WTF-27 End of the World As We Know It-Entourage V/E
Author: Ceares
Title: End of the World as We Know It
Fandom:Entourage
Prompt: oo8/Apocalypse Now
Pairing: Vince/other, Vince/Eric
Warnings: no real spoilers that I'm aware of--does mention movies and peripheral characters from various seasons.
Notes: This has been sitting on my hard drive for almost a year. A huge, huge thanks to Linsey for the beta. Any mistakes left are entirely my own. For WTF27
End of the World as We Know it
Prologue
They led a charmed life. Golden and glorious, but nothing gold can stay. They weren’t prepared for the end, but then very few people ever are, even when they know it’s coming. They never suspected though.One minute everything was normal, the next, there were unnatural noises, bright lights and people shouting hysterically.
Eric slammed the door shut in the face of the mass of paparazzi on their doorstep. "What the fuck?"
"What's up?"
"There's like a million paps out there." He already had his phone out, when it rang. "Ari, what the fuck is going on?"
"Fucking, Apocalypse Now---that's what's going on. I'll be there in five minutes. Turn on the tv, fuck head!"
Someone already had by the time Eric got to the den and Turtle, Drama and Vince were frozen in front of the screen.
"Fuck me!" Turtle covered his eyes.
Johnny shook his head, staring at his brother in shock. "Jesus, Vince!"
Eric stared at the tv a few seconds, then turned away. He gripped the phone tight enough that edge dug an imprint into his hand, and started making phone calls.
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11AM:
"Just how the hell am I supposed to spin this?" Shauna snatched the drink out of Eric's hand and downed it. "Thank God I'm not breast-feeding. And where the fuck were you when all this was going on?"
Eric kept his voice calm with effort. "I'm Vince's manager Shauna, I'm not attached to his dick."
Vince winced and sent him an apologetic look that was really fucking too little, too late as far as Eric was concerned. That was Vince all over, forgiveness instead of permission-a flash of pretty eyes and that gorgeous fucking smile and he got away with anything. It wasn’t going to work this time though. This shit was pretty untenable.
Shauna snorted and knocked back the rest of her drink.
"Too bad you're not. At least if it had been you he was nobbing, you'd have had more sense than to let some skank film the shit." Ari refilled his own glass along with Shauna's.
Eric rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah, sure. Here that Vince? Next time you decided to have a threesome, please invite me to keep the cameras away."
"This shit is not funny E! This is the fucking end. You couldn't do this while you were still with Amanda. Oh no, you have to come back to me and fuck us all. "
"Fuck you guys! This is not my fault." Eric turned his back to them, setting his own drink down carefully. He noticed his hand was shaking slightly.
Ari shook his head. “No, mostly it’s your boy Vince here, who decided to explore an alternative lifestyle on film. Where is your partner in crime anyway?"
"Australia, he had some re-shoots onTapping the Source.”
Ari laughed sharply. "Oh, I'm sure Harvey is loving this shit. Though knowing that bastard, he'll find some way to work it to his benefit. You on the other hand my friend, have fucked the pooch on this one. Three days after the goddamned nomination! "
Vince shrugged, giving Ari his 'fuck it' smile, but Eric could tell it was forced. "I probably wasn't going to win anyway, Ari."
"Forget the Oscar. We need to make sure you still have some kind of career." Shauna paused. "At least frickin' Ian McKellen, and not Rupert Everett."
"Yeah, and that might work if Vinnie looked like Ian McKellen, but he doesn't." Ari shook his head. "We are so fucked, we make Jenna Jameson look like a virgin."
"Hey guys! Calm down. It's not the end of the world."
"Vince..." Johnny came in the room tentatively, and passed him the phone. "It's Ma."
For the first time, Vince actually looked the way the rest of them felt. Vince and Eric looked at each other, and Eric winced in momentary sympathy.
"Shit! Now it's the end of the world."
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1PM:
“Okay, look --- there’s just something like thirty seconds of kissing right? We can work with that.”
Ari nodded, wanting to be convinced. “Right, we can work with that. We’ll play up the young, wild, bad boy angle.”
Shauna nodded. “Right. A threesome, they were a little drunk, and things got a little crazy you know. I mean boys kiss boys these days-look at Colin Farrell, and Dave Navarro. It was just kissing right?”
Vince shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
Eric looked at him sharply. He had been leaning against the door, watching them wrangle, but he straightened up at Vince’s tone. Before he could say anything though, Vince’s phone rang. Eric was the only one to notice that it was Vince’s phone. The real one, not the one most people used-that one went through Eric. Very few people had his actual number.
“Hi.” Vince grinned. “Yeah? You’re lucky, I’ve got about five times that outside my door.” He gave a small chuckle. “Fast enough to make me dizzy.”
Ari and Shauna had stopped talking and were watching Vince now, their expressions half curious, half worried.
Vince’s voice lowered into a tone Eric recognized with dread, and he half turned his back to them. Eric’s stomach dropped. Fuck!
“Ah-yeah. Yeah, okay. Uh-huh. Me too. Bye.” He turned back and gave them a particularly innocent smile that meant nothing but trouble. “That was Paul. His people are going to call you, Shauna so you can coordinate things. You know, so our stories don’t contradict each other.”
Ari frowned. “What do you mean contradict each other? Threesome, drinking, shit happened; end of story right?”
Vince nodded. “Oh yeah, absolutely that’s how it started.”
Eric watched as Ari almost literally froze. “Started?”
“Well, we sort of…”He trailed off, eyes flicking pleadingly in Eric’s direction for the usual rescue.
Eric hesitated for a moment, but even pissed, he was still a sucker for that look. “They’re fucking.” It didn’t mean he had to make it easy though--not on anyone.
Shauna sat down, dropping her head in her hands. “Shit.”
“They’re fuck…”Ari couldn’t even get the words out. He collapsed next to Shauna, for once in complete solidarity with the publicist. “You’re fucking, Paul Walker?”
Vince shrugged sheepishly. “Well in the interest of complete disclosure. Kind of, yeah.”
Eric left.
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2PM
“I can’t believe Vince is gay.” Johnny leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.
“He’s not gay, Drama. It was a threesome. Sometimes people get carried away. You know how that works.”
“Fuck you Turtle! We accidentally crossed swords, we didn’t try and swallow each other’s tonsils.” Turtle slugged him on the arm, leading to a brief scuffle that Eric really didn't have the energy to try and break up.
“He’s. Not. Gay.” Eric thought Turtle sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Johnny.
Drama tuned him out, focused on himself as usual. “They say it could be genetic. What if I’m gay too?”
Eric sighed. “Then that’ll be twice as much sex you don’t get, Drama.” He was tired of talking about it already, tired of thinking about it, and he knew it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. “Look. Gay, bi, experimenting, whatever you want to call it, Vince is doing it.” They both looked at him in shock.
“It wasn’t just a one time thing okay? And unless Ari and Shauna can pull a miracle out of their asses, this is gonna be a shit storm for a long time.”
Johnny tried to grin. “Well, let’s hope somebody sleeps with somebody’s husband soon, or Mel Gibson feels like a drink.” It was half hearted at best.
Turtle looked between the two of them incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding me? Oh no way-fuck this!” he stormed off, heading upstairs.
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4PM:
Eric sat by the pool, watching the security guards patrol the grounds to keep any of the more daring photographers out. He’d turned his phone off long ago, and he'd advised their friends to do the same. Everybody from their mother's to Vince's fucking stylist had been getting calls for information and interviews. He could imagine the headlines, and all the stories from anonymous sources, from 'family friends'--meaning the fucking pool boy.
Eric sighed and leaned back onto the lounger. It had been almost five hours since the world had started to crumble around them. Three hours since he’d dug out his emergency pack of cigarettes and he was already on his seventh one.
Vince came and sat next to him, frowning slightly at the cigarette. Eric shrugged, and took another drag. “Still crazy in there?”
“Yeah.” He leaned back as well, stretching out and tucking his hands behind his head. “Right now, they’re arguing over which talk show I’m going to do. Johnny is watching porn, and Turtle won’t come out of his room.”
Eric glanced over at him. “So, you and Paul Walker?”
Vince shrugged. “What can I say? He’s a nice guy-a lot of fun you know? It just sort happened. First the threesome, and then things went from there.”
“Just another exciting adventure in the life of Vincent Chase’s dick.” Eric rolled his eyes, putting out his cigarette and resisting the urge to light another one.
Vince cocked an eyebrow. “Are you a little mad about this, E?”
“Yeah Vince, I’m a little mad about this.”
Vince sat up, his faux earnest look going full blast. “Is it the guy thing? Cause if it is, I’m surprised at you Eric.”
“What do you mean?” He wasn't in the mood to play but it was obvious that Vince was, and when he was, resistance was not only futile, it was frustrating.
“I mean, you had a crush on Reed Fatone-I even caught the two of you together. I figured you’d understand about Paul.”
“A. I did not have a crush on Reed. B. It was a circle jerk you idiot-we were twelve. And C. All of a sudden you have a crush? A minute ago he was just a nice guy.”
“I don’t have a crush on him. You gotta admit though, he is cute.”
“Yeah, almost as cute as you.” It was mumbled under his breath, but Vince heard anyway. He grinned. Eric refused to be sidetracked, glaring at him.
Vince shrugged. “The point is, I thought you’d be more understanding.” He leaned back again, propping his feet up on Eric's chair. Eric shoved him off, and they popped right back up again. He ignored them this time.
“Really? That’s why you never mentioned it to me?”
“What? Am I supposed to tell you everybody I fuck now?”
Eric didn’t bother to mention that Vince usually did anyway. “No, just the ones who could fuck up your career.” He shook his head. “I don’t care that you fuck guys Vince, though you could have told me. Do you not get how huge this is?”
“Yeah, I just…yeah.”
For the first time the happy go lucky façade fell away and Eric saw the worry in Vince’s eyes.
He bopped Vince’s foot with one fist. “Hey, it’ll work out, all right?”
“Right. I can always do stage, or hell go to England or something. They’re more liberal about that stuff right? We won’t starve.”
“Nope. If it comes down to it, we can always eat Drama.”
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8PM:
Eric tried not to let it bother him. He really did, especially since he didn’t know why it bothered him so much. It didn’t bother him the way it did Turtle who’d finally come out of his room, but was still torn between discomfort and disbelief, or Drama who felt the need to reassert his own masculinity at every turn, or even Ari and Shauna who'd finally stopped making plans and calls and gone home. But still he felt a surge of …something, every time Vince’s phone rang-which at this point was something like every thirty minutes--and Paul was on the other end.
It had gotten to the point where every time he heard the ring tone, Eric left the room, only returning after he thought sufficient time had passed for them to finish.
10PM
“Are you gonna keep seeing him?”
Vince shrugged. “Maybe. Are you going to keep being weird about it?”
Eric mimicked the shrug. “Maybe.”
“Eric, look…”
He recognized the look in Vince’s eyes. One he’d seen a thousand times before. This time it pissed him off.
“What the fuck Vince--you want me decide this for you too?”
After bringing the world down around their ears, he was pulling the same old shit, and for a moment Eric felt sorry for Paul-except Vince was staring at him now in a way that made him think maybe he’d been completely wrong about what was going on.
“Yeah, I do.”
Eric shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Vince gave him a half smile.“Well, when you do, let me know.”
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12AM
Eric’s eyes popped open, his heart beating a rapid thud in his chest. He sat up and ran a hand over his face, trying to orient himself. It took him a moment to remember everything that had happened. “Shit!” He was out of bed, down the hall and in Vince’s room, before he could even finish his thought.
Vince woke up when he sat on the bed, turning sleep heavy eyes to him in confusion. “E? What’s wrong?”
He sat down on the side of the bed. “No. Don’t see him anymore.”
Vince came awake at that, sitting up in the bed. “It took you long enough.” But he was grinning and reaching for Eric even as he said it.
Eric batted his hands away. "Oh, do not even give me that look, and try and tell me that you banged Paul Walker to get my attention."
Vince shrugged. "I didn't, not really. I mean it’s not like it was a plan or anything. But you know, I kinda like how it worked out." He grinned. "Besides, this way I don't have to come up with some lame excuse to start feeling you up."
This time Eric didn’t bat away the hand making it’s way up his thigh, but he did put his own hand on top, stopping it at the edge of his boxers. He could feel the grin stretching his own face. "Fuck you! I'm not as easy as your pretty boy."
“I don’t know, E--you come in my room in the middle of the night, in just your boxers, you get in my bed. That says pretty easy to me.”
Epilogue:
The apocalypse came and went, and the world was rebuilt, somewhat differently, as is the way of these things.
For good or bad, Vince’s career was never what it had been. The scripts dried up at first-on pause for the court of public opinion, and while Ari was tearing his hair out, Vince did as he’d once threatened and took a play.
Turtle settled enough to add tasteless gay jokes to the rest of his repertoire of tastelessness, and Johnny somewhat ambivalently accepted that batting for both teams wasn’t really his forte-it was yet another field he had to cede to his younger brother.
Vince’s play was a success, and New York was home. If they missed Los Angeles, well none of them would cop to it, especially around Vince. Billy showed up about six months after ‘the day’, with a part he’d written specifically for Vince. The movie took the Palm D’Or and suddenly Vince was a hot property again-not as a movie star this time, but as an actor.
Ari eventually calmed down enough not to call Eric every morning at 5am and spew obscenities. He kept it to just on the big Friday movie openings. After Vince got his second Oscar nomination, he stopped all together.
In the end, E proved…not quite as easy as Vince had hoped, but not exactly difficult either.
Title: End of the World as We Know It
Fandom:Entourage
Prompt: oo8/Apocalypse Now
Pairing: Vince/other, Vince/Eric
Warnings: no real spoilers that I'm aware of--does mention movies and peripheral characters from various seasons.
Notes: This has been sitting on my hard drive for almost a year. A huge, huge thanks to Linsey for the beta. Any mistakes left are entirely my own. For WTF27
End of the World as We Know it
Prologue
They led a charmed life. Golden and glorious, but nothing gold can stay. They weren’t prepared for the end, but then very few people ever are, even when they know it’s coming. They never suspected though.One minute everything was normal, the next, there were unnatural noises, bright lights and people shouting hysterically.
Eric slammed the door shut in the face of the mass of paparazzi on their doorstep. "What the fuck?"
"What's up?"
"There's like a million paps out there." He already had his phone out, when it rang. "Ari, what the fuck is going on?"
"Fucking, Apocalypse Now---that's what's going on. I'll be there in five minutes. Turn on the tv, fuck head!"
Someone already had by the time Eric got to the den and Turtle, Drama and Vince were frozen in front of the screen.
"Fuck me!" Turtle covered his eyes.
Johnny shook his head, staring at his brother in shock. "Jesus, Vince!"
Eric stared at the tv a few seconds, then turned away. He gripped the phone tight enough that edge dug an imprint into his hand, and started making phone calls.
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11AM:
"Just how the hell am I supposed to spin this?" Shauna snatched the drink out of Eric's hand and downed it. "Thank God I'm not breast-feeding. And where the fuck were you when all this was going on?"
Eric kept his voice calm with effort. "I'm Vince's manager Shauna, I'm not attached to his dick."
Vince winced and sent him an apologetic look that was really fucking too little, too late as far as Eric was concerned. That was Vince all over, forgiveness instead of permission-a flash of pretty eyes and that gorgeous fucking smile and he got away with anything. It wasn’t going to work this time though. This shit was pretty untenable.
Shauna snorted and knocked back the rest of her drink.
"Too bad you're not. At least if it had been you he was nobbing, you'd have had more sense than to let some skank film the shit." Ari refilled his own glass along with Shauna's.
Eric rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah, sure. Here that Vince? Next time you decided to have a threesome, please invite me to keep the cameras away."
"This shit is not funny E! This is the fucking end. You couldn't do this while you were still with Amanda. Oh no, you have to come back to me and fuck us all. "
"Fuck you guys! This is not my fault." Eric turned his back to them, setting his own drink down carefully. He noticed his hand was shaking slightly.
Ari shook his head. “No, mostly it’s your boy Vince here, who decided to explore an alternative lifestyle on film. Where is your partner in crime anyway?"
"Australia, he had some re-shoots onTapping the Source.”
Ari laughed sharply. "Oh, I'm sure Harvey is loving this shit. Though knowing that bastard, he'll find some way to work it to his benefit. You on the other hand my friend, have fucked the pooch on this one. Three days after the goddamned nomination! "
Vince shrugged, giving Ari his 'fuck it' smile, but Eric could tell it was forced. "I probably wasn't going to win anyway, Ari."
"Forget the Oscar. We need to make sure you still have some kind of career." Shauna paused. "At least frickin' Ian McKellen, and not Rupert Everett."
"Yeah, and that might work if Vinnie looked like Ian McKellen, but he doesn't." Ari shook his head. "We are so fucked, we make Jenna Jameson look like a virgin."
"Hey guys! Calm down. It's not the end of the world."
"Vince..." Johnny came in the room tentatively, and passed him the phone. "It's Ma."
For the first time, Vince actually looked the way the rest of them felt. Vince and Eric looked at each other, and Eric winced in momentary sympathy.
"Shit! Now it's the end of the world."
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1PM:
“Okay, look --- there’s just something like thirty seconds of kissing right? We can work with that.”
Ari nodded, wanting to be convinced. “Right, we can work with that. We’ll play up the young, wild, bad boy angle.”
Shauna nodded. “Right. A threesome, they were a little drunk, and things got a little crazy you know. I mean boys kiss boys these days-look at Colin Farrell, and Dave Navarro. It was just kissing right?”
Vince shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
Eric looked at him sharply. He had been leaning against the door, watching them wrangle, but he straightened up at Vince’s tone. Before he could say anything though, Vince’s phone rang. Eric was the only one to notice that it was Vince’s phone. The real one, not the one most people used-that one went through Eric. Very few people had his actual number.
“Hi.” Vince grinned. “Yeah? You’re lucky, I’ve got about five times that outside my door.” He gave a small chuckle. “Fast enough to make me dizzy.”
Ari and Shauna had stopped talking and were watching Vince now, their expressions half curious, half worried.
Vince’s voice lowered into a tone Eric recognized with dread, and he half turned his back to them. Eric’s stomach dropped. Fuck!
“Ah-yeah. Yeah, okay. Uh-huh. Me too. Bye.” He turned back and gave them a particularly innocent smile that meant nothing but trouble. “That was Paul. His people are going to call you, Shauna so you can coordinate things. You know, so our stories don’t contradict each other.”
Ari frowned. “What do you mean contradict each other? Threesome, drinking, shit happened; end of story right?”
Vince nodded. “Oh yeah, absolutely that’s how it started.”
Eric watched as Ari almost literally froze. “Started?”
“Well, we sort of…”He trailed off, eyes flicking pleadingly in Eric’s direction for the usual rescue.
Eric hesitated for a moment, but even pissed, he was still a sucker for that look. “They’re fucking.” It didn’t mean he had to make it easy though--not on anyone.
Shauna sat down, dropping her head in her hands. “Shit.”
“They’re fuck…”Ari couldn’t even get the words out. He collapsed next to Shauna, for once in complete solidarity with the publicist. “You’re fucking, Paul Walker?”
Vince shrugged sheepishly. “Well in the interest of complete disclosure. Kind of, yeah.”
Eric left.
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2PM
“I can’t believe Vince is gay.” Johnny leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.
“He’s not gay, Drama. It was a threesome. Sometimes people get carried away. You know how that works.”
“Fuck you Turtle! We accidentally crossed swords, we didn’t try and swallow each other’s tonsils.” Turtle slugged him on the arm, leading to a brief scuffle that Eric really didn't have the energy to try and break up.
“He’s. Not. Gay.” Eric thought Turtle sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Johnny.
Drama tuned him out, focused on himself as usual. “They say it could be genetic. What if I’m gay too?”
Eric sighed. “Then that’ll be twice as much sex you don’t get, Drama.” He was tired of talking about it already, tired of thinking about it, and he knew it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. “Look. Gay, bi, experimenting, whatever you want to call it, Vince is doing it.” They both looked at him in shock.
“It wasn’t just a one time thing okay? And unless Ari and Shauna can pull a miracle out of their asses, this is gonna be a shit storm for a long time.”
Johnny tried to grin. “Well, let’s hope somebody sleeps with somebody’s husband soon, or Mel Gibson feels like a drink.” It was half hearted at best.
Turtle looked between the two of them incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding me? Oh no way-fuck this!” he stormed off, heading upstairs.
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4PM:
Eric sat by the pool, watching the security guards patrol the grounds to keep any of the more daring photographers out. He’d turned his phone off long ago, and he'd advised their friends to do the same. Everybody from their mother's to Vince's fucking stylist had been getting calls for information and interviews. He could imagine the headlines, and all the stories from anonymous sources, from 'family friends'--meaning the fucking pool boy.
Eric sighed and leaned back onto the lounger. It had been almost five hours since the world had started to crumble around them. Three hours since he’d dug out his emergency pack of cigarettes and he was already on his seventh one.
Vince came and sat next to him, frowning slightly at the cigarette. Eric shrugged, and took another drag. “Still crazy in there?”
“Yeah.” He leaned back as well, stretching out and tucking his hands behind his head. “Right now, they’re arguing over which talk show I’m going to do. Johnny is watching porn, and Turtle won’t come out of his room.”
Eric glanced over at him. “So, you and Paul Walker?”
Vince shrugged. “What can I say? He’s a nice guy-a lot of fun you know? It just sort happened. First the threesome, and then things went from there.”
“Just another exciting adventure in the life of Vincent Chase’s dick.” Eric rolled his eyes, putting out his cigarette and resisting the urge to light another one.
Vince cocked an eyebrow. “Are you a little mad about this, E?”
“Yeah Vince, I’m a little mad about this.”
Vince sat up, his faux earnest look going full blast. “Is it the guy thing? Cause if it is, I’m surprised at you Eric.”
“What do you mean?” He wasn't in the mood to play but it was obvious that Vince was, and when he was, resistance was not only futile, it was frustrating.
“I mean, you had a crush on Reed Fatone-I even caught the two of you together. I figured you’d understand about Paul.”
“A. I did not have a crush on Reed. B. It was a circle jerk you idiot-we were twelve. And C. All of a sudden you have a crush? A minute ago he was just a nice guy.”
“I don’t have a crush on him. You gotta admit though, he is cute.”
“Yeah, almost as cute as you.” It was mumbled under his breath, but Vince heard anyway. He grinned. Eric refused to be sidetracked, glaring at him.
Vince shrugged. “The point is, I thought you’d be more understanding.” He leaned back again, propping his feet up on Eric's chair. Eric shoved him off, and they popped right back up again. He ignored them this time.
“Really? That’s why you never mentioned it to me?”
“What? Am I supposed to tell you everybody I fuck now?”
Eric didn’t bother to mention that Vince usually did anyway. “No, just the ones who could fuck up your career.” He shook his head. “I don’t care that you fuck guys Vince, though you could have told me. Do you not get how huge this is?”
“Yeah, I just…yeah.”
For the first time the happy go lucky façade fell away and Eric saw the worry in Vince’s eyes.
He bopped Vince’s foot with one fist. “Hey, it’ll work out, all right?”
“Right. I can always do stage, or hell go to England or something. They’re more liberal about that stuff right? We won’t starve.”
“Nope. If it comes down to it, we can always eat Drama.”
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8PM:
Eric tried not to let it bother him. He really did, especially since he didn’t know why it bothered him so much. It didn’t bother him the way it did Turtle who’d finally come out of his room, but was still torn between discomfort and disbelief, or Drama who felt the need to reassert his own masculinity at every turn, or even Ari and Shauna who'd finally stopped making plans and calls and gone home. But still he felt a surge of …something, every time Vince’s phone rang-which at this point was something like every thirty minutes--and Paul was on the other end.
It had gotten to the point where every time he heard the ring tone, Eric left the room, only returning after he thought sufficient time had passed for them to finish.
10PM
“Are you gonna keep seeing him?”
Vince shrugged. “Maybe. Are you going to keep being weird about it?”
Eric mimicked the shrug. “Maybe.”
“Eric, look…”
He recognized the look in Vince’s eyes. One he’d seen a thousand times before. This time it pissed him off.
“What the fuck Vince--you want me decide this for you too?”
After bringing the world down around their ears, he was pulling the same old shit, and for a moment Eric felt sorry for Paul-except Vince was staring at him now in a way that made him think maybe he’d been completely wrong about what was going on.
“Yeah, I do.”
Eric shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Vince gave him a half smile.“Well, when you do, let me know.”
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12AM
Eric’s eyes popped open, his heart beating a rapid thud in his chest. He sat up and ran a hand over his face, trying to orient himself. It took him a moment to remember everything that had happened. “Shit!” He was out of bed, down the hall and in Vince’s room, before he could even finish his thought.
Vince woke up when he sat on the bed, turning sleep heavy eyes to him in confusion. “E? What’s wrong?”
He sat down on the side of the bed. “No. Don’t see him anymore.”
Vince came awake at that, sitting up in the bed. “It took you long enough.” But he was grinning and reaching for Eric even as he said it.
Eric batted his hands away. "Oh, do not even give me that look, and try and tell me that you banged Paul Walker to get my attention."
Vince shrugged. "I didn't, not really. I mean it’s not like it was a plan or anything. But you know, I kinda like how it worked out." He grinned. "Besides, this way I don't have to come up with some lame excuse to start feeling you up."
This time Eric didn’t bat away the hand making it’s way up his thigh, but he did put his own hand on top, stopping it at the edge of his boxers. He could feel the grin stretching his own face. "Fuck you! I'm not as easy as your pretty boy."
“I don’t know, E--you come in my room in the middle of the night, in just your boxers, you get in my bed. That says pretty easy to me.”
Epilogue:
The apocalypse came and went, and the world was rebuilt, somewhat differently, as is the way of these things.
For good or bad, Vince’s career was never what it had been. The scripts dried up at first-on pause for the court of public opinion, and while Ari was tearing his hair out, Vince did as he’d once threatened and took a play.
Turtle settled enough to add tasteless gay jokes to the rest of his repertoire of tastelessness, and Johnny somewhat ambivalently accepted that batting for both teams wasn’t really his forte-it was yet another field he had to cede to his younger brother.
Vince’s play was a success, and New York was home. If they missed Los Angeles, well none of them would cop to it, especially around Vince. Billy showed up about six months after ‘the day’, with a part he’d written specifically for Vince. The movie took the Palm D’Or and suddenly Vince was a hot property again-not as a movie star this time, but as an actor.
Ari eventually calmed down enough not to call Eric every morning at 5am and spew obscenities. He kept it to just on the big Friday movie openings. After Vince got his second Oscar nomination, he stopped all together.
In the end, E proved…not quite as easy as Vince had hoped, but not exactly difficult either.