Entourage FF: Anywhere you want to go [Eric/Charlie; NC-17]
Title: Anywhere you want to go
Fandom: Entourage
Pairing: Eric/Charlie (implied Eric/Vince)
Rating: NC-17 for sex and language
Length: 4,000 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to Doug Ellin and HBO.
Spoilers: Through 5.12, Return to Queens Boulevard
Summary: Charlie wants the parts of Eric that Vince gets, but he wants the other parts too. It's a little screwed up.
Charlie likes Vince, he really does. Sure, he has off days. Days when he’s jealous of the movie star with the girls and the cars and Eric’s undivided attention. But right now, he’s not really anything but glad for Vince and E. It’s a great party and he’s not drinking, because Eric keeps trying to introduce him to people. Vince isn’t getting introduced, because it’s his party. Or Eric’s - it’s kind of hard to tell. But Eric downplays his role in the Scorsese coup every chance he gets, while subtly directing the movers and shakers across the room to where Vince is sitting.
Drama and Turtle are getting restless, hanging at Vince’s shoulder. There are girls, apparently, who want to see Drama’s place. Vince has found a few pretty girls of his own as well.
Eric drifts back towards them, once he’s finished getting Charlie to make nice with one of Ari’s friends. Andy apparently knows everyone who’s anyone in TV, and it seems like even if Charlie has his own show, he still needs better connections.
Vince nods at Charlie, and smiles at E. “Hey. You wanna head back?”
“I’m still…” Eric trails off, waving his hand at the crowd he needs to make one more pass through.
“What’s the problem?” Charlie asks.
“Vince doesn’t drive, is the problem,” Eric says. “We came in together.” He turns back to Vince. “Look, go. I’ll get a cab back later.”
“I’ll drive you,” Charlie offers.
“Hmm?”
“I do drive. Still waiting on that Porsche, but I manage.” He looks at Vince. “I wasn’t drinking. I’ll drive Eric back after.”
Eric asks, “You sure? It’s not gonna be long, but maybe another hour.”
“Hey,” Charlie says. “You spent enough time ferrying me around when I was unemployed and broke. I’m on the network dime now, I can drive my manager home.”
Vince is frowning. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see you back at the apartment later, E?”
“Sure,” Eric says, but his mind is clearly already on other things. Back on the indie director across the room and the web-content producer in the corner.
Charlie works the room for another forty-five minutes, with a half-glass of wine in his hand so the servers stop trying to press them on him. In between, he gulps down water, shakes hands with people he doesn’t know and turns aside drunken people of both genders.
Eric grips Charlie’s shoulder. “Hey, Charlie, come here.”
Charlie is pulled through the crowd until he’s face-to-face with Jon Stewart.
“Eric,” Jon says, smirking, “if I had known you were willing to cheat on Vince with comedians, I would have put myself forward.”
Eric deflects easily. “Jon, this is Charlie. He’s a client of mine, and you should book him and Natasha on the show before Conan makes us a better offer.”
Jon looks at Charlie. “He’s always like this, isn’t he?”
Charlie nods, and Eric grins and walks away, and now Charlie has to be funny with Jon Stewart for ten straight minutes. He starts to worry at about nine minutes thirty, when Jon is still laughing, but Charlie’s two minutes away from running out of anecdote.
Eric comes back just as Charlie can tell that Jon needs to be somewhere else. He’s got good timing that way.
“Okay,” Jon says, “so you definitely need to come on the show and gives us all a quick surfing lesson. It’s been whole days since I humiliated myself on live television. I’ll get someone to give E a call to set it up.”
“Yeah, man, that’d be cool.”
Jon shakes his hand again, and claps Eric on the back before making his way back through the party.
Eric looks at Charlie. “That go okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that was okay. But unless you’ve got Lorne Michaels behind your back, ready to ask me to host SNL, I’m done for the night. Please tell me you’re ready to go, cause I don’t think I can do the comedy live-wire much longer.”
“What happened to your stamina, buddy?” Eric asks, grinning. “I thought actors loved all this attention?”
“Have you ever tried to make somebody laugh, knowing that if you screw up, there’s a good chance they’ll never book you and then they’ll tell everyone they know not to book you either?”
“No,” Eric says. “But I’ll bet I know exactly what it feels like. Yeah, I’m done. You sure you can drive me back? I can get a car.”
“E,” Charlie says. “I’ve got you, all right? I’m doing this.”
Eric smiles and follows Charlie out. When he gets into the car, he smiles again and this time he might even mean it. Charlie’s pretty sure Eric’s been doing the live-wire act for as long as Charlie’s known him. He’s heard Vince and the guys talking about stuff they did back in New York, or in their first few years in LA, and he can’t make that fit with the Eric he knows. Eric’s wound tighter than any twelve people Charlie ever met. Charlie doesn’t know if there’s anything he can do about that, but he’d kind of like to try.
If he’s being really honest, Charlie ended up talking to Eric because the big guys wouldn’t sit down for a meeting with him and Eric was a little desperate too. But he asked Eric to manage him because of that meeting. Because Eric was tired, and overwrought, and it was all about the guy with his face on the posters on Eric’s walls. Charlie had thought, ‘this guy cares about his clients’. And Eric does care about Charlie, maybe not quite as much as he cares about Vince, but then they don’t have that kind of history. Eric’s gone above and beyond for Charlie, and that’s what he appreciates. Charlie’s poster is on Eric’s wall now too.
Of course, Charlie doesn’t say that. He says, “How the hell do you know Jon Stewart?”
“The Aquaman circuit, way back.” Eric leans back in the passenger seat. He rolls the window down and lets the night air in. Eric groans.
“What?” Charlie asks.
“They brought those girls home.”
“And?”
“It’s a small apartment, Charlie.”
“Bigger than mine.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have three guys bringing girls home every other night. It’s not big enough for seven, is what I’m saying. And Drama’s fucking loud.”
Charlie screws up his face. “I did not need to know that.”
“And I did?”
Charlie reaches the cross-section and pulls the car to a stop. “You wanna stay at mine?”
“Huh?”
“My place. I guarantee there’s no girls over there.”
Eric blinks at him, very slowly, like he’s trying to figure out the question beneath the question. Charlie doesn’t know if Eric has always been this suspicious, or if it’s a new deal since the Medellín fiasco - Charlie wouldn’t be able to tell. Eric dropped into his world fully formed - a professional miracle-worker who won’t let Vince buy a new house until they book the next film. Eric over-thinks everything because of something that happened before Charlie knew him. Charlie meets Eric’s gaze steadily.
“Yeah,” Eric says, “okay.”
* * *
Charlie’s apartment is still pretty low-rent. It’s on the list right after the Porsche, when the network finally gets around to giving a green light to season two. It’s plenty big enough for two though, especially when Charlie wraps his arm around Eric to get him in the door. Eric allows Charlie to push him against the wall, and kiss him ‘til they’re both gasping for air.
“Charlie, hey,” Eric says.
“Hey.”
“Not like- you know what I meant.”
“You wanna fuck? Because it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. I like you, man, and I think we work well together.”
“Yeah, and fucking has a habit of messing shit up,” Eric retorts. “I’d like to keep on working well together, if that’s okay.”
“You think I’m gonna fire you because we had sex?”
Eric flinches, not at ‘sex’ but at ‘fire’. Charlie shoves him back against the wall. Eric’s maybe a little taller, but Charlie’s fucked models who had four inches on him, so it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Eric turns his face against the wall when Charlie gets a hand inside his jeans. He curses a little, and sort of slumps. Eric says, “Yeah, yeah, okay,” and pulls Charlie towards the bedroom.
Eric’s lost his jeans and his shirt by the time they hit the bed. Charlie’s already dropped his jeans by the door, and he has his t-shirt halfway off.
They have a moment of awkward fumbling for position, and Eric turns them until he’s flat on his back with Charlie over him. Charlie says, “Yeah?”
“Yeah, sure,” Eric says, “It’s cool, just get…”
Eric is an expert at that particular tone of voice. It’s a calm, ‘let’s not get too excited’ tone. It has ‘wait and see’ written all over it. In Charlie’s case, it has ‘wait until we get a second season’ written all over it.
Charlie stops. “Is it the black thing?”
Eric’s mouth drops open. “What the hell?”
“Is that the problem?”
“Charlie, I don’t know what you were smoking at that party, but I don’t have a problem with you being black. I kind of have a problem with you throwing something like that at me for no reason when you’re about to fuck me.”
“Name me one mainstream sitcom led by an African-American guy.”
“Charlie.”
“This is why you keep telling me not to- You think they won’t green light season two?”
“I told you to be careful. It’s a cutthroat business. TV even more than movies, maybe. At least once you find the cash for a film and get started, they don’t usually stop halfway.” Eric pauses. “Unless you’re Vince.”
“The whole time we were selling this thing, you kept talking about ‘30 Rock’ and ‘The Office’. Like you’re doing your best to make them forget about the black thing.”
“I was talking about ‘30 Rock’ and ‘The Office’ because they’re new comedy. You told me you didn’t want to make a traditional sitcom, so that’s what I told them. And no, traditional doesn’t mean black, it means three-camera with a laugh-track. You wanted me to sell it as ‘The Cosby Show’?”
Charlie stares. “‘The Cosby Show’ was the first thing you could think of? Really? Man, you really don’t do TV, do you?”
Eric shrugs against the covers. “I’m catching up. Now, are we fucking or having a meeting? Because I’m cool with either, Charlie, but if it’s a meeting I want to put my pants back on.”
Charlie puts his hand on Eric’s bare chest. Eric’s got a fast heartbeat, jumped into fight or flight response already. Some days Charlie thinks all the worrying and all the wariness in those guys somehow ended up in Eric’s rising chest and thudding pulse. Like they’ve spread out the responsibilities between them and Eric ended up with all the grown-up ones. Charlie says, “I want the stuff Vince doesn’t get.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Not the ‘everything’s gonna be fine but don’t spend all the money’ part. The part where maybe you tell me the truth.”
“I tell you the truth,” Eric says. “I tell Vince the truth too. I’m maybe not always right, but I don’t lie to my clients.”
“You lie to your friend. That’s okay, E.”
Eric shudders. Charlie reaches into the nightstand for the condoms and lube; he lets Eric talk.
Eric says, “You want me to tell you that I’m worried?”
Charlie uncaps the tube, and slicks it onto his fingers.
Eric says, “That, yeah, all right, I’m not sure the network knows what to do with the show? We’ve filmed four, and the first one airs next week, and I’m not sure what’s gonna happen.”
Charlie nods, and presses one finger inside.
“Fuck. Charlie, fuck. Christ.”
Charlie wraps his other hand around Eric’s cock. He says, “Yeah? What else?”
Eric looks at him like he’s crazy. “Timeslot. Promos.” (He gasps, and jerks half-way up against Charlie). “Fuck. Supporting cast. Natasha.”
Charlie nods, and leans down to leave a mark on Eric’s straining shoulder.
Eric breathes, “I’ve fucked things up before. So yeah, I’m a little more cautious these days - you gonna fire me over that?”
Charlie slides another finger in, and watches Eric’s lips tighten close. He stops moving; Eric thrusts up into his loose hand. Charlie says, “That it?”
“What the hell do you…? I’m not gonna fuck your career up, you got that? If we have to play it safe, we play it safe. I’m in this thing for the long haul.” Eric closes his eyes, and gets his legs up and out of the way. He laughs. “You want me to say, ‘baby, I’m gonna make you a star’? Cause I don’t do that anymore.”
Charlie laughs too then. He’s got three fingers inside Eric now, and when he pulls them out, Eric groans. Charlie rocks Eric’s legs up a little more. He says, “I changed my mind. I like having what Vince has.”
“Yeah?” Eric opens his eyes again, looking straight at Charlie. “And what’s that?”
“You. Your full and goddamn undivided attention.” Charlie pushes down into Eric, holding him against the bed.
Eric isn’t loud, but he moans, “Charlie. Fucking- God, Charlie,” and nothing else.
Charlie jacks Eric off in time with his down thrusts. Neither of them bends well enough to get really close, but Charlie leans in. He says, “You never fucked things up for me. I don’t need you to say you’re gonna make me a star - I just need you to keep right on doing it.”
Eric says it again, “Charlie. Yeah, yeah, okay, Charlie. Okay.”
Charlie thinks that Eric probably takes more abuse from him than another manager would. Charlie gets freaked out too sometimes, and sometimes Eric’s the nearest target. Eric doesn’t get mad back, he just says, “Yeah, Charlie, I know. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
Pulling out of Eric, with the mess between them, and over the sheets, Charlie finds himself saying it. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Eric grins at him. “The show? Of course it is. It’s a great show. It’ll find its audience.”
“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Charlie says.
“Mmm,” Eric murmurs. It’s not agreement, really. Eric’s been a realist for as long as Charlie’s known him. He just has one hell of a blind spot. So maybe the cars aren’t the only reason Charlie doesn’t always like Vince.
When Charlie gets back into bed, now that they’re both cleaned-off enough to sleep, Eric is staring at the ceiling. Charlie says, “Shouldn’t I be the one thinking this is all gonna go to hell next week?”
“Nah,” Eric says, “that’s what you pay me for.” He laughs, and turns onto his side. Charlie gets the light.
* * *
Charlie wakes up because the phone is ringing. Eric has already woken up, turned on the coffee-machine, powered up his computer, and got into the shower.
Eric must hear it from the bathroom, because the water stops. Eric shouts, “If it’s Vince, answer it and tell him to bring me a shirt to the studio?”
“Right,” Charlie calls, and the water starts again.
Sure enough, it’s Vince calling Eric’s cell. Charlie answers it. “Hey, Vince.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah. Look, Eric’s in the shower. He says can you bring him a clean shirt to your thing this morning? You guys have a meeting?”
“We have a brunch… thing. Warners. Not serious, just a chat.” Vince pauses. “I thought you were driving E back here last night?”
“Yeah, I think your place was a little crowded. We just crashed here instead.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Charlie answers, because what else can he say? Either Vince knows or he doesn’t - Charlie’s not gonna spell it out for him.
Eric comes back into the bedroom, towelling off his hair. He says, “That Vince?”
“Yeah,” Charlie says, and hands over the phone. Eric smiles when he says, “Hey,” and wedges the phone between his ear and shoulder as he gathers up his clothes.
Eric hangs up before he puts his shirt on, and then walks to the door.
Charlie says, “You need a ride?”
“No, I called a cab. But thanks. Remember you’re shooting another promo at three, I’ll see you there.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says, “later.”
Eric looks at him for a second, and he could be thinking about anything. He frowns, and then- It’s not a kiss so much as a really clumsy handshake; they crash into each other and Eric pats Charlie’s back, with his mouth somewhere below Charlie’s ear. “Later,” Eric says.
Charlie echoes it. “Later”
* * *
Charlie doesn’t see Vince again until the next week, when the pilot airs. They have a screening party and because Vince is in the pilot, and Eric organised the evening, the guys are too. Ari Gold is there, for fucks sake, and Natasha and some of the other cast-members give Charlie weird impressed looks. Eric knows some scary people, no doubt about that.
This time, Charlie is drinking and when Eric gets there, Charlie hugs him. “See? Look at this crowd. I told you I was all ready to carry the Murphy Group for you.”
He doesn’t hear Vince come up behind them. Vince grabs Eric’s shoulder and asks, “Who’s carrying the Murphy Group now?” He puts his hand to his chest in pretended injury. “E, I’m hurt.”
Charlie still remembers Eric saying, “You’re the only one that matters.” The first time he heard Vince Chase’s voice someplace that wasn’t a movie or an interview was on Eric’s speakerphone. Eric was in LA, Vince was in Mexico, and Charlie was waiting outside Eric’s office. Eric had been Charlie’s manager for three weeks, and Eric had said, “Vin, please. Will you please just come home?” Charlie had wanted to punch Vince, just a little bit.
Turtle and Drama wander up, and this is turning into a really awkward scene. Then Ari Gold appears, and looks between Charlie and Vince. He says, “If this is gonna turn into a cock-measuring contest, I have to warn you - I’ll win.”
Eric ignores that, but not Ari, and says, “I need to talk to you about the Warners meeting.”
“It was a brunch!” Ari protests. “You told me it was brunch. If Vinnie did more than smile and order a bagel, I should have been there.”
“It was a brunch, Ari,” Eric says. “I still need to talk to you.” He walks away with Ari, leaving Vince and Charlie to stare at each other.
Charlie looks across the room instead, at the very exclusive party he’s found himself hosting, in a club he couldn’t have got into two years ago.
Charlie says, “Shit,” at the same time Vince says, “What the hell?”
Under normal circumstances, Charlie thinks it’s pretty cool that his manager has a nemesis. Less cool when he was trying to get his pilot shot, but normally, yeah. Today isn’t normal circumstances.
Vince says, “Seth Green? How did he get in here?”
“Beats me,” Charlie says. “I haven’t been near the guy since-”
“Exactly. So what the fuck?”
“No idea. You wanna deal with it, or will I? He can’t stay here. Eric’s gonna-”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“So one of us should go over there.” Vince turns and points, back to where they last saw Seth. Of course, he isn’t there anymore.
They circle the room, but by the time they find Seth, he’s only a few steps away from Eric. Eric looks around.
“E,” Seth says.
“Seth,” Eric says. “Get the hell out of here.” His voice is pitched low, and very calm. If Charlie didn’t know better, he might not even notice how close Eric is to just decking the guy.
“E, man, I’m just here to show my support. It’s a great show, I always thought that. It’s just a fucking pity you couldn’t get past the Sloan thing - maybe I could have helped out.”
Eric sighs. He says, “You know what, Seth? I’ve been waiting like five years to say this. Get the fuck away from me before I get security to toss you out on your ass.”
Seth raises his hands in a ‘bring it on’ gesture.
Eric lifts one hand. Four guys appear behind him: dark suits and sunglasses. They step around Eric, towards Seth.
Eric keeps watching until Seth has backed away and out of the party. Then he turns to Charlie and Vince. “Yeah. That felt good.”
“Fuck.” Charlie looks at Vince. “Our manager’s pretty badass.”
“Yeah,” Vince says, “he really is.” Vince wraps his arm around Eric in a backwards hug.
Eric maybe leans into it a little, and then bats Charlie’s shoulder. “Showtime, c’mon.” He steps out of Vince’s hold, and grabs both of their arms. “My two favourite clients in one show. I’d like to actually see the goddamn thing.”
Eric pulls them both across the room to the best view of the screens. He sits them down and retreats back across the club to one of the corners. Before the pilot starts, Charlie watches him take three phone calls, hold one conversation with Ari and one with the network rep, and then record a series of hasty notes. The network voiceover teases for the start of the show, and all that stops. Eric turns to look at the screen, his phone muted in his hand.
Vince leans his head close to Charlie. “Don’t take it personally. He’s just… he’s like that sometimes now.”
Charlie’s a half-second away from hitting Vince.
Vince says. “You know, I asked him to come out here because he was dying in Queens. He was turning into one of those guys from the neighbourhood, with the job he hated and the straight path to wife and kids and a middle age fuck up. We came out here so we wouldn’t have to grow up and get real jobs. And Eric’s ended up with more on his plate than any of our parents would have dreamed of. I did that to him.”
Charlie looks at Eric across the room, in his nice suit and with the little frown that’s never quite off his face.
Vince says, “I swear, I think he’s really gonna have a heart attack some day soon. And it’s my fault - I broke him. Or Medellín, and Mexico, but now… He’s never all there. He’s thinking about the last meeting, and the next meeting, and it’s still about you but it’s not about you, you know?”
Charlie says, “Vince, man…”
“I didn’t mean to, and it wasn’t… but yeah. It’s not you, or me, or whatever you think. He’s giving you everything he’s got.”
Charlie looks at Vince. “And why the hell would I want any more than that?”
Eric hisses, “Guys. It’s about to start.” He’s walked over to the couch, bending over the back of it to talk to them. Eric sits down there, balancing on a table so they can hear it when he laughs, though he’s seen the thing a hundred times by now.
When the show ends, and their friends and family are all applauding, Eric whispers in Charlie’s ear. “I’ve got to go start working on numbers and early word. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow.” He pauses. “You were great, okay? No matter what happens, you were great, and everyone’s gonna see that. It’s all gonna be good.”
Charlie nods, and waits for Eric to leave before looking at Vince. Vince gives him a hand up and says, “E’s right. He’s almost always right. Remember that, okay?”
“Not gonna be a problem.”
Vince shakes his head, and walks into the middle of the party. Charlie calls his mom, and asks if she saw the way Eric just made good on that promise of his. It’s just the first step, but if E’s in this for the long haul then Charlie is too. He trusts Eric to do right by him - there’s not a whole lot more he could ask for.
FIN.
Fandom: Entourage
Pairing: Eric/Charlie (implied Eric/Vince)
Rating: NC-17 for sex and language
Length: 4,000 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to Doug Ellin and HBO.
Spoilers: Through 5.12, Return to Queens Boulevard
Summary: Charlie wants the parts of Eric that Vince gets, but he wants the other parts too. It's a little screwed up.
Charlie likes Vince, he really does. Sure, he has off days. Days when he’s jealous of the movie star with the girls and the cars and Eric’s undivided attention. But right now, he’s not really anything but glad for Vince and E. It’s a great party and he’s not drinking, because Eric keeps trying to introduce him to people. Vince isn’t getting introduced, because it’s his party. Or Eric’s - it’s kind of hard to tell. But Eric downplays his role in the Scorsese coup every chance he gets, while subtly directing the movers and shakers across the room to where Vince is sitting.
Drama and Turtle are getting restless, hanging at Vince’s shoulder. There are girls, apparently, who want to see Drama’s place. Vince has found a few pretty girls of his own as well.
Eric drifts back towards them, once he’s finished getting Charlie to make nice with one of Ari’s friends. Andy apparently knows everyone who’s anyone in TV, and it seems like even if Charlie has his own show, he still needs better connections.
Vince nods at Charlie, and smiles at E. “Hey. You wanna head back?”
“I’m still…” Eric trails off, waving his hand at the crowd he needs to make one more pass through.
“What’s the problem?” Charlie asks.
“Vince doesn’t drive, is the problem,” Eric says. “We came in together.” He turns back to Vince. “Look, go. I’ll get a cab back later.”
“I’ll drive you,” Charlie offers.
“Hmm?”
“I do drive. Still waiting on that Porsche, but I manage.” He looks at Vince. “I wasn’t drinking. I’ll drive Eric back after.”
Eric asks, “You sure? It’s not gonna be long, but maybe another hour.”
“Hey,” Charlie says. “You spent enough time ferrying me around when I was unemployed and broke. I’m on the network dime now, I can drive my manager home.”
Vince is frowning. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see you back at the apartment later, E?”
“Sure,” Eric says, but his mind is clearly already on other things. Back on the indie director across the room and the web-content producer in the corner.
Charlie works the room for another forty-five minutes, with a half-glass of wine in his hand so the servers stop trying to press them on him. In between, he gulps down water, shakes hands with people he doesn’t know and turns aside drunken people of both genders.
Eric grips Charlie’s shoulder. “Hey, Charlie, come here.”
Charlie is pulled through the crowd until he’s face-to-face with Jon Stewart.
“Eric,” Jon says, smirking, “if I had known you were willing to cheat on Vince with comedians, I would have put myself forward.”
Eric deflects easily. “Jon, this is Charlie. He’s a client of mine, and you should book him and Natasha on the show before Conan makes us a better offer.”
Jon looks at Charlie. “He’s always like this, isn’t he?”
Charlie nods, and Eric grins and walks away, and now Charlie has to be funny with Jon Stewart for ten straight minutes. He starts to worry at about nine minutes thirty, when Jon is still laughing, but Charlie’s two minutes away from running out of anecdote.
Eric comes back just as Charlie can tell that Jon needs to be somewhere else. He’s got good timing that way.
“Okay,” Jon says, “so you definitely need to come on the show and gives us all a quick surfing lesson. It’s been whole days since I humiliated myself on live television. I’ll get someone to give E a call to set it up.”
“Yeah, man, that’d be cool.”
Jon shakes his hand again, and claps Eric on the back before making his way back through the party.
Eric looks at Charlie. “That go okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that was okay. But unless you’ve got Lorne Michaels behind your back, ready to ask me to host SNL, I’m done for the night. Please tell me you’re ready to go, cause I don’t think I can do the comedy live-wire much longer.”
“What happened to your stamina, buddy?” Eric asks, grinning. “I thought actors loved all this attention?”
“Have you ever tried to make somebody laugh, knowing that if you screw up, there’s a good chance they’ll never book you and then they’ll tell everyone they know not to book you either?”
“No,” Eric says. “But I’ll bet I know exactly what it feels like. Yeah, I’m done. You sure you can drive me back? I can get a car.”
“E,” Charlie says. “I’ve got you, all right? I’m doing this.”
Eric smiles and follows Charlie out. When he gets into the car, he smiles again and this time he might even mean it. Charlie’s pretty sure Eric’s been doing the live-wire act for as long as Charlie’s known him. He’s heard Vince and the guys talking about stuff they did back in New York, or in their first few years in LA, and he can’t make that fit with the Eric he knows. Eric’s wound tighter than any twelve people Charlie ever met. Charlie doesn’t know if there’s anything he can do about that, but he’d kind of like to try.
If he’s being really honest, Charlie ended up talking to Eric because the big guys wouldn’t sit down for a meeting with him and Eric was a little desperate too. But he asked Eric to manage him because of that meeting. Because Eric was tired, and overwrought, and it was all about the guy with his face on the posters on Eric’s walls. Charlie had thought, ‘this guy cares about his clients’. And Eric does care about Charlie, maybe not quite as much as he cares about Vince, but then they don’t have that kind of history. Eric’s gone above and beyond for Charlie, and that’s what he appreciates. Charlie’s poster is on Eric’s wall now too.
Of course, Charlie doesn’t say that. He says, “How the hell do you know Jon Stewart?”
“The Aquaman circuit, way back.” Eric leans back in the passenger seat. He rolls the window down and lets the night air in. Eric groans.
“What?” Charlie asks.
“They brought those girls home.”
“And?”
“It’s a small apartment, Charlie.”
“Bigger than mine.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have three guys bringing girls home every other night. It’s not big enough for seven, is what I’m saying. And Drama’s fucking loud.”
Charlie screws up his face. “I did not need to know that.”
“And I did?”
Charlie reaches the cross-section and pulls the car to a stop. “You wanna stay at mine?”
“Huh?”
“My place. I guarantee there’s no girls over there.”
Eric blinks at him, very slowly, like he’s trying to figure out the question beneath the question. Charlie doesn’t know if Eric has always been this suspicious, or if it’s a new deal since the Medellín fiasco - Charlie wouldn’t be able to tell. Eric dropped into his world fully formed - a professional miracle-worker who won’t let Vince buy a new house until they book the next film. Eric over-thinks everything because of something that happened before Charlie knew him. Charlie meets Eric’s gaze steadily.
“Yeah,” Eric says, “okay.”
* * *
Charlie’s apartment is still pretty low-rent. It’s on the list right after the Porsche, when the network finally gets around to giving a green light to season two. It’s plenty big enough for two though, especially when Charlie wraps his arm around Eric to get him in the door. Eric allows Charlie to push him against the wall, and kiss him ‘til they’re both gasping for air.
“Charlie, hey,” Eric says.
“Hey.”
“Not like- you know what I meant.”
“You wanna fuck? Because it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. I like you, man, and I think we work well together.”
“Yeah, and fucking has a habit of messing shit up,” Eric retorts. “I’d like to keep on working well together, if that’s okay.”
“You think I’m gonna fire you because we had sex?”
Eric flinches, not at ‘sex’ but at ‘fire’. Charlie shoves him back against the wall. Eric’s maybe a little taller, but Charlie’s fucked models who had four inches on him, so it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Eric turns his face against the wall when Charlie gets a hand inside his jeans. He curses a little, and sort of slumps. Eric says, “Yeah, yeah, okay,” and pulls Charlie towards the bedroom.
Eric’s lost his jeans and his shirt by the time they hit the bed. Charlie’s already dropped his jeans by the door, and he has his t-shirt halfway off.
They have a moment of awkward fumbling for position, and Eric turns them until he’s flat on his back with Charlie over him. Charlie says, “Yeah?”
“Yeah, sure,” Eric says, “It’s cool, just get…”
Eric is an expert at that particular tone of voice. It’s a calm, ‘let’s not get too excited’ tone. It has ‘wait and see’ written all over it. In Charlie’s case, it has ‘wait until we get a second season’ written all over it.
Charlie stops. “Is it the black thing?”
Eric’s mouth drops open. “What the hell?”
“Is that the problem?”
“Charlie, I don’t know what you were smoking at that party, but I don’t have a problem with you being black. I kind of have a problem with you throwing something like that at me for no reason when you’re about to fuck me.”
“Name me one mainstream sitcom led by an African-American guy.”
“Charlie.”
“This is why you keep telling me not to- You think they won’t green light season two?”
“I told you to be careful. It’s a cutthroat business. TV even more than movies, maybe. At least once you find the cash for a film and get started, they don’t usually stop halfway.” Eric pauses. “Unless you’re Vince.”
“The whole time we were selling this thing, you kept talking about ‘30 Rock’ and ‘The Office’. Like you’re doing your best to make them forget about the black thing.”
“I was talking about ‘30 Rock’ and ‘The Office’ because they’re new comedy. You told me you didn’t want to make a traditional sitcom, so that’s what I told them. And no, traditional doesn’t mean black, it means three-camera with a laugh-track. You wanted me to sell it as ‘The Cosby Show’?”
Charlie stares. “‘The Cosby Show’ was the first thing you could think of? Really? Man, you really don’t do TV, do you?”
Eric shrugs against the covers. “I’m catching up. Now, are we fucking or having a meeting? Because I’m cool with either, Charlie, but if it’s a meeting I want to put my pants back on.”
Charlie puts his hand on Eric’s bare chest. Eric’s got a fast heartbeat, jumped into fight or flight response already. Some days Charlie thinks all the worrying and all the wariness in those guys somehow ended up in Eric’s rising chest and thudding pulse. Like they’ve spread out the responsibilities between them and Eric ended up with all the grown-up ones. Charlie says, “I want the stuff Vince doesn’t get.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Not the ‘everything’s gonna be fine but don’t spend all the money’ part. The part where maybe you tell me the truth.”
“I tell you the truth,” Eric says. “I tell Vince the truth too. I’m maybe not always right, but I don’t lie to my clients.”
“You lie to your friend. That’s okay, E.”
Eric shudders. Charlie reaches into the nightstand for the condoms and lube; he lets Eric talk.
Eric says, “You want me to tell you that I’m worried?”
Charlie uncaps the tube, and slicks it onto his fingers.
Eric says, “That, yeah, all right, I’m not sure the network knows what to do with the show? We’ve filmed four, and the first one airs next week, and I’m not sure what’s gonna happen.”
Charlie nods, and presses one finger inside.
“Fuck. Charlie, fuck. Christ.”
Charlie wraps his other hand around Eric’s cock. He says, “Yeah? What else?”
Eric looks at him like he’s crazy. “Timeslot. Promos.” (He gasps, and jerks half-way up against Charlie). “Fuck. Supporting cast. Natasha.”
Charlie nods, and leans down to leave a mark on Eric’s straining shoulder.
Eric breathes, “I’ve fucked things up before. So yeah, I’m a little more cautious these days - you gonna fire me over that?”
Charlie slides another finger in, and watches Eric’s lips tighten close. He stops moving; Eric thrusts up into his loose hand. Charlie says, “That it?”
“What the hell do you…? I’m not gonna fuck your career up, you got that? If we have to play it safe, we play it safe. I’m in this thing for the long haul.” Eric closes his eyes, and gets his legs up and out of the way. He laughs. “You want me to say, ‘baby, I’m gonna make you a star’? Cause I don’t do that anymore.”
Charlie laughs too then. He’s got three fingers inside Eric now, and when he pulls them out, Eric groans. Charlie rocks Eric’s legs up a little more. He says, “I changed my mind. I like having what Vince has.”
“Yeah?” Eric opens his eyes again, looking straight at Charlie. “And what’s that?”
“You. Your full and goddamn undivided attention.” Charlie pushes down into Eric, holding him against the bed.
Eric isn’t loud, but he moans, “Charlie. Fucking- God, Charlie,” and nothing else.
Charlie jacks Eric off in time with his down thrusts. Neither of them bends well enough to get really close, but Charlie leans in. He says, “You never fucked things up for me. I don’t need you to say you’re gonna make me a star - I just need you to keep right on doing it.”
Eric says it again, “Charlie. Yeah, yeah, okay, Charlie. Okay.”
Charlie thinks that Eric probably takes more abuse from him than another manager would. Charlie gets freaked out too sometimes, and sometimes Eric’s the nearest target. Eric doesn’t get mad back, he just says, “Yeah, Charlie, I know. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
Pulling out of Eric, with the mess between them, and over the sheets, Charlie finds himself saying it. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Eric grins at him. “The show? Of course it is. It’s a great show. It’ll find its audience.”
“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Charlie says.
“Mmm,” Eric murmurs. It’s not agreement, really. Eric’s been a realist for as long as Charlie’s known him. He just has one hell of a blind spot. So maybe the cars aren’t the only reason Charlie doesn’t always like Vince.
When Charlie gets back into bed, now that they’re both cleaned-off enough to sleep, Eric is staring at the ceiling. Charlie says, “Shouldn’t I be the one thinking this is all gonna go to hell next week?”
“Nah,” Eric says, “that’s what you pay me for.” He laughs, and turns onto his side. Charlie gets the light.
* * *
Charlie wakes up because the phone is ringing. Eric has already woken up, turned on the coffee-machine, powered up his computer, and got into the shower.
Eric must hear it from the bathroom, because the water stops. Eric shouts, “If it’s Vince, answer it and tell him to bring me a shirt to the studio?”
“Right,” Charlie calls, and the water starts again.
Sure enough, it’s Vince calling Eric’s cell. Charlie answers it. “Hey, Vince.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah. Look, Eric’s in the shower. He says can you bring him a clean shirt to your thing this morning? You guys have a meeting?”
“We have a brunch… thing. Warners. Not serious, just a chat.” Vince pauses. “I thought you were driving E back here last night?”
“Yeah, I think your place was a little crowded. We just crashed here instead.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Charlie answers, because what else can he say? Either Vince knows or he doesn’t - Charlie’s not gonna spell it out for him.
Eric comes back into the bedroom, towelling off his hair. He says, “That Vince?”
“Yeah,” Charlie says, and hands over the phone. Eric smiles when he says, “Hey,” and wedges the phone between his ear and shoulder as he gathers up his clothes.
Eric hangs up before he puts his shirt on, and then walks to the door.
Charlie says, “You need a ride?”
“No, I called a cab. But thanks. Remember you’re shooting another promo at three, I’ll see you there.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says, “later.”
Eric looks at him for a second, and he could be thinking about anything. He frowns, and then- It’s not a kiss so much as a really clumsy handshake; they crash into each other and Eric pats Charlie’s back, with his mouth somewhere below Charlie’s ear. “Later,” Eric says.
Charlie echoes it. “Later”
* * *
Charlie doesn’t see Vince again until the next week, when the pilot airs. They have a screening party and because Vince is in the pilot, and Eric organised the evening, the guys are too. Ari Gold is there, for fucks sake, and Natasha and some of the other cast-members give Charlie weird impressed looks. Eric knows some scary people, no doubt about that.
This time, Charlie is drinking and when Eric gets there, Charlie hugs him. “See? Look at this crowd. I told you I was all ready to carry the Murphy Group for you.”
He doesn’t hear Vince come up behind them. Vince grabs Eric’s shoulder and asks, “Who’s carrying the Murphy Group now?” He puts his hand to his chest in pretended injury. “E, I’m hurt.”
Charlie still remembers Eric saying, “You’re the only one that matters.” The first time he heard Vince Chase’s voice someplace that wasn’t a movie or an interview was on Eric’s speakerphone. Eric was in LA, Vince was in Mexico, and Charlie was waiting outside Eric’s office. Eric had been Charlie’s manager for three weeks, and Eric had said, “Vin, please. Will you please just come home?” Charlie had wanted to punch Vince, just a little bit.
Turtle and Drama wander up, and this is turning into a really awkward scene. Then Ari Gold appears, and looks between Charlie and Vince. He says, “If this is gonna turn into a cock-measuring contest, I have to warn you - I’ll win.”
Eric ignores that, but not Ari, and says, “I need to talk to you about the Warners meeting.”
“It was a brunch!” Ari protests. “You told me it was brunch. If Vinnie did more than smile and order a bagel, I should have been there.”
“It was a brunch, Ari,” Eric says. “I still need to talk to you.” He walks away with Ari, leaving Vince and Charlie to stare at each other.
Charlie looks across the room instead, at the very exclusive party he’s found himself hosting, in a club he couldn’t have got into two years ago.
Charlie says, “Shit,” at the same time Vince says, “What the hell?”
Under normal circumstances, Charlie thinks it’s pretty cool that his manager has a nemesis. Less cool when he was trying to get his pilot shot, but normally, yeah. Today isn’t normal circumstances.
Vince says, “Seth Green? How did he get in here?”
“Beats me,” Charlie says. “I haven’t been near the guy since-”
“Exactly. So what the fuck?”
“No idea. You wanna deal with it, or will I? He can’t stay here. Eric’s gonna-”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“So one of us should go over there.” Vince turns and points, back to where they last saw Seth. Of course, he isn’t there anymore.
They circle the room, but by the time they find Seth, he’s only a few steps away from Eric. Eric looks around.
“E,” Seth says.
“Seth,” Eric says. “Get the hell out of here.” His voice is pitched low, and very calm. If Charlie didn’t know better, he might not even notice how close Eric is to just decking the guy.
“E, man, I’m just here to show my support. It’s a great show, I always thought that. It’s just a fucking pity you couldn’t get past the Sloan thing - maybe I could have helped out.”
Eric sighs. He says, “You know what, Seth? I’ve been waiting like five years to say this. Get the fuck away from me before I get security to toss you out on your ass.”
Seth raises his hands in a ‘bring it on’ gesture.
Eric lifts one hand. Four guys appear behind him: dark suits and sunglasses. They step around Eric, towards Seth.
Eric keeps watching until Seth has backed away and out of the party. Then he turns to Charlie and Vince. “Yeah. That felt good.”
“Fuck.” Charlie looks at Vince. “Our manager’s pretty badass.”
“Yeah,” Vince says, “he really is.” Vince wraps his arm around Eric in a backwards hug.
Eric maybe leans into it a little, and then bats Charlie’s shoulder. “Showtime, c’mon.” He steps out of Vince’s hold, and grabs both of their arms. “My two favourite clients in one show. I’d like to actually see the goddamn thing.”
Eric pulls them both across the room to the best view of the screens. He sits them down and retreats back across the club to one of the corners. Before the pilot starts, Charlie watches him take three phone calls, hold one conversation with Ari and one with the network rep, and then record a series of hasty notes. The network voiceover teases for the start of the show, and all that stops. Eric turns to look at the screen, his phone muted in his hand.
Vince leans his head close to Charlie. “Don’t take it personally. He’s just… he’s like that sometimes now.”
Charlie’s a half-second away from hitting Vince.
Vince says. “You know, I asked him to come out here because he was dying in Queens. He was turning into one of those guys from the neighbourhood, with the job he hated and the straight path to wife and kids and a middle age fuck up. We came out here so we wouldn’t have to grow up and get real jobs. And Eric’s ended up with more on his plate than any of our parents would have dreamed of. I did that to him.”
Charlie looks at Eric across the room, in his nice suit and with the little frown that’s never quite off his face.
Vince says, “I swear, I think he’s really gonna have a heart attack some day soon. And it’s my fault - I broke him. Or Medellín, and Mexico, but now… He’s never all there. He’s thinking about the last meeting, and the next meeting, and it’s still about you but it’s not about you, you know?”
Charlie says, “Vince, man…”
“I didn’t mean to, and it wasn’t… but yeah. It’s not you, or me, or whatever you think. He’s giving you everything he’s got.”
Charlie looks at Vince. “And why the hell would I want any more than that?”
Eric hisses, “Guys. It’s about to start.” He’s walked over to the couch, bending over the back of it to talk to them. Eric sits down there, balancing on a table so they can hear it when he laughs, though he’s seen the thing a hundred times by now.
When the show ends, and their friends and family are all applauding, Eric whispers in Charlie’s ear. “I’ve got to go start working on numbers and early word. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow.” He pauses. “You were great, okay? No matter what happens, you were great, and everyone’s gonna see that. It’s all gonna be good.”
Charlie nods, and waits for Eric to leave before looking at Vince. Vince gives him a hand up and says, “E’s right. He’s almost always right. Remember that, okay?”
“Not gonna be a problem.”
Vince shakes his head, and walks into the middle of the party. Charlie calls his mom, and asks if she saw the way Eric just made good on that promise of his. It’s just the first step, but if E’s in this for the long haul then Charlie is too. He trusts Eric to do right by him - there’s not a whole lot more he could ask for.
FIN.