure, he's always had a soft belly, it never seemed worth it to do all that work to get a six pack when he can get laid perfectly well without it, but he's lost the full twenty pounds and looks sickeningly thin everywhere else. But Vince has gotta figure it's because he started eating his ass off the second E brought honest to god real food back into the house (no caffeine, no dairy, no alcohol of any kind, because E listens to the doctor like she knows what the fuck is going on). He figures he might as well binge a little, so long as he's going to be purging all the god damn time anyway, and besides which he's fucking starving all the time. He's even starving while he's clutching the sides of the toilet twenty minutes later.

This only makes Turtle sing-song man-o-rex-i-a under his breath and Johnny cluck in disapproval every time Vince leaves the table. It makes Vince want to pop them both one every fucking time they do it. At some point the fizzy water grew on him, so he chugs a tapered blue glass bottle of the stuff and says he has to piss, which he does, but mostly it's a non-man-o-fucking-rexia related excuse to hit the head so he can throw some water on his face and breathe until he's able to shake it off. His fuse is admittedly a lot shorter than it used to be, but he's never going to have Johnny's anger management issues.

Eric climbs into bed with Vince at night and rubs soft, wide spirals into Vince's stomach. Vince moans at the contact every time. It's not even sexual, it's just that E gives the best fucking belly rubs in the world. But then, Eric's hands on him have always made him moan, one way or another. Even still, Vince starts getting shy about having Eric touch him when his pants stop fitting and he starts getting honest to god fucking stretch marks from how fast his gut is ballooning, not to mention that his tummy rumbles constantly and he belches like he's been chugging his dad's brand of extra-hoppy beer every time E's fingers press into the distended flesh.

E just laughs, says, “Nice push,” or, “Good out,” and kisses Vince's food baby. Sometimes he'll even join in and they'll go at it twenty minutes back and forth, like an old time belching contest back in Queens when they were kids, only now he wins sometimes. For such a little guy, E always did have superior fucking volume.

Sometimes, when Vince's feeling particularly pathetic, which is pretty much all the time lately, Eric gets out the shea butter hand cream from the bedside table and rubs it into Vince's belly, then onto Vince's dick. Which is nice, really fucking nice, actually, it's just that for the first time since puberty, Vince doesn't feel particularly sexy. He's starting to look like his dad, who had chicken legs and a twelve-pack-a-day beer gut erupting over the waistband of his pants all Vince's life. He's fat and gross and his hair is greasy and he's pretty sure that even his most rabid fans wouldn't fuck him right now.

The thing is, he's still fucking horny as all hell. When he's not eating, or puking, he's beating it like he hasn't since he was thirteen-years-old and so fucked up over E he was a little afraid he'd literally jerk his dick off. Even with the twenty-seven pounds and gaining Vince has put on on top of his pre-starvation diet weight in the last couple months (all gut, no ass, so none of his pants stay up without a serious belt, never mind trying to button any of his shirts), E acts like watching Vince rub one out is the hottest thing he's ever seen. When E walks in on Vince, he says, “Fuck,” and, “Jesus, Vince,” and groans, sucks Vince's dick until his mouth is full of Vince's cum, or fucks him or just lays down on the bed beside him and jerks off next to him, frantic and ready to go again the second Vince is.

Vince knows he's depressed. It's not like he doesn't know he's fucking depressed.

He's got no job and he's pretty sure Ari isn't even looking, but E still has to go to work every day, because Vince isn't his only client anymore and it's not like E can afford to just bail on them, no matter how much Vince might want him to. In the morning E kisses him and brushes his hair back from his eyes and tells him to get some sleep. Ever since fucking TMZ got footage of him fat, straining to get out of the passenger seat of E's Aston Martin, all Vince wants to do is stay in bed with the covers pulled over his head and wallow.

Besides, really, what the fuck has he got to get out of bed for? Exhausted as he is, it takes so fucking much effort just to get dressed and walking around makes his feet hurt and his ankles swell. For all E gives a world class belly rub, he's for shit at massaging feet, too soft and he quits whenever he hits a spot that makes Vince wince. Pussy.

So instead of getting up, Vince watches Oprah and Tyra and old Lifetime movies in bed and can't even bring himself to be horrified that he cries like a little bitch every fucking time the woman gets away and makes a new life for herself. Eats a dozen tasteless granola bars, or pudding cups, or whatever else E's left in the little fridge by the bed. Watches porn. Worships the porcelain god for a while when some random smell sets him off. Tries to sleep a little, fails, watches some more TV. Draws a Santa face on his belly and videos it jiggling like a bowl full of jelly while he tries to burp the tune to Jingle Bells before it can make him puke (he'll be ready for YouTube by Christmas). Eats Tums like candy. Whatever. He can entertain himself. It's not like he'd be off hanging with the boys anyway, what with them all having their own lives now.

And then one day, his stomach is fine. He's still a little gassy, sure, but fuck if he doesn't go the whole day without visiting the vomitorium, or even thinking about it. He's got a stuffy nose and his back hurts, but that throbbing knot of sick in his chest is gone and it doesn't come back. He celebrates by dragging his ass out to the kitchen to eat his weight in ice cream and jalapeños. It's like everything just tastes more interesting than it has in a long time and he wants to try it all. Together. He knows it's freakish, and probably brought on by the sheer boredom of his current life, but he spends hours mixing shit that really shouldn't go together and eating like a fat chick at a buffet. Which he sort of is, but whatever. He's totally not thinking about the manboobs he may or may not be growing.

After he's stuffed himself to capacity, he sinks back into the couch in the living room, spreads his legs wide to accommodate his uncomfortably full belly, and burps contentedly for the first time in months without acid or puke bubbling up the back of his throat. Vince pats the wide stretch of naked stomach hanging down under the tight edge of his t-shirt, over the top of the elastic waist of his sweats where they've ridden down out of self-preservation. Burps again, fat and happy. He watches the Laker's game with his hand down his pants, jerks off in the shower at halftime thinking about that time E blew him in the john at the Staples Center while Ari and the boys cheered the Lakers on to victory. By the time he lays himself out, naked and clean on the bed he's hard again and thinking about E fucking him when they got home that night.

“You look like you're feeling better, today,” E says as he walks in, pulling off his tie and leering in a way that's really fucking good for Vince's ego. “Guess we can skip the belly rub tonight then, huh?”

This makes Vince suddenly, violently simultaneously both unaccountably sad and irrationally angry. He's so unprepared for this, he actually fucking cries. He's been a moody bitch lately, and he's so, so fucking sick of it, but he can't stop.

E says, “Baby, no, hey,” kisses Vince's snotty face, and gets out the shea butter.

By the time Eric's done rubbing it into Vince's belly, Vince is just done. He's done crying and he's done caring and he's really fucking done being awake. He sniffles, “I was having such a good day,” into E's chest.

E kisses his head, pulls him in close and says, “I know, baby,” without stopping the comforting swirl of his hand on Vince's belly.

Vince wakes up in sweatpants he doesn't remember putting on from a nightmare he doesn't remember with E wrapped around him, hands holding Vince's ever-expanding gut lightly in his sleep. Vince falls back to sleep nice and easy like he hasn't in months.

E wakes him up yelling, “What the fucking fuck was that?! Holy shit!”

Vince yawns expansively and scratches his belly. The skin feels tight. He has no fucking clue what E's talking about or why he's making that face.

“Something in your stomach just fucking moved,” E says, slightly hysterical.

Vince looks at his stomach. Still massive, still hairy, still just hanging out the top of his sweats like always. It gurgles. He rubs it, burps, scratches his balls. He shrugs. “Indigestion?”

“No, man, something moved.” E is adamant. And freaking Vince out a little.

Vince grabs E's hand, presses it to his belly suggestively close to his morning wood and leers. “Maybe it wants you to rub it.”

Then, something weird happens. There's a sudden intense pressure coming from inside his gut right in the spot where E's hand is, and then it's gone. E yanks his hand away like Vince's stomach is on fire. Vince rubs the spot for a second, because, shit, it had kinda hurt, and then all of a sudden it's back and gone again. He jumps, yelling, “Holy shit! Something fucking moved in there!”

He feels a little queasy, but it's not the comforting, familiar nausea of the past however many months. When it happens again, he can almost see it ripple in the tight skin.

“That's not normal, right?” E asks, tentatively poking the spot where Vince ... rippled. “Tell me that's not normal.”

“I feel like I swallowed a live rabbit,” he says. And now that he thinks about it, he does. It totally feels like there is something alive and kicking down there.

“I told you not to eat your meat so rare,” Eric says, totally deadpan. Vince busts up laughing and can't seem to stop. E snickers twice and then falls into Vince laughing so hard the bed shakes.

It last right up until the rabbit kicks his kidneys, as if his tiny bladder needed help. He leaves the door open so he can hear E on the phone with the doctor while he pees. As he comes back into the bedroom he says, “What's the verdict?”

“Appointment at nine. Get dressed, you're leaving the fucking house today. Thank god.”

They spend five hours with Dr. Takamura, Vince's GP, and a somewhat shocking array of specialists of vague origin. If they'd have been smart, there'd be confidentiality agreements beyond the common bonds of professionalism, but instead they'd just been freaked out by the stomach rabbit and favored speed over mental agility. Doesn't matter, though. Nobody would fucking believe the diagnosis they give after he's been poked and prodded and covered in freezing cold goo, taped to electrodes, shoved in giant whirring tubes, touched in places he never wanted to be touched before and doesn't have the inclination to explore now in every possible embarrassing, violating, down right unpleasant way known to modern medicine.

“You're up the duff, Mr. Chase,” Dr. Takamura says finally. “I cannot explain it, but your blood tests and ultrasound confirm it.”

“I'm sorry,” Eric says in his most polite negotiation voice. “Can you say that one more time?”

“I'm pregnant,” Vince says, voice dull from too many neurons firing all at once. The minute she said it, he knew it was true. It was the implications that were shutting down his brain.

“Congratulations,” Dr. Takamura offers with a bashful little smile. “I know it's probably just as shocking for you as it was for me.”

“Is this some kind of practical joke?” E asks, looking bewildered and just on the edge of furious. “Because seriously, there's something alive in there. I felt it.”

“Ye-es,” the doctor says slowly. “It's a baby. Third trimester. Thirty-eight, Thirty-nine weeks along, somewhere in that range. You're due on December 24th, though we'll want to book you for a c-section on the 23rd due to short staffing on the holidays. You'll have her home by Christmas.”

“Seriously, Ashton, if you are behind this, I will kick your ass,” E yells. Nothing happens.

“So all the heartburn and the puking and indigestion, that was -,” Vince starts to say.

“Morning sickness,” Dr. Takamura says. “I imagine you've been having some mood swings as well, by now, in addition to the back pain, swollen ankles and gastrointestinal distress you reported on your intake form.

Vince bursts into tears. Again. But at least he has a good excuse this time. E looks like he wants to cry too, but instead he pulls Vince into a hug. Vince just goes with it; presses his face into the curves of Eric's throat and cries. It explains so much, and yet, fucking nothing at all because, “I'm a man. I have a penis, I can't be having a baby.”

Turns out he can be. He was talking to Eric, really, not the perfectly nice doctor standing three feet away and making his brain turn to pudding. He covers his ears and says, “LALALALALALA,” with his eyes closed while Dr. Takamura explains it all to E, who's had power of attorney over Vince for years for just this kind of fucked up situation, and from the look on E's face, he really fucking doesn't want to know. Ever. Ever. Ever.

The doc gives E a whole bunch of lists and little pieces of paper and samples and so much crap they have to send it home in a bag. Vince feels like he should be gasping for breath the second they walk out the door of the office, because for fuck's sake, how could a person be expected to breathe in that place.

“All I want to do is get blind drunk and fuck a girl. No, wait, two girls. You can watch, but I get to fuck both of them. And then maybe two more tomorrow.”

“You have totally earned the right,” Eric says. Vince always knew they were simpatico. “Except that you can't drink while you're pregnant, and I'd prefer it if you didn't fuck anyone else until after you have my baby. For New Years you can fuck as many girls as you need to.”

Well shit. When they were nineteen Eric had a girlfriend from the neighborhood named Gina Gambarro. Vince hadn't liked Gina any more than she'd liked him, but that hadn't bothered Vince, because he could always tell when E was serious about falling in love with a girl, and Gina was no competition. Only then Gina got pregnant and everything changed. Eric dropped out of community college, got a job and bought a ring. He even stopped sleeping with Vince. It was the only time Vince ever really thought Eric would chose someone over him. Gina got upset, got drunk, and drove her car into a pylon on the turnpike. Gina was fine, just a few scratches, but she lost the baby. E hadn't been fine for a long time, and nobody said boo to him about Gina again, like she never even existed.

Somehow knowing what's wrong manages to make everything worse. Eric turns into a nesting machine. He reschedules all of his clients, lavishes Vince with attention and affection and takes care of everything. Eric doesn't let Vince be uncomfortable for a moment longer than necessary, hands him Tums before he realizes he needs them, tucks blankets around him before he realizes he's got goosebumps, gets him water, feeds him whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Which is fucking all Vince has been wanting for months. It's just ... now that he knows what's wrong with him? It's so fucking petty, but he can't help it. He doesn't want it.

He hates the baby. At first it's just the betrayal of the mere existence of the baby living inside him like a parasite, but that is soon over shadowed by the bigger issue with the fucking baby. E loves the fucking baby about ten times more than he loves Vince. It's not like Vince hadn't known since they were kids that if E should some day spawn, Vince would lose his spot as the number one most important person in E's life, but it hadn't really seemed like it would be an issue for at least the past ten years, since Vince started vetoing all the girls who even looked like they might be baby hungry, or irresponsible with their birth control. Vince likes it that way.

Vince loses interest in taking care of himself. He's fairly sure Eric doesn't need Vince to actively participate for this whole little drama to play out, and Vince is fine with that. Eric says he'll take care of everything: sets up the nursery, buys all the baby crap Vince has no interest in picking out, wrangles the lawyers. Eric says Vince doesn't even have to worry about labor, since he'll be completely under when they cut they baby out of him. He'll just fall asleep one minute with a parasite in his stomach, then the next minute, he'll wake up parasite-free and E will have a baby. Everybody wins. Woo.

Vince goes three days without saying a word besides yes, no and whatever you think before Eric notices. And in point of fact, it's Turtle that notices, not E at all. E's been talking non-stop the whole time, but not to Vince, to Vince's belly. He's been kissing it and cooing at it and reading it the fucking paper, and for those brief moments when E is gone, he leaves headphones stuck to Vince's stomach. He thinks he may have to kill Eric if he refers to himself in the third person or calls himself Daddy one more goddamn time.

Daddy's gotta make a phone call now, but he'll be back soon. Daddy picked out the cutest little onesies for you today. Daddy loves you, yes he does, yes he does.

The shitty thing about it is no matter how Vince feels about all of this, he knows Eric's been waiting his whole life to play house with his very own wife and baby and since Vince has never really been quite willing to let Eric have a wife up to this point, there's just no way he can take this away from him now. Vince feels like an ass. He does. But the only options he has in his arsenal at this point are saying something nasty that will get Eric to leave him the fuck alone for a goddamn minute or crying. Sadly, the thought of anyone saying nasty things to Eric makes him want to cry, so he really just has the one.

It's nice, though, when he cries. It's the one time E focuses his whole attention on Vince. It doesn't change a thing for the baby if Vince cries or not, so when E wraps Vince up and kisses the top of Vince's head and wipes the tears out of Vince's eyes and the snot off his face and stops touching his fucking tummy and talking to the fucking baby for a hot second, it's nice. It makes Vince want to cry more. By the time Eric lets Turtle in to see him, Vince is just sitting there in a cocoon on the bed with tears streaming down his face and he's been like that for hours, broken only by intermittent bouts of sobbing and hiccuping.

“I don't know what to do,” Eric says frantically. Vince is detached enough that he can see Eric's tired and knows it's been a while since E slept. Or ate. Or fucking got up to pee. Vince is beyond the place where he can care, though, so he just watches the wild-eyed edges fraying right in front of him. “He won't stop crying.”

“What the fuck did you do to him this time? He was mostly functional last I saw him.”

“He's pregnant.”

“No shit? I got that when you called,” Turtle says. Vince would have thought it'd be harder to convince Turtle it wasn't a prank than it had E. If Vince didn't know it was true, he'd still think it was a prank. “You the lucky father? What am I saying, of course you are. Only you would be lucky enough to knock up Prince Charming here.”

“I always wanted to have a family,” E says, three parts excited, one part just a little bit broken. “Vince, though...”

“Not taking it well. I noticed. The crying was my first clue.”

“Do you think we should tell Johnny?”

“That you knocked up his perfect baby brother? That all those times we beat kids up for saying Vince was too fuckin' pretty to be a boy, they were right? That Vince was really supposed to be a fucking girl? You really think Johnny could handle any or all of these issues without having an aneurysm?”

“Or paying Gino to put a hit out on me. Fuck. No, you're right.”

The tears streaming down Vince's face had slowed nearly to a halt, but this was all just too fucking much. “E?” Vince says, leaking tears, but totally fucking done crying.

“Yeah, Vince?” E looks startled and a little relieved.

“Get the fuck out. Come collect your kid on Christmas Eve, and then I don't want to see you, or it, ever again. Do you understand me?”

“Jesus, Vin,” Turtle says.

In the end he knows Eric leaves because it's not good for the baby for Vince to get agitated, which his is. He also knows Eric plans to come back when Vince is calmer, because Eric can't resist the chance to play happy families when it's all on offer as a package deal like this. But he also knows that two out of three ain't bad and when push comes to shove, E'll take the kid over him every time.

It's not even selfish, the way Vince sees it. Vince knows E and he knows himself. E'll fall in love again, find a nice mommy for his kid and settle down, maybe have a few more. But Vince, he knows with complete certainty that he'll never get over this. It's not about not being ready to be a dad, or no notice, or whatever. It's about the core foundation of his identity being ripped out from under him and that kid, no matter how cute or endearing it turns out to be, will always be a reminder that there is something fundamentally fucking wrong with Vince, and he knows himself well enough to know he can't live with that. At least this way Vince knows the kid is in good hands.

He knows that E still comes by the house every day, but Vince refuses to see him. It's not like he could actually stop him, but Turtle keeps E out of the bedroom, and anyway, Vince has only heard E making a fuss about it loud enough for him to hear once.

Turtle doesn't talk to Vince's stomach or try to touch it or hold baby clothes up to it. Vince appreciates this. Turtle also doesn't hold him while he sleeps or call him baby or pet his hair while he cries or rub his belly at the end of the day. Which fucking sucks. It's not like he wants Turtle to do those things, anyway, but he fucking wants it like he wants key lime pie and brussel sprouts. Which is to say, a fucking lot, in as large a quantity and quick a fashion as possible. At least Turtle gives him that, even if he does make a face.

Mostly Turtle ignores it when he cries, or says, “Jesus fucking Christ, what are you watching,” and turns the fucking channel before the woman ever has a chance to take her power back or fall in love or save the inn. Turtle tried watching porn, but ever since he sent E away, porn makes Vince sob uncontrollably, basketball still makes Vince horny and he's not so fucking gone he's going to jerk off in front of Turtle, and just seeing commercials for Johnny's show makes them both feel guilty as hell, since Turtle told Johnny E got him in the divorce, so TV is pretty much out. They play a lot of Madden. Vince wins most games. He's pretty sure Turtle's letting him win. When he says this, Turtle says his hand eye coordination is for shit when he's not high, and since the smell of pot makes Vince hurl, Turtle's at an unfair disadvantage. Turtle promises after Vince's surgery he's going to kick Vince's ass in the rematch.

That's what Turtle calls it: Vince's surgery. Not after the baby comes, after your surgery. Vince is pretty sure that Turtle is pretending Vince has an obstructed bowel, the way he talks about everything from Vince's emotional outbursts to his continuing gastrointestinal symptoms, to his pants not fitting. Vince is cool with that and wishes to god he could block out all the knowledge of his impending fucking motherhood, too.

Vince is lonely at night. He fished one of Eric's t-shirts out of the dirty laundry, the really soft one that E likes to wear to bed, and hid it inside his pillowcase so Turtle won't see. He pulls it out after Turtle goes to bed and smooths it out on the bed next to him. Sometimes he shoves a pillow inside it and lays his head on it over the logo on the chest. Sometimes spritzes it with E's cologne from the bathroom and just smells it.

He's still not sleeping much, though, and there's only so much cuddling a piece of cloth a person can do, so he runs his lines. Sure, production on Nigel is shut down, and it's not like Vince even really thinks they'd take him back if it started up again, either. It's just. Well. He doesn't fucking read that much, besides whatever scripts E forces him to read, and he can only read the articles in last month's Sports Illustrated so many times.

It's not like he's reading to E's fucking baby. So he happens to be reading aloud. He's running his fucking lines. And Kate's. You never know when a project will get picked back up again, for fuck's sake, and if, after his surgery, they want him to come back, he wants to be ready.

He talks to Johnny on the phone once. Johnny says, “You really amicable about this split, Vin? I mean, I know you two were never exclusive, or whatever, but you really cool with him ditching your surgery to go pick up some kid whose mom he knocked up nine months ago and didn't even bother to tell him? Because I will kick his ass, if you want me to. I hear hernia surgery fucking hurts, man.”

Fuck, Eric. Always protecting him. “No, Johnny, it's fine. You know Eric's always wanted to be a dad. It's not his fault the kid had the bad luck to have one parent who doesn't want it.”

“Yeah, yeah, you're right. Wouldn't be our E if he had it in him to be a deadbeat like Pops. Gotta tell you, though, man, he looks like shit. I don't think he's eating and his eyes are all red all the time. Pussy's probably been crying about how much he misses you. Maybe he'll change his mind about breaking up with you once he gets used to being a dad.”

“Yeah, maybe, Johnny,” Vince says real quiet. “Hey, I gotta go.”

Vince cries so hard he pukes, even though his morning sickness has mostly gone away by now. He doesn't change his mind, though.

He doesn't change his mind about anything right up until his ass is hanging out the back of his gown and they're sticking an IV in his hand. Which is when he grabs the front of Turtle's shirt and snarls, “Get on the phone right fucking now and tell E that if he isn't here in ten fucking minutes I'm going to cut off his dick!”

It takes four. When E walks in, Johnny says, “E! It's a Christmas miracle! I thought you had that thing today.”

Eric says, “I was just down in the parking lot when Turtle called. My thing got pulled back to tomorrow at the last minute.”

Vince just grabs E by the back of the head, pulls him down and kisses him viciously. Then he presses their foreheads together, runs his fingers through the hair at the nape of E's neck and says, “I didn't change my mind,” before E can get any ideas. “I just needed to see you. Before. I haven't changed my mind about after.”

“Okay.” E kisses him again. His eyes look suspiciously wet and his voice warbles a little when he says, “Whatever you need. Always. Whatever you need, baby.”

And then they wheel him back.

When he wakes up he feels like he has to burp, or maybe fart, but can't. The nurse tells him that's just air that got trapped inside during the procedure, nothing's wrong, and it'll work itself out in a few days, but until then he should only be mildly uncomfortable. There's nothing mild about it, but once the anesthesia wears off, he's more concerned with how fucking bad his groin hurts than the fact that he feels a lot more than mildly uncomfortably fucking gassy.

Before the surgery, he'd had nightmares that he'd have a big gash across his stomach like his mother and never be able to take off his shirt on screen again. Not so. The doctor explains that most of the time they do what's called a bikini cut these days. Sure enough, Vince's been shaved from just below his nipples to the top of his thighs and there's bandages a whole fucking lot closer to his dick than he ever wanted to see in life. Never the less, they send him home with a box of little sticky strips to keep him from scarring and tell him to rub the incision with vitamin E every day.

It really fucking hurts to move the first six days, but Turtle makes him get up and walk, anyway. Apparently E threatened Turtle's dick if he didn't make Vince follow all the doctor's orders to the letter. Vince'd think it's sweet, except for how it hurts so much he's surprised he's not pissing blood afterwards. But then, he feels like that when he tries to sit up on his own, too. The drugs they gave him are for shit, even though Turtle keeps telling him they gave him the good stuff. He still smokes Vince out until he can't remember his own name, though.

He doesn't fuck anybody on New Years. It hurts just thinking about getting hard.

The week after New Years, he fucks nine girls in three days. He's still got a gut, though nothing like before, and the cream the doc gave him for the stretch marks hasn't really kicked in yet, but finds that it makes zero difference in getting himself laid. He feels better from the surgery and his stitches are out and apparently chicks really do dig scars.

Despite the clear evidence that he doesn't actually need to lose weight to get laid, he does anyway. He goes to the gym twice a day and lives on protein shakes and vitamins, though that has more to do with a lack of any real appetite to speak of, until he's two pounds less than his contractual weight for Nigel, because he can't fucking stand to look at himself and think baby weight. He just needs it to be over, and it can't be over when he sees the evidence written on his body every time he looks in a mirror or sees his picture in the papers.

Some asshole pap got pictures of him looking like a whale going into the hospital and there's been a flurry of speculation that he had gastric bypass or lipo or something. He tells Shauna what he tells everyone else: that he'd put on weight due to his condition, but once he'd had the surgery to correct it, the pounds just fell right off him. He isn't even lying. He can never remember the cover story, though, so he always calls it his condition, which is totally what his mother called it when his sister got knocked up her junior year of high school. It's like his own private joke.

But whatever else the gossip rags say about him, they say he looks good now. It's not like he doesn't know he does, either. He stands in front of the full length mirror at home and looks at himself naked every morning before he gets in the shower, just to reassure himself. And then sometimes he gets a little fucked in the head, drinks as much fizzy water as he possibly can without exploding, takes a deep breath, looks at himself in the mirror with his stomach pushed out as far as it will go and jerks off rubbing his belly, remembering E's hands on him. But really, most of the time, he's used to the way his body looks now, and barely remembers how he looked before.

He still fucking cries all the time, though. Thinking about how much he cries makes him cry. He feels more alone than he's felt in his entire life. The only person he talks to is Johnny since Turtle said that thing about for fucks sake, wasn't he supposed to stop crying after his surgery, and moved out. In with Jamie. Whatever.

The point is that Vince is still living on his own with a kitchen full of sharp knives, and he's never lived alone. He's barely stayed in a hotel alone, and really, that lasted about three days before he fucking begged E to take the train up to Toronto from the city when Vince was still new in the business and couldn't afford to bring the guys with him. He'd fucking beg to move in with Johnny, but he can hardly stand to talk to Johnny when he can hang up on him, because all Johnny fucking wants to talk about is how cute E's fucking baby is.

He thinks about calling Brooke Shields to tell her he's totally on her side and that Tom Cruise is a dick, because Vince's done nothing but fucking exercise and take vitamins and he still thought about killing himself this morning. He calls Dr. Takamura and gets a prescription for Prozac instead. After Johnny and the inconvenient erection, Brooke probably doesn't want to talk to him, anyway.

It helps.

He stops worrying about himself around knives and starts hanging out with Turtle again. Turtle doesn't fucking talk about E, ever. Which is pretty much why he kept Turtle in the divorce in the first place. He knows that Turtle talks to E, but only because Johnny talks about E in front of Turtle and Turtle never looks surprised. Johnny talks about E constantly, though, not just when Turtle's around. He makes oh-so-casual reference to how E looks like shit without him, or how much E misses Vince, or even worse, how fucking cute E's kid is way too fucking hopefully for the Prozac to do a damn thing about the stabbing chest pains it gives Vince. Turtle pulls Johnny aside one day after Vince looks at his steak knife a little too long. After that, Johnny only does it when he forgets. Vince finds himself hoping for one of Johnny's forgetful days.

Despite E following to the fucking letter what Vince told him he wanted, E doesn't do anything the way Vince thought. For one thing, he stays in L.A., where Vince could just run into him whenever he goes out. For some reason, he was sure Eric would go back to New York and live with his mother, at least for a little while. Vince kinda wants to go home and live with his mother, and he doesn't even have to change diapers. But mostly it's because Vince sort of thought, which he gets is his ego talking, that E was in the business because Vince asked him to, and that without him, he'd move on to something else. Maybe go back to school. It's not like E needs the money anymore, not after Vince told Marvin to put half his savings in an account for E in a fit of conscience at New Year (his New Year's resolution was be a man). Admittedly, he's not getting paid as much as some people these days, but even two million lasts a long time when you're living with your mother.

E keeps his job, though, even gets a few high profile clients thanks to fucking Ari, the fucking traitor. Apparently the two of them bonded over fatherhood and now they're best fucking pals all of a sudden. Ari Gold, Ari fucking Gold, who hates E, who has always hated E, was supposed to be on Vince's fucking side, but instead is apparently the one who taught E to change a fucking diaper. Vince mostly stops talking to Ari when he find that out, but mostly it's because Ari can't go five fucking minutes without telling Vince amusing fucking anecdotes about Eric's fucking kid.

Eric's fucking daughter. Rita. Vince can't believe he's surprised by that, but the last time he'd talked to his mother, he'd had to hang up on her because he didn't want her to know he started crying when she called herself Grandma Rita and cooed at what he is pretty fucking sure had to be his kid. Johnny says she cried at the christening. Vince thinks it's possible Eric sent him an invitation, but it's been a really fucking long time since he looked at his own mail, and he doesn't want to ask Turtle, in case E really didn't. It's not like he would have gone. He still feels a little teary whenever he thinks about it at how fucking pleased Johnny is to be the Godfather, but it's not like he thinks that's because the Prozac has just decided to stop working selectively.

Vince decides he needs to get the fuck out of the house. Possibly go back to work. He hasn't gotten a new manager. Actually, he never actually fired E, which fine, he doesn't want another manager. If he can't have E, he doesn't want anybody else. He doesn't want to see how happy E is off being a daddy and fine without Vince, either, but still.

He calls Ari and tells him he's ready to work. He also tells him he doesn't want to talk about Eric. For once in his goddamn life, Ari listens. He also calls Vince back two days later and tells him The Truth About Nigel's back on, if he still wants it. Apparently the director couldn't see anyone but him in the part, and neither could Kate. Vince wants it. Production is back up and running in two weeks, and done filming again in six. When Vince gets his check, he has Marvin set up a trust for Eric's daughter and send Eric his ten percent.

It's not like he thinks Eric needs the money - according to Marvin, E hasn't touched the account he set up in January - or that Eric even wants the money. Actually, he's a little afraid E's going to be pissed, maybe come to his house and scream that he doesn't need Vince's money and throw it in Vince's face. The prospect of getting a reaction from E isn't why he's doing it, either. It's just, it's E's fucking money. E found the script, E found the director, and E watched BBC America with him twelve hours a day for two weeks until he got the accent right. And it's not like Vince has to explain himself to anyone if he wants to set money aside for his own fucking daughter. Even if she wasn't his, she's Eric's, which would have made her family anyway.

Vince hasn't talked to Eric since before Christmas, which fucking kills him. Even if E had left him for a 19-year-old twink at the height of Vince's bloated, miserable existence, when he was fucking puking his guts out and still the size of a house and told him it was because he was fat, he wouldn't have gone this long without talking to him. It hurts more than a little that E hasn't even tried to get Vince to change his mind. Vince hasn't changed his mind, but it still fucking hurts.

Which is the only thing he can think of to explain why he says, “ It's fine. I don't want you to be late. You can drop me off after you pick her up,” the day Johnny says, “Oh, shit. I'm sorry man, I forgot we were hanging out today and I promised E I'd pick the kid up from daycare. You want me to drop you somewhere? There's no way I can get you all the way back to your place and get back before the place closes, but maybe you can get grab a cab from downtown?”

Johnny's a little skeptical, but just says, “You sure, baby bro?”

And then when Vince compounds his stupidity and says sure, he's sure, Johnny smiles like a fucking loon and tells Vince stories about Rita the whole way there like the fucking floodgates have opened. By the time they get there Vince feels a little shocky, so he just sort of blindly follows behind Johnny like he can't think for himself, which, really at that point, maybe not. He snaps the fuck out of it ten seconds after they walk in the door of the day care, the second they get to the window of the nursery.

He doesn't even wait long enough for the attendant to move in the direction of one kid over another, but it doesn't matter. Nobody who's ever seen Vince's baby pictures, even once, would have trouble picking that kid out of a line up. He's literally fucking run out of there and down the street before he even notices he's made the decision. When he does notice, he keeps going, past when his side starts to feel like it's being stabbed, past when his lungs start burning, and right on through until he's puking all over himself and crumpling to the ground.

He sits there on the sidewalk for half an hour before he can get back up. He wouldn't get up at all but it's dark and when he calls a cab, they hang up on him because when he looks around, he has no fucking clue where he is. He doesn't even know what city for sure. There's cute little houses with well manicured lawns and garden gnomes everywhere he looks, and he can't even tell the difference between the gnomes, let alone the houses. If he wasn't already freaked out, that would do it. He walks six blocks before he runs into a 7-Eleven and has the kid behind the counter talk to the cab company for him.

When the cab gets there, Vince almost tells the drive to take him to a club. He wants to get trashed and fuck a dozen girls almost as much as he want to have told Johnny to leave him downtown that afternoon. He doesn't, though. For one thing, he's not supposed to drink with his medication, and it's not like he's really so sure of himself that he wants to fuck with his antidepressants not working. He can feel the press of hopeless despair pressing at him, kept at bay by only the thinnest of barriers, and he always was a maudlin fucking drunk when he's been anything less than high on life, or alternately just high. For another, he hates going out by himself. Mostly, though, it's neither of those things, or even the puke he couldn't get off his shirt in the sink at the Sev. The thought of getting drunk and fucking some random girl just to make himself feel like a man when he has a family he could fucking be with right now makes him want to punch something. Just because he didn't want to be some kid's mother doesn't mean he wants to turn into his father.

So he goes home. He feels pretty fucking mature. And sad. Lonely. But mostly, mature. It's not a first, but it's been a while.

Just as the cab pulls up to the front of his house, his phone rings. Turtle says, “You fucking pussy. Are you lying in a gutter drunk somewhere, or trying to slit your wrists with kitchen utensils?”

“Jesus Christ, Turtle. What the fuck?”

“Yes, or fucking no, Vin? I don't have all night.”

“No, asshole, thanks for checking on me, though.”

“Drama said you pussied out when you saw Rita and ran off into suburbia. I fucking told him you could take care of yourself, but he's all freaked out, and won't fucking shut up about it, so if you're not in imminent danger of harming yourself or others, I've gotta go stop E from sticking his head in the oven or jumping off a bridge.”

“The fuck, Turtle?! What's wrong with E?”

“What do you think is wrong with him, Vin? He's worried.”

“Well, tell him I'm fine. He doesn't have to worry about me.”

Turtle snorts. “Yeah, I'm sure that'll cut it. Whatever. Have a nice night.”

Vince can hear Rita screaming in the background. “Let me talk to him.”

“Ha. I think fucking not. You'll just upset him more, and at this point, he can't take any fucking more.”

“If you just let me tell him I'm fine he won't have anything to be upset about.”

“You stupid, selfish son of a-” Turtle cuts himself and exhales loudly. “The guy thinks he ruined your fucking life. Two fucking things the guy has ever been upset about in his whole life: his stupid fucking propensity to fall in love and thinking it's his job to make you happy, so, really just the one thing. So you aren't lying dead in a gutter somewhere? Good for fucking you.

“E's still got a broken fucking heart, practically fucking kills himself everyday keeping a really fucking stupid promise to you to make you happy, and you aren't fucking happy. E's barely fucking holding it together since Christmas because I tell him every day you just need a little more time, but after the stunt you pulled today, he's basically given up you're ever gonna come around. He's drunk as fuck, Rita won't stop crying and Drama, the fucker, is just working both of them up into a frenzy worrying about your punk ass. And much as I love you, Vin, I am just about fucking done covering for you.”

“I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

“About god damn time. You know where E lives?”

“Yeah.” Yes. Of course he knows where E lives. There hasn't been a day since Eric moved in next door when they were six years old that Vince hasn't known where E lives. E could go into the witness protection program and Vince would fucking know where E lives within 24 hours. Vince has known Eric's address and how to get there since Eric made the offer on the house, two weeks before the place actually belonged to E. It's not like Johnny had really even been trying to keep it from him when Vince weaseled it out of him.

So, just because Vince's never actually physically been to Eric's house before, that doesn't mean he wouldn't know it in the middle of a row of identical houses. Which it is. Vince has watched it's roof sometimes hours at a time on Google Earth, every day since the real estate lady took down the photos and the virtual tour from her website. Vince slips the cabbie an extra hundred to get him there in fifteen minutes, a full seven minutes faster than mapquest has ever told Vince he could get there.

Vince's mouth is dry and his hands are sweaty when he walks to the door. He can hear the baby crying inside. He rubs his hands on the tops of his thighs a few times before he knocks. For a short guy, Turtle is remarkably hard to shove past.

“You gonna pussy out again? Because nobody needs that here tonight.”

“Swear to god, Turtle, if you don't let me see E-”

“Kid first. I gotta know you can take it, before I let you up to see him. I let you go up there and you two make up for the night and you freak out in the morning when the baby needs feeding and bail, it'll be like starting all over again with this mess. You need to prove to me you can man up, first.”

He didn't come for the kid. Rita. He came for E. But it's not like he didn't know the two of them would be a package deal, even before she was born. “I hear she's pretty.”

“Yeah, yeah, your fucking genetics, what else was she gonna be? Go on back. Johnny's got her in the bedroom on the left.”

Rita's face is red and puckered, covered in tears. She's screaming and wriggling like she's very fucking unhappy. Before Vince has a chance to say anything, Johnny says, “I don't know what else to do. I fed her, I burped her. I changed her diaper.”

“Let me try,” Vince says. It's not like he's some kind of baby expert or anything, but she is E's daughter, and Vince has been calming E down for decades. Plus, she is a girl, right? Girls love him.

Johnny hands Rita over like she's a ticking time bomb. A screaming, red-faced, delicate time bomb. She's heavier than she looks, at first, but then she stops kicking her little legs and straining her little back and sinks into his chest and feels much lighter. She's still making little sobbing sounds, but she's curling one little fist into his hair and one into his shirt. Vince pets her wild, curly black hair and pats her back and makes the little shushing sounds he makes to get E to fall back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night.

“Well would you look at that,” Johnny says ten seconds later, when Rita stops crying with a hiccup and snuggles down even deeper into Vince's chest. “Guess she just needed her daddy.”

Vince startles a little at that. No way would E tell Johnny that, Godfather or not. “What are you talking about, Johnny? E's Rita's daddy.”

“Sure, in all the important ways, E's this little baby's daddy. He gets up with her in the middle of the night, changes her diapers, feeds her every morning. E certainly loves her like she's his daughter. And man, your lawyers did a bang up job showing she's his on paper. But Vince, there ain't one damn person in his family or ours who don't know just from looking that Rita's your kid. Ma fucking cried when she saw her.”

“Johnny-”

“Don't worry about it, little bro. I get it. You freaked out at first, but I always knew you wouldn't let E take care of your responsibilities forever. I had faith. Besides, it's not like you abandoned her. There isn't a damn person on the face of the Earth who loves your kid more than E, and there is nothing he wouldn't do for her. I mean, you could have put her up for adoption, right? But instead, you kept her close to home where you could always get to her. That's how I knew you'd do the right thing once you had your head out of your ass.”

“You can't tell anybody, Johnny.” Vince feels a little desperate for the first time since Turtle let him in the front door. “This is important. You gotta let her be E's kid.”

Johnny snorts. “Like E could make a baby this pretty. That's grade A Chase breeding right there.”

Vince looks at Johnny, stern, pleading.

“You gonna do right by her?”

Rita twitches in her sleep against Vince's chest. She is pretty, when her face isn't all red, so tiny and fragile. Johnny may only be able to see her dark curls, her dark lashes, the bow of her mouth, but Vince can see E in the freckles dusting her pink cheeks, the shape of her nose, the blue of her eyes. Vince hitches her up to kiss her forehead. “Promise.”

“No one will ever hear it from me.”

“Thanks, Johnny.”

“No problem, bro. I'm her Godfather. Part of my job to look out for her.”

“I'm sorry I didn't come to the christening,” Vince says, smoothing down Rita's bangs.

“Yeah, well. E didn't invite a lot of people. Besides E and Rita, it was just E's mom, Ma and Turtle and his mom. I guess he wanted a little privacy when he named her.”

“Why would anyone besides Ma care that he named her Rita?”

It's E's voice, not Johnny's that Vince hears behind him, over by the door. “Her name's Rita Chase Murphy.”

Oh. “E.” It's all he can say. Johnny slips out the door with a grin and a thumbs up and latches it shut behind him. “You didn't have to do that, man.”

“Yeah, I did, but I didn't do it for you.” E looks like he might want to take Rita for a second, but just leans in and kisses her on the top of her head. “All the women in my family are named that way.”

“All the women in your family are named after their father's ex-gay lovers?”

“Jesus, Vince.” E hasn't moved back, still standing close enough to touch Rita, to take her if Vince doesn't want her. He smells like liquor, but he looks pretty sober. A little rough, but fine. “Don't make me say it, okay?”

“Say what?” How bad could it be?

“All the women in my family are named after their maternal grandmother's Christian name and their mother's maiden name, okay.”

“I'm not her mother, E.” Vince says it soft, not like a rebuke, more like a reflex. He's not motherhood material. Fatherhood, though. He could maybe be a daddy.

“Yeah, well, you're all the mother she's ever gonna have.” E says it like a slap in the face, and Vince can hear hurt and bitterness on the edges that should never belong to E.

“You could find a girl, get married. Kick out another few kids. Be happy.” Vince would let him. It would rip his fucking heart out, but if it would make E happy, he'd be best fucking man at the wedding.

E shakes his head, angry, voice low in what Vince can only assume is an attempt not to wake the baby. “There's never going to be another girl for me besides Rita. I don't need a wife or three extra kids running around to be happy.”

“Yeah?” Vince feels a little surge of ... something. Hope, maybe. “What do you need to be happy?”

“Her.” E says it quietly, looking at the baby in Vince's arms, overwhelming affection written across his face. Then he looks up and meets Vince's eyes, determined. “You. Our family. All I ever needed to be happy.”

“I don't want to be like my dad, E.” It's a non-sequitur, except for how it's not. Vince can't stay and be the guy he's afraid he'll turn into if he doesn't say it.

“You are nothing like your dad. Your dad was a miserable drunk who didn't care about anybody, not even himself.”

“He stepped out on Ma a lot and he abandoned us when we needed him.” He doesn't have to say, just like I did.

“So move in with us, and don't step out on me.” The intensity in Eric's eyes belies the casual way he says it.

“No more girls?” Vince has never really thought about girls as cheating, except for maybe Mandy, and they weren't; that was never their arrangement. Still, if they're gonna do this, that's gotta be a condition. E's always loved to fall in love, and Vince isn't willing to chance that E's wrong about Rita being the girl for him. “For you, either, I mean? Just us?”

“No more girls, Vince. Just us.”

When they kiss, Rita gurgles in her sleep, pressed safe between their chests. Eric takes her from him, plops her down in her crib, flicks on what looks like a pink and white walky-talky and turns off the light as they shut the door behind them.

“She'll sleep the whole night after she cried like that,” E says, mischief thick in his voice.

They make love, desperate and hard, soft and tender, quick and slow. The sad truth of Vince's life is that he's been in love with Eric Murphy as long as he can remember, but he's never been quite sure that E wouldn't freak out if he really knew how Vince felt. It's not that he doesn't know E loves him, too. E would do anything for him, and put up with a lot of shit besides, but at the same time that's never stopped E from falling in love with a dozen assorted women. The only girl Vince ever felt about a fraction of the way he feels about E was Mandy, and Eric flat out told him he was freaking him out with how obsessive he was about that. Still, that night, Vince thinks maybe E's been playing it cool with him, too.

“I love you,” Vince tells E, desperately earnest, willing E to get the depth of what he's trying to say. “I never, I never loved anybody but you.”

“I know,” Eric says, mouth mashed against Vince's throat, panting.

“No, I mean-” Vince breaks off. He can't think with E touching him. “I like sex.”

“No shit,” E laughs and bites Vince on the collar bone. “I never noticed that about you before.”

“Fuck. No, I mean. Fuck. It's a nice way to spend an afternoon.”

“Okay, but I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna last that long.”

“It's a nice way to spend an afternoon, but it was never anything more than that. A nice time. Except with you.”

“You've had a lot of nice afternoons for a guy who doesn't care that much.”

“Yeah, well, you've had a lot of girlfriends for a guy who's been sticking his dick up my ass since the tenth grade.”

“Oh,” E says, then smiles so bright it almost blinds Vince. “You fucking love me.”

“Yeah,” Vince says, soft.

“I love you, too, moron. You think I couldn't have made it work with any of those girls?”

“Not with me cockblocking your ass like a part-time job for the last fifteen years, but if I let you...” Vince shudders. E'd have six kids who call him Uncle Vince by now.

“If you let me, Angie Fiorelli in the eighth grade would have been my last girlfriend.”

Vince squishes up his face in disgust for a second. “You wanted to marry Angie Fiorelli? Angie with the big glasses and the braces who gave you mono the first time you kissed her and smelled like cheese?”

“Right, asshole. That's what I mean. Jesus. Like you don't know I've been panting after your ass like some kind of pathetic, love sick puppy since we were thirteen.”

Actually, he didn't know that. Vince was chubby when he was 13. Not fat, exactly, but he had a definite puppy fat thing going on in junior high. Besides, it was Vince's idea the first time, and as far as Vince knows, only worked at all because for all that E is cool about sex now, he was a horny little fucker at 15. Everybody has wanted to fuck Vince since his growth spurt at 14, even lesbians want to fuck Vince. So, really, it hadn't been that big of a surprise to Vince that Eric went with it when he offered to let E fuck him instead when E failed to lose his virginity with Mary MacIntyre (who was never good enough for E, anyway, and only going out with him because she wanted to fuck Vince). It had totally made sense at the time.

Vince falls asleep happy for the first time in months. He wakes up with E whimpering and clutching him in his sleep. Vince makes shushing noises, runs his hands up and down E's back a few times and kisses his temple. E relaxes against Vince's chest and drops back into silent sleep. Vince stays awake holding him until the sun comes up just listening to him breathe.

Vince legally adopts Rita a week after he and E get married in Connecticut. Her first word is daddy. Vince cries. She's beautiful and wicked smart and completely embarrassed by her famous father all through puberty, except when she's making fun of his accent watching The Truth About Nigel on DVD, which she finds hilarious. He cries again while he and Eric walk her down the aisle together when she marries a very average looking accountant who thinks she hung the moon. She owns and manages a string of Italian restaurants with reasonably priced food in the Valley. Her husband does the books.

Two years after she gets married, Rita starts burping like a trucker and a month later she can't seem to keep anything down. Vince passes out in the delivery room when the baby crowns, while Eric is out in the hall trying to keep her husband from hyperventilating. By her third kid, Vince is holding the video camera while her husband holds her hand. Sometimes she smiles and chides Vince and Eric for spoiling their five (red-headed) grandkids, but Vince doesn't think she really means it. She never asks who her mother is, and Vince never volunteers anything beyond the fact that, at first, her mother thought she was indigestion.

Rita just laughs and says, “Oh, Daddy!”