one hundred and forty-five.
The weather and my family continue to try and bring me down. I start the internship on Monday along with obligatory driving lessons because my parents don't know I've been driving for two years now. Fail.
So, julietofspades made a casting post of epic win for The Sun Also Rises which is one of my favorite novels. Which makes me want to read it again except I left my copy in London and my father owns every thing Hemingway has ever written bar this.
Now, a really self indulgent round up of the fic I wrote for Michelle's rpf meme. Look away if rpf makes you squeamish, ladies!
I have to say-- my absolute favorite pairing that came out of this is Marion Cotillard/James Franco. Anyone willing to photoshop this for me will get love and cookies and devotion because I'm fairly certain this is my new OTP.
a private affair. clemence poesy/eva green, eva green/marion cotillard. (eva green)
She fucks Clem in an empty bedroom upstairs at a party and they will both pretend to be sixteen even though they are not.
Her fingers are slick when she touches her hand after and Clem smiles as they dress, quietly, quickly and Eva does not but she murmurs a quick thank you when she is handed her bra and they leave the smell of sex on the bed.
It's not the first time. It won't be the last.
+
She's made something of a habit of this, after Marion, fucking around, she supposes some would call it. Not that she-- she was exactly celibate before.
But it's accelerated now. Some search for a release.
At night, she feels a cold air near her legs and a voice laughing back at her.
Her therapist calls it insomnia, ignorant fucker.
+
Back then she fucked Marion in a closet in Daniel's apartment, he didn't ask to watch but she did, she sat on a chair and watched Daniel fuck her and gave instructions.
After, he'd laughed and Marion had said nothing but they didn't do it again.
+
The newspapers seem to think it's something of a national tragedy but Eva, Eva does not think like that, she thinks it is ironic because the dark one, the tragic one was supposed to be her and in the end, she thinks, maybe it still is.
She takes to reading the obituaries more regularly, just sort of scanning over the page. It's become something of a habit.
+
"I'm leaving Guillaume," she'd said once.
Eva hadn't believed her and they'd fought about it and fucked about and it had almost ended there.
It didn't, though. Sometimes, she thinks, it still hasn't ended.
+
She did fuck Guillaume, he was a terrible lay, though maybe grief had something to do with that, he maybe cried afterward and she told him she fucked his girlfriend but he wasn't even listening.
Melanie, too but that was cold and quiet and different and in some ways, more terrible.
+
There's a Hollywood special on it. It offends her a little, because Oscar or no Oscar, Hollywood doesn't have much claim and she doesn't watch it, all sorts of nonsense about the young French starlet with a promising future.
"You and her-- you fucked, didn't you?" Clem asks.
"I don't want to talk about it."
She realizes she sounds more vulnerable in those words than she has ever let herself be with Clem before, but the girl doesn't notice just shrugs her pale shoulders, says "she was very beautiful" and then goes down on Eva like the whole conversation never happened and she is left with the salty taste of tears in her mouth and her hand on the blond head between her legs.
+
Daniel calls.
"You know, this reminds me of a movie we once did, Green."
"Go to hell."
She hangs up to the sound of his laughter and she is sitting in a taxi that is till and oh, god, he is right.
we are savages. daniel craig/marion cotillard.
She's on the hotel balcony with nothing on. It's a few hours before dawn, so he supposes she's safe and it's too many floors up for a camera anyway. Twenty two, actually. She was counting when he fucked her in the elevator, her lips red against his throat and he thought it was the oddest thing.
"You're very rough," she smiles, finger sliding over a bruise on her side of her neck.
"Worried about having to explain it to Canet?"
She shrugs her bare shoulders, the moon plays over the line of her neck. "Guillaume's not particularly observant."
He's not surprised. Canet's never seemed all that bright.
"Well, that's a pity."
"Is it?" She stubs out the cigarette in a bowl near his arm. Some of the ash flicks over his skin, still hot.
"Well--" he leans up from the chair and runs an arm down from her neck, "I just think there's such a lot to notice."
"Very smooth, Mr Bond," and she sounds just like another French girl for another second but the light shifts in her eyes; they are similar but they are not the same and there is enough space between that time and now for this to not be replacement. He does not make spaces in his life, not ones that need to filled.
"I aim to please," he smirks.
Her laugh is just mocking enough to fascinate him. By dawn, she has printed her fingers on him as well.
have you forgotten. elizabeth i/leicester.
when we we were kids, we hated things our parents did.
Her eyes mock him, green, gold.
"You'll never have me," they say.
Always the same thing, always.
+
She wonders sometimes, when he is gone, off with the wife and on a night that her bed is empty, virgin queen, she wonders if there's a line between in his ambition and his heart, some kind of partition that will tell her which is which.
She hasn't found it yet. She wonders if she ever will.
+
They are children of time but time moves on without them.
+
“You love me don’t you, Leicester?”
She doesn’t look like a queen right now, not without the paint. There is something rough about the shape of her mouth. He hasn’t seen it bare since they were children and she was pushing him into the grass, her ankles kicking at the backs of his knees. He could catch her then. She was slippery but he managed.
“Everyone loves you, your majesty.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
She is sharp. Her breath frosts over the glass.
“If I said I would, would you marry me?”
She tips her head to one side. Her hair is loose about her shoulders.
“I might.”
“I love you with all my heart.”
He says, simply. Stares into the fire, the flames crackle and die and he should be on one knee, he should-
She laughs.
“You’re a silly boy.”
His face hardens.
“As you say.”
“I wish I loved you enough,” she whispers teasingly and the “enough”-
He wants to tell her she'd make a better whore than she would a queen but he does not.
+
Death takes something of a toll on her, each loss marked into the creases of her skin, thin beneath the paint.
She wonders now if she ever loved him.
Did she? She can never be sure.
dead hearts that i once knew. eva green/louis garrel.
The first time they fuck, she asks him not to touch her. In her low voice and bedroom eyes and he keeps his hands behind his back while she slips down on him and there's something like a release when he fucks her and it's hard then, to keep still but Louis' surprisingly good at following instructions.
After, she mocks him for it.
"You're just a boy, Garrel."
"So?" he grins and he doesn't think it's a bad thing at all.
+
"Older woman?" she asks, with the glass upside down on the table and she is moving it's mouth back and forth against the surface, leaving a trail of her lipstick on the wood.
Eva never looks for answers. She already has them but she asks anyway, it's another rule in her complicated game so he doesn't say anything and when they are quite finished playing, he take her to bed.
"She's good for me, they say," this is later, after sex, special territory marked off where nothing counts and she won't mind if he sounds stupid.
(He never sounds stupid.)
"You're bad for her, though. You're bad for everyone."
+
"Here's the thing about Garrel," Eva says to Marion, a week after the other woman's gone to bed with him, "He, the thing is--"
They are sitting at lunch, the light is coming through the windows, a little stilted and it catches in the color on Marion's lips. The woman smiles, tilts her head a little, not like she is waiting but like she is listening. There's something curious there.
Eva can't really remember what the thing about Garrel is.
+
"Have we fucked everyone then?"
"Collectively speaking?"
She lights up and grins at him. "It's a small industry, Louis."
"Yes. Very."
+
They don't make promises to each other. That's the reason it works, when the rest, Craig, Cotillard, the rest fall down like a house of cards and Garrel's left standing, as always.
+
Someone asks her once, it's not a reporter, just a fan on the street, wanting to know if she's fucked him or not.
She grins like a dreamer and says "He's always inside me."
Funny how being evasive works.
there is a light that never goes out. eva green/marion cotillard.
"We understand each other, don't we?" she asks one day, lying on her stomach with her head tipped onto one shoulder.
Eva hadn't known what to say. "Yes?"
It's the wrong answer.
+
The formal introduction was in a shop, she can't remember which one, but Marion was there for a fitting and Eva was waiting for one in a room with white arm chairs and champagne and Marion walks out into the hall in her blue and white dress and stops.
"Hello."
Eva puts down the champagne.
"We haven't met before."
"Pity, isn't it?"
"Yes." She takes up another sip. "That's a lovely dress."
"I might not take it."
Eva shrugs. "Do what you like."
+
Once, they made a list, not written down, just recited. It was a terrible idea. However-- however detached no one wants to hear a list of who their lover has fucked, whose hands have gone where yours now sit and who else has--
"So, not Leo?"
"No."
"Well, which one from Inception, then?"
"Oh, you know, the boy."
"I don't."
"He's a nice boy," she says. She appears to be smirking.
+
Eva takes her driving once in London. Apparently, Marion hasn't touched the wheel in years.
"You want to take a turn?"
"I'll kill us."
She grins, the cigarette between her teeth. "Who cares?"
+
In London, they go everywhere with hats turned down low over their eyes and sunglasses heavy on their noses and they speak French loudly. Once Marion did an American accent for the tourists-- some art museum. She was trying to be funny but Eva only smiles and said it was terrible. The paintings frown down at them.
"Don't go home," she asks later, her fingers sliding out of her and her mouth pressing hot kisses in the back of her neck.
Marion turns, her eyes shut and smiling.
"I don't know what home is anymore."
+
The apartment feels empty for a while, after, it always does, even when Marton is there and his voice is filling the space between the four brick walls.
She will come back, though. She's made certain of it.
you and i, we're the same as each other. gillian jacobs/joel mchale.
"Knock, knock."
She doesn't open it. "You realize, McHale that this is a lot less funny if you are actually at the other side of the door?"
"I hadn't considered it."
Stupid boy. He's got a bag in his hand. A takeway bag. Chinese, she thinks.
"That food had better for me."
"Or I won't be let in?"
She tips her head to one side. "Or I'll have to consider it."
"Isn't this getting kind of Method?"
"What?"
"Well, Britta's supposed to be mad at Jeff, so you're clearly taking it out on me--"
"I'm not in love with you, Joel."
"--by not letting me into your apartment." He cocks his head to one side. "You don't think there's a certain parallel in the situations?"
"No. I do not."
He shrugs.
"Want to fuck on a table?"
"I don't think so, Mc--"
They don't do it on the table. Couch is much classier.
an affair to remember. james franco/marion cotillard.
It's on the red carpet and it's funny, because he's had something of a crush and in this line of work it is best not to get attached to a pretty face across a big screen because she could be standing in front of you, flesh and blood and smirks. She turns to look at him when he coughs, her hand up shading her eyes from the sun.
"I'm a fan," he manages with a grin and her boyfriend smiles at him politely like he doesn't know who he is.
Fuck that. He's James Dean Franco.
"I've seen you in something," she says later. They are at the bar. Everyone else is talking shop. Apparently, she's not a fan of doing that with her wine.
"Have you?"
"Yes. I can't-- oh," she blushes quickly, "We have met before."
They haven't. They couldn't have. He'd have fucking remembered. (He doesn't say that bit.)
"I don't think so? I mean, I--"
"It was--" she waves her hand, "This party after the Oscars-- you were."
He was passed out on the lawn with his shirt off. Classy.
"I know the one. I'm not usually like that."
This is amusing to her. "What are you like usually?"
He's not sure what to say to her.
She ends up taking him home that night, does it beautifully, giving him a hotel room number when she kisses him goodbye just a brush of her mouth against his cheek and puts the boyfriend on a plane before meeting him.
"That was very well handled," he congratulates.
"Merci."
"They used to call me the next Dicaprio, you know?"
She rolls out of bed, all messy hair, wearing nothing but his shirt and all he can see when she stands is long legs and that half grin. "Did they really?"
"Well, not really. More James Dean, really."
"I don't know what that is."
"That's criminal."
He brings over a movie next time. They don't watch it together.
"Do you like acting?"
"That's an odd question."
"I wondered."
"It pays the bills."
She frowns. Her mouth goes down at the corners. "It can be very complicated, I think."
"You're the Oscar winner."
"Oh, Franco."
She never calls him by his first name. That bothers him.
The filming for her movie wraps up. It's something with Gwyneth Paltrow. He meets her for lunch once in the city and she's sitting at lunch with the blonde woman looking bored and when he walks up to the table, he doesn't think she's ever been this happy to see him.
"Franco!"
Gwyneth gives a small smile and excuses herself.
"That looked like an interesting conversation."
"You have no idea what she was saying. She seems to think we are friends. That baby, Franco, is not her husbands!" Marion wrinkles her nose and down the remnants of her wine. "Hollywood," she says with some disdain.
"Says the woman cheating on her boyfriend."
She kicks him under the table.
Once she comes over to his apartment.
"So, you're clever then?" she asks, archly, fingering through one of his books.
"Yale seems to think so."
"Well, it's a well kept secret."
He takes her out to a dinner the next night, somewhere small and private and no one they know. He wear his glasses and Marion laughs.
"You look like a professor."
"Not yet," he says, fingering them and he can't help but grin when she tries them on. When he kisses her, his mouth tastes like coffee and hers tastes like champagne and the combination's not as strange as it should be.
He's gotten used to her. That's all.
They both move on eventually. It's only to be expected.
He's something of a romantic, though and once in bed, with the sheets pushed down at their feet and the smoke floating over their naked skin, he'd turned to her and said "If we weren't who we are, I think I could have loved you."
She'd smiled the same half smile like when they first met and it says he doesn't know her and other half truths that she likes to relate.
"It's pretty to think so, isn't it?"
For a minute there, he thinks he does love her.
She moves on first.
It doesn't really matter, though.
the piano has been drinking. javier bardem/marion cotillard.
She makes a movie with her girlfriend and he visits her on set, smiling, his arm around Penelope's waist and Marion raises an eyebrow, it is both arch and blushing.
He doesn't really understand her, not her tongue or her body.
Maybe this is why he takes her to bed again.
+
"So, now you are doing some stupid American show?"
Her disapproval is both charming and irksome. She sits at the end of a long table with her legs up on the chair and sunglasses hiding her eyes. He sees himself caught in the dark lenses.
"It's funny."
She wrinkles her nose. "I do not understand you-- too many of you, just come here and, and--" her lips twist a little, "I don't see the point. You can do better."
She is talking about Eva, of course. He has a cigar in his mouth so he nods and doesn't say anything.
+
He takes her in an elevator once, her legs around his waist and her fingers caught in the knot of his tie, it is very foolish of them but she is laughing with her head back.
He thinks he is a little drunk on her laugh.
+
On the red carpet, Guillaume congratulates him on a performance and Marion's lips go very tight.
He only smiles.
+
"This won't last long," she told him that first night, with her legs tangled in the sheets and her hair spread out the pillow.
"Okay," he said, "Okay."
That was six months ago.
+
In Hollywood, everything is fake.
There isn't enough room in the town for her disdain. He swallows it down with a dash of something in his coffee and she smiles.
+
"You know," he tells her once, with his finger on her wrist and his head bent nears hers, "You're really not as elusive as you think."
She smirks something maddening in French.
They do not last long. A year is nothing in this line of work.
if she wants me. katie mcgrath/rebecca hall.
The first meeting is a little embarrassing. It's not that Rebecca doesn't recognize her, it's that she can't quite seem the place her and now, they are caught in some awkward guessing game with Rebecca (hopefully) running out of turns and Katie coming closer to confession.
"It's Merlin, actually. You know the tv show?"
"Oh."
"Yes."
"And you're--"
"Morgana."
"Ah."
Katie shifts her feet a little and grins.
"I haven't seen that," Rebecca confesses.
"I didn't think you had."
"So, I--"
She presses a hand against her forearm, fingers cold from the night air and that wide red smile spread out on her mouth and says "Well, I'm a big fan."
And then she walks away with something of her dignity intact.
+
The next time, she is remembered.
Rebecca waves. "Hello."
"Oh, hello. You look nice."
She fingers the dress. "I hate dressing up for these events. It's so-- well, not designed for comfort."
Katie laughs and leans forward to whisper, "Feels good when it all comes off though, doesn't it?"
There's a thin flush across her cheek. "I watched some of your show."
"Did you know? I wouldn't think it'd be your-- well, your type."
"You were lovely."
"Thank you." There's a bit of a smirk but she is pleased.
"I like your accent."
She kisses her then, it's very quick and not a lot of buildup and the room will probably fill soon so she pulls back quickly and tips her head to one side.
"You've got a bit of lipstick there."
"Well, whose fault is that?"
+
They don't make a habit of it. Well, Katie doesn't make much of a habit of anything or anyone and Rebecca learning not to.
"You can do better, you know."
They always talk shop, even in bed. It's something like a boundary line, she guesses.
Katie shuts her eyes.
"I know."
"Yes."
"And I intend to," she winks.
+
"You were in my dream the other night, you know."
"Was I?" Rebecca grins. She's leaving for New York in the morning. "What was I doing?"
"I don't remember."
She does, though. It doesn't particularly matter.
i'm a cuckoo. jack o'connel/kaya scodelario.
He turns up at her doorstep. There's no gateaux.
"I heard there's going to be a movie."
She's not going to let him in, just joins him on the step and lights up, not really looking at his face. "I heard your not going to be in it."
"Oy!"
"Aren't you supposed to be dead or something?"
"All the same," he says, straightening the imaginary collar on his Sex Pistols t shirt- "never mind the bollocks" it tells her, "I'd like to be asked."
"You don't want to make a movie, Jack."
"How would you fucking know what I want, Kaya?"
The smoke rings drift between them. His hair looks funny, she thinks, almost like it's seen a comb or something.
"I'm a very good guesser," she assures him.
He visits them on set.
Meg seems to think it's a shame he's not around more often.
"You should find something really great, Jack, that'll show them."
"On it, Prescott," and he's stupid really, coming around here every other day, with some excuse of nostalgia or friendship when he's really just waiting till she's done shooting her scenes and in a good enough mood to fuck him in the back closet with enough time to straighten her hair in case the boyfriend pops in for a visit.
"I just think--"
"Well, I've got bigger and better things to do, anyway," he winks.
"I don't think O' Connell's problem is his career," Kat says and Kaya's not sure how the fuck she knows these things but it's got to be obvious or something because now, Lily's rolling her eyes and she--
She made the mistake of taking him home with her one night.
"I can't fucking believe you said you could have married me."
"Shut up."
"Marriage, Kaya, how the fuck old do you think we are?"
Her hands press down on her eyes. "I wasn't thinking."
"Ever say that about Nick?"
"No. No, I didn't."
He's stupid enough to wait for her to break it off with Eliot and she's not stupid enough to think he is.
She does break it off. By that time, it doesn't really matter.
shout when you want to get off the ride. joseph gordon levitt/marion cotillard.
It is very funny, she thinks that everyone thinks she is sleeping with Leo (you fucked my wife?) to the extent that no one believes it anymore and the whole prospect of her infidelity has become something of a joke. That doesn't mean she's doing this out of spite. It only sort of-- came about. He kissed her one day, on set, they were having a drink together and now she in his room.
"You're not going to be gentle with me, are you?" she smirks, sitting on a chair with her legs uncrossed and knees spread. There's a glass of wine in her hand and she runs her finger across the top of it.
"What makes you think that?"
Her lip disappears behind a row of white teeth. "You're very young."
He is smirking. "When was youth ever known for being gentle?"
"I'm not in the habit of fucking boys."
"Oh? You prefer what--"
"I'd rather not, thank you."
"Well." He takes a drink, shifts his feet. He is getting a bit impatient. Let him, she thinks, it's a good sign.
She shrugs. "Oh, I don't know-- you're one of those, what do you say? Nice boys."
"Boring?"
"No, not boring. You think I'd be here if I thought you were?"
"You can never tell with women."
"You can never tell what?"
His mouth covers hers and it is firm, his fingers are sliding over her wrists and he has her pinned up against a wall and her legs slide over his hips as he pushes in and out, her arms still stretched out over his head and it is fast, almost too fast and when she comes, she is laughing.
"What?"
"You're not as nice as I thought you were."
"No. Not really."
give me to a rambling man. toby stephens/rebecca hall.
Part of the appeal, she supposes, is the whole swagger. She can't say she cares for it very much.
"I saw your play," she says (she did, it was some kind of-- she liked it, actually and for a minute it felt like he was playing more than just himself and Toby's not always a great actor but often, he is a very good one) and he looks up from the ground, eyebrows raised like he is waiting for criticism. Is she really that harsh? Not always surely.
"Yes?"
"It was decent."
"Well. A decent from Miss Hall. Someone stop the presses," he grins, all teeth and a bit of a glint to the corner of his eye, "I'm flattered."
She shuts her eyes for a minute and she can feel his gaze against the freckles on her nose.
"Don't make a habit of it, Toby."
He kisses her then and there is a bit of taste of gin to it, though she hasn't seen a drink in his hand all evening.
"You know, Rebecca, you're the oddest girl."
"Oh, stop it."
He buys her a drink after that and they pretend they are friends
So, julietofspades made a casting post of epic win for The Sun Also Rises which is one of my favorite novels. Which makes me want to read it again except I left my copy in London and my father owns every thing Hemingway has ever written bar this.
Now, a really self indulgent round up of the fic I wrote for Michelle's rpf meme. Look away if rpf makes you squeamish, ladies!
I have to say-- my absolute favorite pairing that came out of this is Marion Cotillard/James Franco. Anyone willing to photoshop this for me will get love and cookies and devotion because I'm fairly certain this is my new OTP.
a private affair. clemence poesy/eva green, eva green/marion cotillard. (eva green)
She fucks Clem in an empty bedroom upstairs at a party and they will both pretend to be sixteen even though they are not.
Her fingers are slick when she touches her hand after and Clem smiles as they dress, quietly, quickly and Eva does not but she murmurs a quick thank you when she is handed her bra and they leave the smell of sex on the bed.
It's not the first time. It won't be the last.
+
She's made something of a habit of this, after Marion, fucking around, she supposes some would call it. Not that she-- she was exactly celibate before.
But it's accelerated now. Some search for a release.
At night, she feels a cold air near her legs and a voice laughing back at her.
Her therapist calls it insomnia, ignorant fucker.
+
Back then she fucked Marion in a closet in Daniel's apartment, he didn't ask to watch but she did, she sat on a chair and watched Daniel fuck her and gave instructions.
After, he'd laughed and Marion had said nothing but they didn't do it again.
+
The newspapers seem to think it's something of a national tragedy but Eva, Eva does not think like that, she thinks it is ironic because the dark one, the tragic one was supposed to be her and in the end, she thinks, maybe it still is.
She takes to reading the obituaries more regularly, just sort of scanning over the page. It's become something of a habit.
+
"I'm leaving Guillaume," she'd said once.
Eva hadn't believed her and they'd fought about it and fucked about and it had almost ended there.
It didn't, though. Sometimes, she thinks, it still hasn't ended.
+
She did fuck Guillaume, he was a terrible lay, though maybe grief had something to do with that, he maybe cried afterward and she told him she fucked his girlfriend but he wasn't even listening.
Melanie, too but that was cold and quiet and different and in some ways, more terrible.
+
There's a Hollywood special on it. It offends her a little, because Oscar or no Oscar, Hollywood doesn't have much claim and she doesn't watch it, all sorts of nonsense about the young French starlet with a promising future.
"You and her-- you fucked, didn't you?" Clem asks.
"I don't want to talk about it."
She realizes she sounds more vulnerable in those words than she has ever let herself be with Clem before, but the girl doesn't notice just shrugs her pale shoulders, says "she was very beautiful" and then goes down on Eva like the whole conversation never happened and she is left with the salty taste of tears in her mouth and her hand on the blond head between her legs.
+
Daniel calls.
"You know, this reminds me of a movie we once did, Green."
"Go to hell."
She hangs up to the sound of his laughter and she is sitting in a taxi that is till and oh, god, he is right.
we are savages. daniel craig/marion cotillard.
She's on the hotel balcony with nothing on. It's a few hours before dawn, so he supposes she's safe and it's too many floors up for a camera anyway. Twenty two, actually. She was counting when he fucked her in the elevator, her lips red against his throat and he thought it was the oddest thing.
"You're very rough," she smiles, finger sliding over a bruise on her side of her neck.
"Worried about having to explain it to Canet?"
She shrugs her bare shoulders, the moon plays over the line of her neck. "Guillaume's not particularly observant."
He's not surprised. Canet's never seemed all that bright.
"Well, that's a pity."
"Is it?" She stubs out the cigarette in a bowl near his arm. Some of the ash flicks over his skin, still hot.
"Well--" he leans up from the chair and runs an arm down from her neck, "I just think there's such a lot to notice."
"Very smooth, Mr Bond," and she sounds just like another French girl for another second but the light shifts in her eyes; they are similar but they are not the same and there is enough space between that time and now for this to not be replacement. He does not make spaces in his life, not ones that need to filled.
"I aim to please," he smirks.
Her laugh is just mocking enough to fascinate him. By dawn, she has printed her fingers on him as well.
have you forgotten. elizabeth i/leicester.
when we we were kids, we hated things our parents did.
Her eyes mock him, green, gold.
"You'll never have me," they say.
Always the same thing, always.
+
She wonders sometimes, when he is gone, off with the wife and on a night that her bed is empty, virgin queen, she wonders if there's a line between in his ambition and his heart, some kind of partition that will tell her which is which.
She hasn't found it yet. She wonders if she ever will.
+
They are children of time but time moves on without them.
+
“You love me don’t you, Leicester?”
She doesn’t look like a queen right now, not without the paint. There is something rough about the shape of her mouth. He hasn’t seen it bare since they were children and she was pushing him into the grass, her ankles kicking at the backs of his knees. He could catch her then. She was slippery but he managed.
“Everyone loves you, your majesty.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
She is sharp. Her breath frosts over the glass.
“If I said I would, would you marry me?”
She tips her head to one side. Her hair is loose about her shoulders.
“I might.”
“I love you with all my heart.”
He says, simply. Stares into the fire, the flames crackle and die and he should be on one knee, he should-
She laughs.
“You’re a silly boy.”
His face hardens.
“As you say.”
“I wish I loved you enough,” she whispers teasingly and the “enough”-
He wants to tell her she'd make a better whore than she would a queen but he does not.
+
Death takes something of a toll on her, each loss marked into the creases of her skin, thin beneath the paint.
She wonders now if she ever loved him.
Did she? She can never be sure.
dead hearts that i once knew. eva green/louis garrel.
The first time they fuck, she asks him not to touch her. In her low voice and bedroom eyes and he keeps his hands behind his back while she slips down on him and there's something like a release when he fucks her and it's hard then, to keep still but Louis' surprisingly good at following instructions.
After, she mocks him for it.
"You're just a boy, Garrel."
"So?" he grins and he doesn't think it's a bad thing at all.
+
"Older woman?" she asks, with the glass upside down on the table and she is moving it's mouth back and forth against the surface, leaving a trail of her lipstick on the wood.
Eva never looks for answers. She already has them but she asks anyway, it's another rule in her complicated game so he doesn't say anything and when they are quite finished playing, he take her to bed.
"She's good for me, they say," this is later, after sex, special territory marked off where nothing counts and she won't mind if he sounds stupid.
(He never sounds stupid.)
"You're bad for her, though. You're bad for everyone."
+
"Here's the thing about Garrel," Eva says to Marion, a week after the other woman's gone to bed with him, "He, the thing is--"
They are sitting at lunch, the light is coming through the windows, a little stilted and it catches in the color on Marion's lips. The woman smiles, tilts her head a little, not like she is waiting but like she is listening. There's something curious there.
Eva can't really remember what the thing about Garrel is.
+
"Have we fucked everyone then?"
"Collectively speaking?"
She lights up and grins at him. "It's a small industry, Louis."
"Yes. Very."
+
They don't make promises to each other. That's the reason it works, when the rest, Craig, Cotillard, the rest fall down like a house of cards and Garrel's left standing, as always.
+
Someone asks her once, it's not a reporter, just a fan on the street, wanting to know if she's fucked him or not.
She grins like a dreamer and says "He's always inside me."
Funny how being evasive works.
there is a light that never goes out. eva green/marion cotillard.
"We understand each other, don't we?" she asks one day, lying on her stomach with her head tipped onto one shoulder.
Eva hadn't known what to say. "Yes?"
It's the wrong answer.
+
The formal introduction was in a shop, she can't remember which one, but Marion was there for a fitting and Eva was waiting for one in a room with white arm chairs and champagne and Marion walks out into the hall in her blue and white dress and stops.
"Hello."
Eva puts down the champagne.
"We haven't met before."
"Pity, isn't it?"
"Yes." She takes up another sip. "That's a lovely dress."
"I might not take it."
Eva shrugs. "Do what you like."
+
Once, they made a list, not written down, just recited. It was a terrible idea. However-- however detached no one wants to hear a list of who their lover has fucked, whose hands have gone where yours now sit and who else has--
"So, not Leo?"
"No."
"Well, which one from Inception, then?"
"Oh, you know, the boy."
"I don't."
"He's a nice boy," she says. She appears to be smirking.
+
Eva takes her driving once in London. Apparently, Marion hasn't touched the wheel in years.
"You want to take a turn?"
"I'll kill us."
She grins, the cigarette between her teeth. "Who cares?"
+
In London, they go everywhere with hats turned down low over their eyes and sunglasses heavy on their noses and they speak French loudly. Once Marion did an American accent for the tourists-- some art museum. She was trying to be funny but Eva only smiles and said it was terrible. The paintings frown down at them.
"Don't go home," she asks later, her fingers sliding out of her and her mouth pressing hot kisses in the back of her neck.
Marion turns, her eyes shut and smiling.
"I don't know what home is anymore."
+
The apartment feels empty for a while, after, it always does, even when Marton is there and his voice is filling the space between the four brick walls.
She will come back, though. She's made certain of it.
you and i, we're the same as each other. gillian jacobs/joel mchale.
"Knock, knock."
She doesn't open it. "You realize, McHale that this is a lot less funny if you are actually at the other side of the door?"
"I hadn't considered it."
Stupid boy. He's got a bag in his hand. A takeway bag. Chinese, she thinks.
"That food had better for me."
"Or I won't be let in?"
She tips her head to one side. "Or I'll have to consider it."
"Isn't this getting kind of Method?"
"What?"
"Well, Britta's supposed to be mad at Jeff, so you're clearly taking it out on me--"
"I'm not in love with you, Joel."
"--by not letting me into your apartment." He cocks his head to one side. "You don't think there's a certain parallel in the situations?"
"No. I do not."
He shrugs.
"Want to fuck on a table?"
"I don't think so, Mc--"
They don't do it on the table. Couch is much classier.
an affair to remember. james franco/marion cotillard.
It's on the red carpet and it's funny, because he's had something of a crush and in this line of work it is best not to get attached to a pretty face across a big screen because she could be standing in front of you, flesh and blood and smirks. She turns to look at him when he coughs, her hand up shading her eyes from the sun.
"I'm a fan," he manages with a grin and her boyfriend smiles at him politely like he doesn't know who he is.
Fuck that. He's James Dean Franco.
"I've seen you in something," she says later. They are at the bar. Everyone else is talking shop. Apparently, she's not a fan of doing that with her wine.
"Have you?"
"Yes. I can't-- oh," she blushes quickly, "We have met before."
They haven't. They couldn't have. He'd have fucking remembered. (He doesn't say that bit.)
"I don't think so? I mean, I--"
"It was--" she waves her hand, "This party after the Oscars-- you were."
He was passed out on the lawn with his shirt off. Classy.
"I know the one. I'm not usually like that."
This is amusing to her. "What are you like usually?"
He's not sure what to say to her.
She ends up taking him home that night, does it beautifully, giving him a hotel room number when she kisses him goodbye just a brush of her mouth against his cheek and puts the boyfriend on a plane before meeting him.
"That was very well handled," he congratulates.
"Merci."
"They used to call me the next Dicaprio, you know?"
She rolls out of bed, all messy hair, wearing nothing but his shirt and all he can see when she stands is long legs and that half grin. "Did they really?"
"Well, not really. More James Dean, really."
"I don't know what that is."
"That's criminal."
He brings over a movie next time. They don't watch it together.
"Do you like acting?"
"That's an odd question."
"I wondered."
"It pays the bills."
She frowns. Her mouth goes down at the corners. "It can be very complicated, I think."
"You're the Oscar winner."
"Oh, Franco."
She never calls him by his first name. That bothers him.
The filming for her movie wraps up. It's something with Gwyneth Paltrow. He meets her for lunch once in the city and she's sitting at lunch with the blonde woman looking bored and when he walks up to the table, he doesn't think she's ever been this happy to see him.
"Franco!"
Gwyneth gives a small smile and excuses herself.
"That looked like an interesting conversation."
"You have no idea what she was saying. She seems to think we are friends. That baby, Franco, is not her husbands!" Marion wrinkles her nose and down the remnants of her wine. "Hollywood," she says with some disdain.
"Says the woman cheating on her boyfriend."
She kicks him under the table.
Once she comes over to his apartment.
"So, you're clever then?" she asks, archly, fingering through one of his books.
"Yale seems to think so."
"Well, it's a well kept secret."
He takes her out to a dinner the next night, somewhere small and private and no one they know. He wear his glasses and Marion laughs.
"You look like a professor."
"Not yet," he says, fingering them and he can't help but grin when she tries them on. When he kisses her, his mouth tastes like coffee and hers tastes like champagne and the combination's not as strange as it should be.
He's gotten used to her. That's all.
They both move on eventually. It's only to be expected.
He's something of a romantic, though and once in bed, with the sheets pushed down at their feet and the smoke floating over their naked skin, he'd turned to her and said "If we weren't who we are, I think I could have loved you."
She'd smiled the same half smile like when they first met and it says he doesn't know her and other half truths that she likes to relate.
"It's pretty to think so, isn't it?"
For a minute there, he thinks he does love her.
She moves on first.
It doesn't really matter, though.
the piano has been drinking. javier bardem/marion cotillard.
She makes a movie with her girlfriend and he visits her on set, smiling, his arm around Penelope's waist and Marion raises an eyebrow, it is both arch and blushing.
He doesn't really understand her, not her tongue or her body.
Maybe this is why he takes her to bed again.
+
"So, now you are doing some stupid American show?"
Her disapproval is both charming and irksome. She sits at the end of a long table with her legs up on the chair and sunglasses hiding her eyes. He sees himself caught in the dark lenses.
"It's funny."
She wrinkles her nose. "I do not understand you-- too many of you, just come here and, and--" her lips twist a little, "I don't see the point. You can do better."
She is talking about Eva, of course. He has a cigar in his mouth so he nods and doesn't say anything.
+
He takes her in an elevator once, her legs around his waist and her fingers caught in the knot of his tie, it is very foolish of them but she is laughing with her head back.
He thinks he is a little drunk on her laugh.
+
On the red carpet, Guillaume congratulates him on a performance and Marion's lips go very tight.
He only smiles.
+
"This won't last long," she told him that first night, with her legs tangled in the sheets and her hair spread out the pillow.
"Okay," he said, "Okay."
That was six months ago.
+
In Hollywood, everything is fake.
There isn't enough room in the town for her disdain. He swallows it down with a dash of something in his coffee and she smiles.
+
"You know," he tells her once, with his finger on her wrist and his head bent nears hers, "You're really not as elusive as you think."
She smirks something maddening in French.
They do not last long. A year is nothing in this line of work.
if she wants me. katie mcgrath/rebecca hall.
The first meeting is a little embarrassing. It's not that Rebecca doesn't recognize her, it's that she can't quite seem the place her and now, they are caught in some awkward guessing game with Rebecca (hopefully) running out of turns and Katie coming closer to confession.
"It's Merlin, actually. You know the tv show?"
"Oh."
"Yes."
"And you're--"
"Morgana."
"Ah."
Katie shifts her feet a little and grins.
"I haven't seen that," Rebecca confesses.
"I didn't think you had."
"So, I--"
She presses a hand against her forearm, fingers cold from the night air and that wide red smile spread out on her mouth and says "Well, I'm a big fan."
And then she walks away with something of her dignity intact.
+
The next time, she is remembered.
Rebecca waves. "Hello."
"Oh, hello. You look nice."
She fingers the dress. "I hate dressing up for these events. It's so-- well, not designed for comfort."
Katie laughs and leans forward to whisper, "Feels good when it all comes off though, doesn't it?"
There's a thin flush across her cheek. "I watched some of your show."
"Did you know? I wouldn't think it'd be your-- well, your type."
"You were lovely."
"Thank you." There's a bit of a smirk but she is pleased.
"I like your accent."
She kisses her then, it's very quick and not a lot of buildup and the room will probably fill soon so she pulls back quickly and tips her head to one side.
"You've got a bit of lipstick there."
"Well, whose fault is that?"
+
They don't make a habit of it. Well, Katie doesn't make much of a habit of anything or anyone and Rebecca learning not to.
"You can do better, you know."
They always talk shop, even in bed. It's something like a boundary line, she guesses.
Katie shuts her eyes.
"I know."
"Yes."
"And I intend to," she winks.
+
"You were in my dream the other night, you know."
"Was I?" Rebecca grins. She's leaving for New York in the morning. "What was I doing?"
"I don't remember."
She does, though. It doesn't particularly matter.
i'm a cuckoo. jack o'connel/kaya scodelario.
He turns up at her doorstep. There's no gateaux.
"I heard there's going to be a movie."
She's not going to let him in, just joins him on the step and lights up, not really looking at his face. "I heard your not going to be in it."
"Oy!"
"Aren't you supposed to be dead or something?"
"All the same," he says, straightening the imaginary collar on his Sex Pistols t shirt- "never mind the bollocks" it tells her, "I'd like to be asked."
"You don't want to make a movie, Jack."
"How would you fucking know what I want, Kaya?"
The smoke rings drift between them. His hair looks funny, she thinks, almost like it's seen a comb or something.
"I'm a very good guesser," she assures him.
He visits them on set.
Meg seems to think it's a shame he's not around more often.
"You should find something really great, Jack, that'll show them."
"On it, Prescott," and he's stupid really, coming around here every other day, with some excuse of nostalgia or friendship when he's really just waiting till she's done shooting her scenes and in a good enough mood to fuck him in the back closet with enough time to straighten her hair in case the boyfriend pops in for a visit.
"I just think--"
"Well, I've got bigger and better things to do, anyway," he winks.
"I don't think O' Connell's problem is his career," Kat says and Kaya's not sure how the fuck she knows these things but it's got to be obvious or something because now, Lily's rolling her eyes and she--
She made the mistake of taking him home with her one night.
"I can't fucking believe you said you could have married me."
"Shut up."
"Marriage, Kaya, how the fuck old do you think we are?"
Her hands press down on her eyes. "I wasn't thinking."
"Ever say that about Nick?"
"No. No, I didn't."
He's stupid enough to wait for her to break it off with Eliot and she's not stupid enough to think he is.
She does break it off. By that time, it doesn't really matter.
shout when you want to get off the ride. joseph gordon levitt/marion cotillard.
It is very funny, she thinks that everyone thinks she is sleeping with Leo (you fucked my wife?) to the extent that no one believes it anymore and the whole prospect of her infidelity has become something of a joke. That doesn't mean she's doing this out of spite. It only sort of-- came about. He kissed her one day, on set, they were having a drink together and now she in his room.
"You're not going to be gentle with me, are you?" she smirks, sitting on a chair with her legs uncrossed and knees spread. There's a glass of wine in her hand and she runs her finger across the top of it.
"What makes you think that?"
Her lip disappears behind a row of white teeth. "You're very young."
He is smirking. "When was youth ever known for being gentle?"
"I'm not in the habit of fucking boys."
"Oh? You prefer what--"
"I'd rather not, thank you."
"Well." He takes a drink, shifts his feet. He is getting a bit impatient. Let him, she thinks, it's a good sign.
She shrugs. "Oh, I don't know-- you're one of those, what do you say? Nice boys."
"Boring?"
"No, not boring. You think I'd be here if I thought you were?"
"You can never tell with women."
"You can never tell what?"
His mouth covers hers and it is firm, his fingers are sliding over her wrists and he has her pinned up against a wall and her legs slide over his hips as he pushes in and out, her arms still stretched out over his head and it is fast, almost too fast and when she comes, she is laughing.
"What?"
"You're not as nice as I thought you were."
"No. Not really."
give me to a rambling man. toby stephens/rebecca hall.
Part of the appeal, she supposes, is the whole swagger. She can't say she cares for it very much.
"I saw your play," she says (she did, it was some kind of-- she liked it, actually and for a minute it felt like he was playing more than just himself and Toby's not always a great actor but often, he is a very good one) and he looks up from the ground, eyebrows raised like he is waiting for criticism. Is she really that harsh? Not always surely.
"Yes?"
"It was decent."
"Well. A decent from Miss Hall. Someone stop the presses," he grins, all teeth and a bit of a glint to the corner of his eye, "I'm flattered."
She shuts her eyes for a minute and she can feel his gaze against the freckles on her nose.
"Don't make a habit of it, Toby."
He kisses her then and there is a bit of taste of gin to it, though she hasn't seen a drink in his hand all evening.
"You know, Rebecca, you're the oddest girl."
"Oh, stop it."
He buys her a drink after that and they pretend they are friends