picture, like, Margaret Atwood meets Chilly Beach meets Rocky Horror
Title: Our Lady of the Prairies
Pairing: Vince/Eric from Entourage
Rating: R (language, themes)
Spoilers: Assumes past season four
Word Count: 3927
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the following fictional characters, nor am I affiliated with any real persons mentioned. No profit is being made from this whatsoever.
Summary: There are over three hundred reasons Vince shouldn’t do this movie. Eric’s opinion isn’t one of them.
<>
Vince wants to play a woman in Atom Egoyan’s next film.
Ari simultaneously comes up with three hundred and twenty-nine objections, and they all try to gush out of his mouth at the same time. He sputters and chokes for a good minute, and Eric’s really hoping he won’t have to break out the Heimlich manoeuvre here.
“You-what-this-Canadian-” Ari, thank god, finally takes a breath and manages to say, “Vince is an American, E.”
“I know; we grew up together, remember?”
“Maybe you still haven’t caught on to how the industry works. Lemme explain it to you. The dozen or so people who actually have any talent come down from Canada and thank their fucking Inuit gods for a chance to break into the American market, okay? No one from the US of A goes up to Canada hoping to tap into the tipi village audience. It’s just not natural. It’s like swimming against the current, E. Vince is trying to swim upstream, and he is not a fucking salmon.”
Eric laughs in his face. “What the fuck are you talking about, Ari?”
“I’m talking about the fact that this’ll get a two-theatre release and all ten people in Tukto-fucking-yaktuk will see it, and it’ll be considered a gigantic fucking megahit in Canada, and Vince’ll come away maybe twenty dollars richer. If he doesn’t have to spend the twenty on snowshoes.”
Eric rolls his eyes. Ari’s such a drama queen. “Relax, we know it won’t be a gold mine. You don’t make art films to get rich, Ari. It’ll look good for his versatility.”
Ari picks up a fresh script from his desk. “Well why doesn’t he try M. Night’s new movie? He’s never done a horror flick before. He’s never played a man from another dimension before. How’s that for motherfucking versatility?”
“We don’t want another blockbuster,” Eric explains.
Ari wonders if it’s possible to papercut him to death with M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller. Or maybe he’ll slit his own wrists. Hell, maybe he’ll make it a murder-suicide and Lloyd can explain to the police that he lost his fucking WILL TO LIVE because the people who pay him to make them superstars keep cockblocking him from making them fucking superstars.
“Look, the deal is one for you, one for Vince, right? Aquaman fucking, like, 59 made you a pile of dough. Now Vince wants to do one for himself.”
“First of all,” Ari starts, sticking his finger in Eric’s face, “it was only the fourth one, and it was only made because the third one’s story was too long so we had to split it in half. You can’t leave people hanging in the middle of the action, it gives them blue balls. Secondly, I seem to recall you making a cool two mil off it, so don’t act like it was all for me.”
Eric refuses to back down and resists the urge to snap Ari’s fucking finger off. “Yeah, and we have money now, so what’s wrong with letting him do a passion project? All our bills are paid.”
“E,” Ari pleads, and he’s obviously progressed past the anger stage and heading into bargaining, “what if we find a different indie film for him? Something European, with lots of method acting and depressing background music?”
It’s kind of embarrassing, how desperate Ari sounds, so Eric walks back over to the couch and sits down. “Sorry Ari, but he’s got his heart set on this one.”
“Jesus, E, why does he have to play a woman?”
“There’s only one character in the story-”
“Of course, it’s Atom fucking Egoyan. I bet she has no name and dies at the end,” Ari mutters.
E doesn’t acknowledge the interruption, because he’s not exactly wrong, “-and Vince really loves it. What’s the problem? Didn’t you once get all up in my face about Hilary Swank having no dick and getting an Oscar for pretending she did? ‘That’s what actors do, E, they pretend.’” He tightens his voice to deliver the last sentence and does a good enough impression that Ari can guess how much they make fun of him at home.
“Fuck you, that part was for a gender-confused character. This part is for AN ACTUAL WOMAN.”
Eric shrugs. “So he’ll pretend.”
“Why the fuck would they choose him when they can pick somebody with XX chromosomes?”
“‘Cause he’s good? I don’t know, their casting agent loved his audition.”
“Wait, he auditioned?!” Ari’s face flushes, then goes pale, then flushes again into an almost purple colour. “FUCKING CHRIST, I, what is wrong with you?! Our boy Vinnie Chase doesn’t fucking audition for no-budget Canadian films, they audition for him.”
Eric’s nearing his daily quota of bullshit he can take from Ari, and he’s starting to get bored of repeating himself. “Look, he wants to do the damn movie, so he’s gonna do the damn movie. Call Egoyan’s people if you wanna be a part of it, or fuck off.” He gets up to leave.
“Egoyan’s people probably don’t have phones; they probably use telegrams, or carrier pigeons,” Ari answers weakly, slumping into his desk.
“Whatever,” Eric snorts, rolling his eyes. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Hey Eric,” Ari calls as he’s opening the door. “Maybe if you take Vince’s cock out of your ass once in a while, you’d get to sit down and think shit over instead of just letting him do whatever he wants.”
Eric flips him off on his way out.
<> <> <>
Vince is all blinding white smiles when Eric comes back from Ari’s office. “So, how’d it go?” he asks, like he can’t tell from the look on Eric’s face.
“He hates it. Obviously.” It’s too early to be drinking, but Eric wants a beer and Vince hands one to him before he even has to ask. Eric totally doesn’t accidentally-on-purpose brush Vince’s fingers with his when he takes the bottle, because that would be girly.
“God, you should’ve heard him being all ‘Vinnie is too good for Canada, Canada should be auditioning for Vince’s movies, not the other way around’.” Eric’s doing his Ari voice again. It’s almost disturbing how good he’s getting at it. “Bitch, bitch, bitch.” He groans at the thought of a perfectly good morning gone to waste.
“You know I really want to do this movie, right?” Vince asks, leaning across the kitchen island and ducking his head so he can look up through his eyelashes at E.
Eric maybe swallows his next pull of beer with a louder gulp than normal. “Of course.”
“So what’d you say to him?”
“I told him to shut the fuck up and call Atom Egoyan like we want him to,” he tells Vince in a manly way.
Vince’s fluorescent grin brightens even more. “That’s my boy!” he crows, reaching over to fling an arm around Eric’s shoulders.
Eric is decidedly not blushing with pleasure. It’s just hot in here.
“Ari will get on board when he realizes how great the script is,” Vince says confidently, his arm still around Eric and his mouth therefore distractingly close to his ear. “Now come on, I went mascara shopping this morning. Help me decide which one makes me look like the prettiest girl.”
Eric hurriedly downs the rest of his beer and then scrambles to follow Vince upstairs.
<> <> <>
“What the fuck is it now, Ari?” Eric understands that it’s twenty-four/seven with this job, but he’s spoken to Ari eight times in the last three days and just spent two hours earlier that afternoon finally convincing him to get in touch with Egoyan’s people. There’s only so much Ari Gold a human being can take.
“I assume you’ve seen Vince naked before?”
Eric puts a hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone. “I’m gonna have to take this,” he explains to the perfect-10 girls Turtle and Drama have rounded up to their table. Vince shoots him a questioning glance across the top of a cute blonde head, and Eric mouths ‘I’ll be right back.’
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asks as soon as he finds a quiet corner near the back of the restaurant.
“How come you never told me Vince’s biggest secret?”
Eric pinches the bridge of his nose. “We haven’t started doing shots yet, so I’m not in the right frame of mind to deal with your games. Just tell me what you want.”
“What I want,” Ari says, and it sounds like he’s grinding his teeth or something, “is to know why no one ever told me my most important actor is actually my most important actress.”
“What?”
“Vincenza Chase?”
“…What?”
“Oh yeah, E, your boy went to that audition as a bona fide woman. They actually think he was born that way. Atom Egoyan is really excited to start working with Vincenza.”
“Fuck, are you kidding me?” E hates it when Vince pulls shit like that without telling him. Hates it. “What did you do?”
“What did I-what did I do? I told them Vince is a dude, what do you think I did? I explained to them that he really wants the part and he’s going to stay in character the whole time, but they didn’t bite. They don’t want a transvestite for the part, E.”
Eric sighs. He’s about to tell Ari that he gets it, that he’ll break it to Vince and they’ll find a different movie, but then he catches sight of Vince. Even across a crowded restaurant, Vince still has that uncanny ability of knowing exactly when Eric’s looking at him and returns his gaze, giving him one of those smiles he never uses for a magazine photo. Eric sighs again and says “Ari Gold, Super-agent.”
“Oh god, no.”
“You think you’re still the best agent in town? A lot of up-and-comers have made it since we started working together. Maybe you’re over the hill, past your prime. Maybe Vince needs some young blood on his team, someone who can get him the parts he wants. Someone like Josh-”
“If you say Weinstein I will fucking-”
“Ari. Vince isn’t where he was five years ago; we can play on a whole different level now. If you want to keep your job, you’ll get him this Egoyan movie.”
Eric snaps his phone shut before Ari can start cussing him out, and doesn’t answer when it rings all the way back to their table. He slips into his seat and takes a drink from the nearest glass.
“What’s up?” Vince asks him over the head of a different, but equally cute blonde. “Everything alright?”
“Everything’s fine,” Eric assures him. “We can talk about it later. Now, who wants in on a round of shots?”
<> <> <>
Eric really does talk to Vince about it later, though. Just because he threatened to fire Ari (again) doesn’t mean he’s going to let Vince get away with this crap.
Turtle and Drama are playing that loud boxing game in the living room, so E corners Vince in the kitchen and says, “New rule, Vince: you’re not allowed to go into auditions lying about your body parts anymore.”
Vince gives him a cheeky grin and grabs a spoon from the cabinet. “What, did someone tell on me? They didn’t like how I filled in my forms with fake information?”
Eric leans back on the counter and carefully keeps the breakfast island between himself and that grin. “No, they actually thought you were Vincenza Chase.”
Vince blinks, and then laughs. “Man, I knew I was good, but I must’ve been really good!” He pops the spoon into his mouth and raises his eyebrows suggestively.
“This isn’t funny, Vince. They thought they were getting a woman, and then they found out they’re getting Aquaman. They don’t want you for the part anymore.”
“Hey, that’s not fair.” Vince pouts with the spoon between his teeth and then holds it so he can lick it while he talks. “Logically, I’m the best person for it, since my acting was good enough to nail the audition and to fool them.”
Eric hasn’t so much heard a word he said as he has stared dumbly at Vince’s mouth. Turtle saves him from having to respond coherently by walking in for a drink. “Are you guys talking about that indie film again?” he asks while filling a glass from the tap.
“Yeah, there’s been a glitch in the negotiations but E’s working on it. E always gets me what I want.” Vince squeezes both of Eric’s shoulders briefly before exiting with his spoon.
Eric swallows.
“Yo, you are so fucked.”
“Shut up, Turtle.”
“Do you really think this movie’s gonna help Vince’s career?”
“It won’t hurt it,” Eric hedges.
“Yeah, but is that really worth stressing out and firing Ari and busting your ass trying to convince a bunch of arthouse weirdos that Vince’ll be awesome as a chick?”
“I’m just doing my job, Turtle. Vince really wants this movie.”
Turtle shrugs and drinks his water. “And you really want Vince.”
Between punching Turtle’s fucking teeth in and walking away, Eric chooses the latter option.
<> <> <>
Over the course of the next few days, Eric suffers through Drama’s version of the “I Know My Brother Turns You On But that Doesn’t Mean You Have to Kill Yourself Trying to Make Him a Woman” speech and wonders if Ari’s pre-empted getting fired by quitting, since he doesn’t hear from him at all. He eventually gets tired of waiting and goes to the office in person.
Lloyd sees him coming off the elevator and quickly picks up the phone. Immediately after, all of Ari’s blinds snap shut.
“Sorry E, but Ari’s not in right now,” Lloyd says apologetically.
“Come on, don’t give me that. We’ve never lied to each other before, let’s not start now.” Eric gives him the look he normally reserves for sternly saying no to Turtle.
“Fine, he’s in there,” Lloyd huffs, “but he’s not ready to face you yet. You know how he has a policy of not seeing a client unless he has good news.”
“So you’re saying he doesn’t have good news,” Eric states flatly. “You know what, can you tell him that if he doesn’t want to be Vince’s agent anymore, he should just tell us straight up instead of dicking around?”
Lloyd is possibly trying to frown at Eric, but it comes out looking more like a pout. “You really should give him more credit, E. He’s been working on it day and night, I mean literally-he’s up making calls at three in the morning, and when Ari’s up at three in the morning I have to be up too. It’s been killer on my complexion.” Lloyd pauses to pat his cheeks sadly. “I keep telling him he’s working too hard for such a small movie, but he says he has no choice.”
Eric groans, because giving Ari credit is pretty much the one activity he enjoys least. But it does sound like the guy is doing the best he can. The thing is though, unless Vince gets the part, his best isn’t good enough. He needs to do even better than that. He needs to get Vince the fucking movie. Eric tells Lloyd this forcefully.
“God, you need to take a chill pill,” Lloyd says. “You look like you’ve been stressing even more than Ari. And if your complexion is any indication,” he adds, looking meaningfully at Eric’s face, “you’ve been getting less sleep than me.”
“Yeah, thanks,” E replies, rubbing his jaw ruefully. “That’s exactly what I came here for. To have our agent avoid me and then get my face insulted by his assistant.”
“I’m just saying,” Lloyd says gently, “that maybe you both need to relax a bit. If you take a step back and really think about it, what’s so important about this one little movie?”
“It means a lot to Vince,” Eric answers without hesitation.
There is silence in the office as Lloyd mulls this over while closely scrutinizing E, and E struggles to not stammer out a defensive explanation.
“Well…” Lloyd ponders the most painless way to suggest this. “Have you, um, maybe considered the possibility that this deal might be so important to you because...you...have the hots for Vince?” Okay, that’s not the most painless per se, but it’s definitely the most obvious and unavoidable. Lloyd winces, because he’s perused enough tabloids in the checkout aisle to know that Eric Murphy has a loose temper and a mean punch.
Lloyd is about to duck and cover, but then he notices that Eric’s looking sort of deflated. There isn’t any fight in him, he just scrubs a hand across his eyes and says tiredly, “So I’ve been told.”
Silence again, and there’s really no way to make this less awkward. Lloyd opens his mouth to try, but Eric waves a hand at him to stop him. His other hand is still covering his eyes. “Look. Just. Have Ari call me the second anything develops.”
“Will do, E,” Lloyd promises solemnly.
Eric blindly stumbles to the elevators.
<> <> <>
Ari calls and tells Vince and Eric to get their asses into his office immediately. Eric thinks fuck, this better not be another lecture on how Vince doesn’t have to be a woman just because Eric “has the hots for him,” because he seriously can’t take any more. Especially not if it’s coming from Ari.
The first thing Ari does when they enter his office is hug them both vigorously, which honestly does not freak E out any less. He shoves Ari away roughly and demands “What the fuck?”
Ari rebounds off Eric back into Vince’s arms again. “I got you the goddamned Canadian movie,” he sighs, draped all over Vince and speaking in that curiously post-coital tone he uses whenever he achieves super-agent victory. The overall effect kind of makes Eric’s skin crawl.
In lieu of ripping Ari away from Vince or doing something equally ridiculous, Eric finds his safe place by retreating into his hard-ass manager role. “Oh yeah? What are the terms of the deal?”
“What, I don’t get a pat on the back for a job well done? Or even a congratulatory handjob?” Still said in that annoying sex voice of his, of course, and still sagging dramatically on a lazily amused Vince.
Eric masks his raging jealou-irritation by channelling the topic to money. “How much are they paying?”
“Do not even ask me that right now,” Ari orders him, finally getting off of Vince and turning to Eric. “You wouldn’t BELIEVE the hoops I had to jump through just to make it a positive dollar amount. The budget’s so low, I’m pretty sure they wanted this guy to pay to be in the movie. You don’t want to know what I had to go through to convince them that Vincent Chase is worth it. Even if he’s no Vincenza.”
“Hey, sorry about that,” Vince says sheepishly, and Eric doesn’t remember Vince ever apologizing to him about this whole fiasco. “You know how it is; acting’s my second nature, sometimes it gets away from me.” He slaps a casual hand onto Ari’s bicep and squeezes platonically. “And thank you, Ari, for all the hard work. I appreciate it.”
One could say that Eric’s vision is swimming in a particularly livid shade of red at this point. Fucking Ari. He wouldn’t even have gotten off his ass if Eric hadn’t threatened him. He doesn’t believe in Vince’s artistic integrity, he just wants to make mindless popcorn flicks. The only reason he finally got Vince the fucking Egoyan film is because Eric made him. In fact, the only reason he finally got Vince his first film, ever, is because Eric fucking made him.
Ari’s looking at him funny, and Eric hopes to hell he didn’t just do any of his seething out loud. He discreetly unclenches his fists and starts to thank Ari through the bile in his throat, but Vince is apparently handing out hugs to go with his gratitude these days. He hugs Ari (rather unnecessarily, seeing as they were just holding each other five seconds ago) and then he hugs E. Correction: he engulfs E, wrapping him up tightly and saying something about another critically acclaimed success for the Murphy Group. Eric’s not entirely sure on the details because Vince’s arms are eating him alive.
After that, Vince exits the office, leaving Eric and Ari to wrap up the technicalities as usual. Eric really can’t be responsible for whatever noises he might be making in the back of his throat as he watches Vince go. His skin feels tingly. Why does Ari keep the temperature of his office turned up so high?
“So. Uh.” E clears his throat. A few times. “Fax a copy of the contract over to me and I’ll read it over before he signs the real thing.”
“Sure,” Ari says, looking at Eric cryptically.
Eric eyes him warily in return. “Alright. Thanks. I’ll…just be going then?” He reaches for the glass door.
“Tell me the truth, Eric: was it because Vince loves this movie or because you love seeing him in drag?”
In what has become his usual departure from Ari’s office, Eric flips him off on the way out.
<> <> <>
Okay, but seriously, Vince does look really hot in drag.
Eric is in Vince’s trailer helping him put his wig on. They have final say on costume, mostly because Atom Egoyan couldn’t afford to hire anyone for costuming. As a matter of fact, Eric is literally in Vince’s trailer, one that he personally rented and brought on set himself, because Atom Egoyan couldn’t afford any of those either. The rest of the crew just eats and sleeps and changes outside; there isn’t exactly anybody to see them in the middle of Saskatchewan anyway.
So Eric is in Vince’s trailer, helping Vince with his wig and privately approving of his eyeshadow, when Vince grabs his wrist and pulls him in so their chests are flush against each other. Eric can feel the padded bra between them and it’s more than a little weird.
“Listen,” Vince murmurs breathily, which is kind of counterproductive because the higher brain functions vital to listening evaporate from E's mind whenever Vince whispers like that. “You think I don’t understand that Ari would never’ve gotten me this part if it weren’t for you? I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. And I mean here, all of it, I know it’s all you, E.”
Looking up from this close, Eric can see every detail as the graceful curl of Vince’s bottom lashes meets the dramatic downward sweep of his top lashes. E barely has time to register that Vince has closed his eyes before Vince’s lips are on his.
It’s a testament to Vince’s freakish proficiency at putting on makeup when he pulls out of the kiss with his lipstick still perfect. Considering how enthusiastically Eric reciprocates once he realises what’s going on.
“Mmkay, I have to go shoot another monologue about isolation right now,” Vince says, rubbing away a non-existent smudge from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, “but we’ll continue this conversation when I get back. Don’t go anywhere.”
Vince adjusts his cock under his hip-hugging dress before walking out of the trailer, and Eric thinks everything was pretty much worth it for this.
<>
end
notes: This is my first Entourage fic; comments and criticism are more than welcome. For the record, I am Canadian, and all jokes at the expense of Canadian cinema were made with the utmost of affection and tongue planted firmly in cheek.
Pairing: Vince/Eric from Entourage
Rating: R (language, themes)
Spoilers: Assumes past season four
Word Count: 3927
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the following fictional characters, nor am I affiliated with any real persons mentioned. No profit is being made from this whatsoever.
Summary: There are over three hundred reasons Vince shouldn’t do this movie. Eric’s opinion isn’t one of them.
<>
Vince wants to play a woman in Atom Egoyan’s next film.
Ari simultaneously comes up with three hundred and twenty-nine objections, and they all try to gush out of his mouth at the same time. He sputters and chokes for a good minute, and Eric’s really hoping he won’t have to break out the Heimlich manoeuvre here.
“You-what-this-Canadian-” Ari, thank god, finally takes a breath and manages to say, “Vince is an American, E.”
“I know; we grew up together, remember?”
“Maybe you still haven’t caught on to how the industry works. Lemme explain it to you. The dozen or so people who actually have any talent come down from Canada and thank their fucking Inuit gods for a chance to break into the American market, okay? No one from the US of A goes up to Canada hoping to tap into the tipi village audience. It’s just not natural. It’s like swimming against the current, E. Vince is trying to swim upstream, and he is not a fucking salmon.”
Eric laughs in his face. “What the fuck are you talking about, Ari?”
“I’m talking about the fact that this’ll get a two-theatre release and all ten people in Tukto-fucking-yaktuk will see it, and it’ll be considered a gigantic fucking megahit in Canada, and Vince’ll come away maybe twenty dollars richer. If he doesn’t have to spend the twenty on snowshoes.”
Eric rolls his eyes. Ari’s such a drama queen. “Relax, we know it won’t be a gold mine. You don’t make art films to get rich, Ari. It’ll look good for his versatility.”
Ari picks up a fresh script from his desk. “Well why doesn’t he try M. Night’s new movie? He’s never done a horror flick before. He’s never played a man from another dimension before. How’s that for motherfucking versatility?”
“We don’t want another blockbuster,” Eric explains.
Ari wonders if it’s possible to papercut him to death with M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller. Or maybe he’ll slit his own wrists. Hell, maybe he’ll make it a murder-suicide and Lloyd can explain to the police that he lost his fucking WILL TO LIVE because the people who pay him to make them superstars keep cockblocking him from making them fucking superstars.
“Look, the deal is one for you, one for Vince, right? Aquaman fucking, like, 59 made you a pile of dough. Now Vince wants to do one for himself.”
“First of all,” Ari starts, sticking his finger in Eric’s face, “it was only the fourth one, and it was only made because the third one’s story was too long so we had to split it in half. You can’t leave people hanging in the middle of the action, it gives them blue balls. Secondly, I seem to recall you making a cool two mil off it, so don’t act like it was all for me.”
Eric refuses to back down and resists the urge to snap Ari’s fucking finger off. “Yeah, and we have money now, so what’s wrong with letting him do a passion project? All our bills are paid.”
“E,” Ari pleads, and he’s obviously progressed past the anger stage and heading into bargaining, “what if we find a different indie film for him? Something European, with lots of method acting and depressing background music?”
It’s kind of embarrassing, how desperate Ari sounds, so Eric walks back over to the couch and sits down. “Sorry Ari, but he’s got his heart set on this one.”
“Jesus, E, why does he have to play a woman?”
“There’s only one character in the story-”
“Of course, it’s Atom fucking Egoyan. I bet she has no name and dies at the end,” Ari mutters.
E doesn’t acknowledge the interruption, because he’s not exactly wrong, “-and Vince really loves it. What’s the problem? Didn’t you once get all up in my face about Hilary Swank having no dick and getting an Oscar for pretending she did? ‘That’s what actors do, E, they pretend.’” He tightens his voice to deliver the last sentence and does a good enough impression that Ari can guess how much they make fun of him at home.
“Fuck you, that part was for a gender-confused character. This part is for AN ACTUAL WOMAN.”
Eric shrugs. “So he’ll pretend.”
“Why the fuck would they choose him when they can pick somebody with XX chromosomes?”
“‘Cause he’s good? I don’t know, their casting agent loved his audition.”
“Wait, he auditioned?!” Ari’s face flushes, then goes pale, then flushes again into an almost purple colour. “FUCKING CHRIST, I, what is wrong with you?! Our boy Vinnie Chase doesn’t fucking audition for no-budget Canadian films, they audition for him.”
Eric’s nearing his daily quota of bullshit he can take from Ari, and he’s starting to get bored of repeating himself. “Look, he wants to do the damn movie, so he’s gonna do the damn movie. Call Egoyan’s people if you wanna be a part of it, or fuck off.” He gets up to leave.
“Egoyan’s people probably don’t have phones; they probably use telegrams, or carrier pigeons,” Ari answers weakly, slumping into his desk.
“Whatever,” Eric snorts, rolling his eyes. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Hey Eric,” Ari calls as he’s opening the door. “Maybe if you take Vince’s cock out of your ass once in a while, you’d get to sit down and think shit over instead of just letting him do whatever he wants.”
Eric flips him off on his way out.
<> <> <>
Vince is all blinding white smiles when Eric comes back from Ari’s office. “So, how’d it go?” he asks, like he can’t tell from the look on Eric’s face.
“He hates it. Obviously.” It’s too early to be drinking, but Eric wants a beer and Vince hands one to him before he even has to ask. Eric totally doesn’t accidentally-on-purpose brush Vince’s fingers with his when he takes the bottle, because that would be girly.
“God, you should’ve heard him being all ‘Vinnie is too good for Canada, Canada should be auditioning for Vince’s movies, not the other way around’.” Eric’s doing his Ari voice again. It’s almost disturbing how good he’s getting at it. “Bitch, bitch, bitch.” He groans at the thought of a perfectly good morning gone to waste.
“You know I really want to do this movie, right?” Vince asks, leaning across the kitchen island and ducking his head so he can look up through his eyelashes at E.
Eric maybe swallows his next pull of beer with a louder gulp than normal. “Of course.”
“So what’d you say to him?”
“I told him to shut the fuck up and call Atom Egoyan like we want him to,” he tells Vince in a manly way.
Vince’s fluorescent grin brightens even more. “That’s my boy!” he crows, reaching over to fling an arm around Eric’s shoulders.
Eric is decidedly not blushing with pleasure. It’s just hot in here.
“Ari will get on board when he realizes how great the script is,” Vince says confidently, his arm still around Eric and his mouth therefore distractingly close to his ear. “Now come on, I went mascara shopping this morning. Help me decide which one makes me look like the prettiest girl.”
Eric hurriedly downs the rest of his beer and then scrambles to follow Vince upstairs.
<> <> <>
“What the fuck is it now, Ari?” Eric understands that it’s twenty-four/seven with this job, but he’s spoken to Ari eight times in the last three days and just spent two hours earlier that afternoon finally convincing him to get in touch with Egoyan’s people. There’s only so much Ari Gold a human being can take.
“I assume you’ve seen Vince naked before?”
Eric puts a hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone. “I’m gonna have to take this,” he explains to the perfect-10 girls Turtle and Drama have rounded up to their table. Vince shoots him a questioning glance across the top of a cute blonde head, and Eric mouths ‘I’ll be right back.’
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asks as soon as he finds a quiet corner near the back of the restaurant.
“How come you never told me Vince’s biggest secret?”
Eric pinches the bridge of his nose. “We haven’t started doing shots yet, so I’m not in the right frame of mind to deal with your games. Just tell me what you want.”
“What I want,” Ari says, and it sounds like he’s grinding his teeth or something, “is to know why no one ever told me my most important actor is actually my most important actress.”
“What?”
“Vincenza Chase?”
“…What?”
“Oh yeah, E, your boy went to that audition as a bona fide woman. They actually think he was born that way. Atom Egoyan is really excited to start working with Vincenza.”
“Fuck, are you kidding me?” E hates it when Vince pulls shit like that without telling him. Hates it. “What did you do?”
“What did I-what did I do? I told them Vince is a dude, what do you think I did? I explained to them that he really wants the part and he’s going to stay in character the whole time, but they didn’t bite. They don’t want a transvestite for the part, E.”
Eric sighs. He’s about to tell Ari that he gets it, that he’ll break it to Vince and they’ll find a different movie, but then he catches sight of Vince. Even across a crowded restaurant, Vince still has that uncanny ability of knowing exactly when Eric’s looking at him and returns his gaze, giving him one of those smiles he never uses for a magazine photo. Eric sighs again and says “Ari Gold, Super-agent.”
“Oh god, no.”
“You think you’re still the best agent in town? A lot of up-and-comers have made it since we started working together. Maybe you’re over the hill, past your prime. Maybe Vince needs some young blood on his team, someone who can get him the parts he wants. Someone like Josh-”
“If you say Weinstein I will fucking-”
“Ari. Vince isn’t where he was five years ago; we can play on a whole different level now. If you want to keep your job, you’ll get him this Egoyan movie.”
Eric snaps his phone shut before Ari can start cussing him out, and doesn’t answer when it rings all the way back to their table. He slips into his seat and takes a drink from the nearest glass.
“What’s up?” Vince asks him over the head of a different, but equally cute blonde. “Everything alright?”
“Everything’s fine,” Eric assures him. “We can talk about it later. Now, who wants in on a round of shots?”
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Eric really does talk to Vince about it later, though. Just because he threatened to fire Ari (again) doesn’t mean he’s going to let Vince get away with this crap.
Turtle and Drama are playing that loud boxing game in the living room, so E corners Vince in the kitchen and says, “New rule, Vince: you’re not allowed to go into auditions lying about your body parts anymore.”
Vince gives him a cheeky grin and grabs a spoon from the cabinet. “What, did someone tell on me? They didn’t like how I filled in my forms with fake information?”
Eric leans back on the counter and carefully keeps the breakfast island between himself and that grin. “No, they actually thought you were Vincenza Chase.”
Vince blinks, and then laughs. “Man, I knew I was good, but I must’ve been really good!” He pops the spoon into his mouth and raises his eyebrows suggestively.
“This isn’t funny, Vince. They thought they were getting a woman, and then they found out they’re getting Aquaman. They don’t want you for the part anymore.”
“Hey, that’s not fair.” Vince pouts with the spoon between his teeth and then holds it so he can lick it while he talks. “Logically, I’m the best person for it, since my acting was good enough to nail the audition and to fool them.”
Eric hasn’t so much heard a word he said as he has stared dumbly at Vince’s mouth. Turtle saves him from having to respond coherently by walking in for a drink. “Are you guys talking about that indie film again?” he asks while filling a glass from the tap.
“Yeah, there’s been a glitch in the negotiations but E’s working on it. E always gets me what I want.” Vince squeezes both of Eric’s shoulders briefly before exiting with his spoon.
Eric swallows.
“Yo, you are so fucked.”
“Shut up, Turtle.”
“Do you really think this movie’s gonna help Vince’s career?”
“It won’t hurt it,” Eric hedges.
“Yeah, but is that really worth stressing out and firing Ari and busting your ass trying to convince a bunch of arthouse weirdos that Vince’ll be awesome as a chick?”
“I’m just doing my job, Turtle. Vince really wants this movie.”
Turtle shrugs and drinks his water. “And you really want Vince.”
Between punching Turtle’s fucking teeth in and walking away, Eric chooses the latter option.
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Over the course of the next few days, Eric suffers through Drama’s version of the “I Know My Brother Turns You On But that Doesn’t Mean You Have to Kill Yourself Trying to Make Him a Woman” speech and wonders if Ari’s pre-empted getting fired by quitting, since he doesn’t hear from him at all. He eventually gets tired of waiting and goes to the office in person.
Lloyd sees him coming off the elevator and quickly picks up the phone. Immediately after, all of Ari’s blinds snap shut.
“Sorry E, but Ari’s not in right now,” Lloyd says apologetically.
“Come on, don’t give me that. We’ve never lied to each other before, let’s not start now.” Eric gives him the look he normally reserves for sternly saying no to Turtle.
“Fine, he’s in there,” Lloyd huffs, “but he’s not ready to face you yet. You know how he has a policy of not seeing a client unless he has good news.”
“So you’re saying he doesn’t have good news,” Eric states flatly. “You know what, can you tell him that if he doesn’t want to be Vince’s agent anymore, he should just tell us straight up instead of dicking around?”
Lloyd is possibly trying to frown at Eric, but it comes out looking more like a pout. “You really should give him more credit, E. He’s been working on it day and night, I mean literally-he’s up making calls at three in the morning, and when Ari’s up at three in the morning I have to be up too. It’s been killer on my complexion.” Lloyd pauses to pat his cheeks sadly. “I keep telling him he’s working too hard for such a small movie, but he says he has no choice.”
Eric groans, because giving Ari credit is pretty much the one activity he enjoys least. But it does sound like the guy is doing the best he can. The thing is though, unless Vince gets the part, his best isn’t good enough. He needs to do even better than that. He needs to get Vince the fucking movie. Eric tells Lloyd this forcefully.
“God, you need to take a chill pill,” Lloyd says. “You look like you’ve been stressing even more than Ari. And if your complexion is any indication,” he adds, looking meaningfully at Eric’s face, “you’ve been getting less sleep than me.”
“Yeah, thanks,” E replies, rubbing his jaw ruefully. “That’s exactly what I came here for. To have our agent avoid me and then get my face insulted by his assistant.”
“I’m just saying,” Lloyd says gently, “that maybe you both need to relax a bit. If you take a step back and really think about it, what’s so important about this one little movie?”
“It means a lot to Vince,” Eric answers without hesitation.
There is silence in the office as Lloyd mulls this over while closely scrutinizing E, and E struggles to not stammer out a defensive explanation.
“Well…” Lloyd ponders the most painless way to suggest this. “Have you, um, maybe considered the possibility that this deal might be so important to you because...you...have the hots for Vince?” Okay, that’s not the most painless per se, but it’s definitely the most obvious and unavoidable. Lloyd winces, because he’s perused enough tabloids in the checkout aisle to know that Eric Murphy has a loose temper and a mean punch.
Lloyd is about to duck and cover, but then he notices that Eric’s looking sort of deflated. There isn’t any fight in him, he just scrubs a hand across his eyes and says tiredly, “So I’ve been told.”
Silence again, and there’s really no way to make this less awkward. Lloyd opens his mouth to try, but Eric waves a hand at him to stop him. His other hand is still covering his eyes. “Look. Just. Have Ari call me the second anything develops.”
“Will do, E,” Lloyd promises solemnly.
Eric blindly stumbles to the elevators.
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Ari calls and tells Vince and Eric to get their asses into his office immediately. Eric thinks fuck, this better not be another lecture on how Vince doesn’t have to be a woman just because Eric “has the hots for him,” because he seriously can’t take any more. Especially not if it’s coming from Ari.
The first thing Ari does when they enter his office is hug them both vigorously, which honestly does not freak E out any less. He shoves Ari away roughly and demands “What the fuck?”
Ari rebounds off Eric back into Vince’s arms again. “I got you the goddamned Canadian movie,” he sighs, draped all over Vince and speaking in that curiously post-coital tone he uses whenever he achieves super-agent victory. The overall effect kind of makes Eric’s skin crawl.
In lieu of ripping Ari away from Vince or doing something equally ridiculous, Eric finds his safe place by retreating into his hard-ass manager role. “Oh yeah? What are the terms of the deal?”
“What, I don’t get a pat on the back for a job well done? Or even a congratulatory handjob?” Still said in that annoying sex voice of his, of course, and still sagging dramatically on a lazily amused Vince.
Eric masks his raging jealou-irritation by channelling the topic to money. “How much are they paying?”
“Do not even ask me that right now,” Ari orders him, finally getting off of Vince and turning to Eric. “You wouldn’t BELIEVE the hoops I had to jump through just to make it a positive dollar amount. The budget’s so low, I’m pretty sure they wanted this guy to pay to be in the movie. You don’t want to know what I had to go through to convince them that Vincent Chase is worth it. Even if he’s no Vincenza.”
“Hey, sorry about that,” Vince says sheepishly, and Eric doesn’t remember Vince ever apologizing to him about this whole fiasco. “You know how it is; acting’s my second nature, sometimes it gets away from me.” He slaps a casual hand onto Ari’s bicep and squeezes platonically. “And thank you, Ari, for all the hard work. I appreciate it.”
One could say that Eric’s vision is swimming in a particularly livid shade of red at this point. Fucking Ari. He wouldn’t even have gotten off his ass if Eric hadn’t threatened him. He doesn’t believe in Vince’s artistic integrity, he just wants to make mindless popcorn flicks. The only reason he finally got Vince the fucking Egoyan film is because Eric made him. In fact, the only reason he finally got Vince his first film, ever, is because Eric fucking made him.
Ari’s looking at him funny, and Eric hopes to hell he didn’t just do any of his seething out loud. He discreetly unclenches his fists and starts to thank Ari through the bile in his throat, but Vince is apparently handing out hugs to go with his gratitude these days. He hugs Ari (rather unnecessarily, seeing as they were just holding each other five seconds ago) and then he hugs E. Correction: he engulfs E, wrapping him up tightly and saying something about another critically acclaimed success for the Murphy Group. Eric’s not entirely sure on the details because Vince’s arms are eating him alive.
After that, Vince exits the office, leaving Eric and Ari to wrap up the technicalities as usual. Eric really can’t be responsible for whatever noises he might be making in the back of his throat as he watches Vince go. His skin feels tingly. Why does Ari keep the temperature of his office turned up so high?
“So. Uh.” E clears his throat. A few times. “Fax a copy of the contract over to me and I’ll read it over before he signs the real thing.”
“Sure,” Ari says, looking at Eric cryptically.
Eric eyes him warily in return. “Alright. Thanks. I’ll…just be going then?” He reaches for the glass door.
“Tell me the truth, Eric: was it because Vince loves this movie or because you love seeing him in drag?”
In what has become his usual departure from Ari’s office, Eric flips him off on the way out.
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Okay, but seriously, Vince does look really hot in drag.
Eric is in Vince’s trailer helping him put his wig on. They have final say on costume, mostly because Atom Egoyan couldn’t afford to hire anyone for costuming. As a matter of fact, Eric is literally in Vince’s trailer, one that he personally rented and brought on set himself, because Atom Egoyan couldn’t afford any of those either. The rest of the crew just eats and sleeps and changes outside; there isn’t exactly anybody to see them in the middle of Saskatchewan anyway.
So Eric is in Vince’s trailer, helping Vince with his wig and privately approving of his eyeshadow, when Vince grabs his wrist and pulls him in so their chests are flush against each other. Eric can feel the padded bra between them and it’s more than a little weird.
“Listen,” Vince murmurs breathily, which is kind of counterproductive because the higher brain functions vital to listening evaporate from E's mind whenever Vince whispers like that. “You think I don’t understand that Ari would never’ve gotten me this part if it weren’t for you? I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. And I mean here, all of it, I know it’s all you, E.”
Looking up from this close, Eric can see every detail as the graceful curl of Vince’s bottom lashes meets the dramatic downward sweep of his top lashes. E barely has time to register that Vince has closed his eyes before Vince’s lips are on his.
It’s a testament to Vince’s freakish proficiency at putting on makeup when he pulls out of the kiss with his lipstick still perfect. Considering how enthusiastically Eric reciprocates once he realises what’s going on.
“Mmkay, I have to go shoot another monologue about isolation right now,” Vince says, rubbing away a non-existent smudge from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, “but we’ll continue this conversation when I get back. Don’t go anywhere.”
Vince adjusts his cock under his hip-hugging dress before walking out of the trailer, and Eric thinks everything was pretty much worth it for this.
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end
notes: This is my first Entourage fic; comments and criticism are more than welcome. For the record, I am Canadian, and all jokes at the expense of Canadian cinema were made with the utmost of affection and tongue planted firmly in cheek.