Fic: we were collectors first
we were collectors first
rpf ; rebecca hall/christian bale ; 3,100 words ; R
there is nothing about them you don’t recognize. some faces aren’t for the lighthearted.
notes: for falseeeyelashes. MICHELLE. I know I promised you robots, but I’m quickly entering 10k territory and I feel like, what the hell, two presents are just as fun as one. Anyways, you’re amazing. I’m glad you had a great birthday. This is happened. ILU. ♥
-
SONG: chief - night & day
Forget the first time they meet.
It’s not important. They knew then.
It’s always sunny in LA. High sun, the kind of sun that squats, sticks, and burns into your window. In her hotel room, Rebecca squints and studies the city.
There’s something gray about the city, she thinks. The buildings stare back at her and she blinks, tracing her fingers against the glass.
“How’s your daughter?” she calls.
“Fine,” he says, and emerges from the bathroom. She watches his reflection: towel in his hair, jeans slung low on his hips. Bastard, she thinks. “She’s doing well,” he adds.
“Good,” she says.
“But you don’t want to talk about my daughter,” he says. He’s amused. There are hints of him, the accent. She finds the whole thing rather odd. There is a memory there too, but neither of them wants to talk about that.
“Not really,” she agrees.
They have been here since Thursday. He lives in the city. She is supposed to be running to New York. In the corner of the room, there’s dinner, untouched and dried rotten, as if they have been here for more than just days.
“Don’t have one of those moments,” he says, and she watches his mouth in the window. It opens and his tongue slides along his lip. There’s a smile, or so she thinks. Then she remembers that he rarely does it.
“What moments?”
He sighs and sits on the bed. She turns, her mouth curling. Her back presses against the glass. They study each other, almost thoughtfully. They do this a lot. For Rebecca, these are the moments when he’s entirely too kind.
“You’re being passive-aggressive,” he says. He doesn’t accuse. Not with her, she thinks. “And if you really wanted to know about my daughter, my wife even, we would be having an entirely different conversation.”
“You mean you wouldn’t be sleep with me.”
His gaze is even. He stretches back into the bed. She sees her bra, peeking out from the sheets. The strap is broken.
“I didn’t start this.”
She laughs. She thinks of him as handsome for that moment.
“Of course,” she mutters. She moves to her suitcase. Her fingers press into the buttons of his shirt and she claws them off. It falls by her feet and the air picks at her skin. “Of course,” she keeps talking, picking through her clothes, “this would be my fault, because it were your fault, you’d be in bloody therapy, having these sorts of conversations with your therapist. Maybe you’d fuck her too, consider your issues with anger and acceptance. And maybe, maybe in the end it would be her fault - god, you snap around men, women you fuck.”
She means it to be crass. She listens, her hands still over her clothes, but she doesn’t hear him stand. She’s naked and she doesn’t care. The air sinks into her skin and it’s cold, it hurts, and she sighs loudly.
“You’re fucking me,” she adds. He doesn’t answer.
Instead, he’s behind her. His hands curl into her hips, but then he presses one into her back. She’s bent then, over her clothes and the leather off her bag. She laughs and feels him press into her ass, jeans scraping against her skin.
“I don’t understand you,” he breathes.
When she comes, he has her by the hair, his hand grasping her at her breast, as her hips grind back into his. She’s wet and slick and he’s inside her, deep inside her; she feels him as he begins to pull out, finally, slowly before her knees give out. She laughs too, breathlessly, even with her nails clawing into the wall.
The suitcase is on the floor. His cock brushes against her thigh. “I know,” she says.
Rebecca tries to do the right thing. Maybe this is why she said yes to Woody in the first place. It’s a universal truth, reluctance and Woody, someone tells her. There is wise, wise advice.
“He’s a notorious pervert,” Rose says to her. They are having lunch in New York. In any case, Rebecca knows Matthew, Matthew knows Rose and Diane. This is how she learns not to sleep with him. Or get girlfriends, it seems.
“It was a long time ago,” she says, sighing. They are waiting for Diane. The heat in the city is starting to glisten against her wine glass. “At any rate,” she says too. “His heart belongs to Scarlett.”
Rose snorts. Rebecca shakes her head. They neither laugh nor share a look; the other woman doesn’t like her, that much does know, and earlier, they’re mistaken for some kind of sisters and Rose makes an odd reference to careers.
“How’s Matthew?” Rebecca asks, still and remembering. She watches the other woman with her sunglasses, too dark even for a window seat. “I saw him, briefly,” she says, “but that was months ago.”
Rose’s eyes narrow. She picks up her glass. “Still mystified by you,” she says. “And by Diane, but I’m not touching that.”
Their waiter passes the table and she stops, staring. She seems to be looking for someone, but Rebecca doesn’t ask.
“I see,” she says instead.
There’s something odd about the restaurant she’s picked, she thinks too, one of those corner cafés, in between neighborhoods where you can be seen and unseen. She’d rather ignore it all together, but she’s learning, learning quickly that all Rose does isn’t without an edge.
“We’re in a movie together though.”
Rebecca feels surprised. Rose’s mouth twists and shifts.
“When?” she asks the other woman.
“I go back tomorrow,” Rose says, and says it like a woman running away, as if it were the most important thing she was doing. There’s something in that Rebecca recognizes, but doesn’t touch. There’s a little bit of a coward in all of them.
It makes all of this something stranger. Rebecca tries to remember the party they were introduced at - there was Matthew, there was wine, and there was too many corners to really pinpoint the necessity of this introduction.
They’re here, she thinks. This isn’t the first time either.
“You?” the other woman asks, but Rebecca doesn’t share. Rose leans forward and picks up her wine glass. Behind her, Rebecca picks out Diane walking to them. “I imagine there’s something you have to get to,” Rose says.
They stop talking when Diane comes to the table. Rose straightens and Rebecca watches, fascinated. They say women aren’t meant to be friends.
Rose looks at Diane as she sits. “It’s Christian,” she says. They all know.
There is a party in London. There is wine and she meets the wife, strained into a corner of the room. Rebecca decided to go last minute.
She has to work though, she has to smile and talk about what’s next; in theory, there should be nothing about her job that speaks to time. But Rebecca still wears black and feels too thin in her heels, walking to the corner where there is wine and the wife.
“These things,” the woman mutters. They wait, both, for red. Last minute again, Rebecca changes for a white.
“I know,” she says sympathetically, and the other woman turns to her to laugh. They smile at each other, Rebecca tight-lipped. “I hate coming to these things.”
Across the room, there’s Christian, standing arm to arm with someone else. She knows the man, but never pays attention; names are names only if it’s necessary. They call that a business tool.
When she catches his gaze though, she’s standing off to the side. The wife moves to her and they don’t smile. For a minute, she searches for concerned but he looks tired and she needs to disconnect.
But there is music and laughter too, and when she meets the wife’s smile, the crowd has begun to mull around the two of them.
“Do I know you?” the other woman asks her, and Rebecca shakes her head. She lies. They may have meet years ago and at the premiere, the first. “I’m sure,” the woman says. “You look ridiculously familiar,” she says too.
Rebecca shakes her head again. “I have that face.”
Later Christian comes to her flat. It’s after one and she swallows the whiskey after he kisses her. He has her dress in a fist.
“You’re bloody stupid,” she breathes, and he grunts. They’re both angry and she forgets why. His trousers drop to the floor though. She draws her nails over his stomach. “She’s a lovely, lovely woman, but you brought her here. You’re so fucking stupid.”
“Here I am,” he says.
He’s breathless and boyish. He grins at her, sliding to his knees and spreading her legs with his palms. He pulls one of her legs to his shoulder. Her dress is somewhere by the door, her glass of wine too; she hates herself for this, for him, and there’s nothing else she can do.
His tongue slides over her clit. She grits her teeth.
“You’re already wet,” he laughs.
Diane takes her shopping when she comes to London. She shares her cigarettes. This is a good thing. For the moment even, she thinks.
They walk along the park, away from the shops. The day is warmer than they both like, but neither mentions that of course. Diane looks in place too, bright eyes and smile; she catches a few looks before they find a bench to sit on.
Rebecca lights their second cigarette. Between them, Diane places her bag.
“Rose hates me,” Rebecca says, for conversation. She neither cares nor needs to know if the other woman hates her or not. But Diane laughs lightly, smiles even, and shakes her head. “I just get that impression,” Rebecca adds.
“It isn’t you,” Diane says.
“Then?”
Diane’s eyes close. She slides on sunglasses. Her head falls back and the sun catches the arch of her frames. When her hair starts to spill against her shoulders, Rebecca begins to think of her as entirely too romantic.
“Rose hates everyone,” Diane says, and laughs again. “She hates you, she hates her parents, she hates me and I’ve been her longest - friend. Rose hates Matthew so much she’s in love with him.”
“Matthew,” Rebecca echoes, and the other woman nods.
“It’s strange,” she says too. “You can be in love, then you grow up in this business, then you think you’re too jaded to be in love. Then it happens with the right one, but then you meet the wrong one -”
“I don’t understand.”
She hands Diane her cigarette, finally. It’s the first time she means it, she thinks too. Diane looks at her. She flicks the cigarette to the side.
Ash drops. She’s serious. “You do,” she says.
Rebecca walks Diane back to her hotel later. The sun is high and Rebecca carries a new bag from the shops, but doesn’t remember what it is that she’s bought. She remembers LA for some reason then, and when the other woman stops, next to her, she catches a glimpse of a man waiting at the doors.
He’s tall and awkward. Michael, she remembers. She read the reviews. When he sees them, there’s some sort of smile too. Next to her Diane tenses, but shakes her head. Rebecca looks between the two of them and feels like she’s supposed to understand.
“The wrong one,” she guesses.
Diane sighs. “And he’s late,” she says. Rebecca does understand this one.
Often she thinks about the first time she met him. It’s irrelevant; she can say so many useless things: I was young, this was the beginning of my career, I thought I was in love, and it was supposed to make sense.
But Christian is Christian, he’s liar not an actor, and somehow she feels like she’s looking at herself instead of away. There’s nothing impulsive, he’s there and she’s there, and usually, she’ll walk away with the taste of him in her mouth, the sensation of his fingers inside her, and her fingers, trembling, because she’s marked him too hard. They know each other best this way.
There is no going back.
Christian invites her to New York. This isn’t out of the blue. They used to do this, she remembers, when she was younger and these things could still speak to her. She goes because she doesn’t know how she can’t.
Their room is under Anderson. She laughs when she tells the desk attendant. The woman doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, she thinks. She still says, “your husband is upstairs,” like it matters and it’s because she has to. Rebecca wonders if the woman is the better actor.
She walks to the elevator though and her suitcase feels lazy. She remembers too that she likes the city, like everyone else, and she’ll be okay if he doesn’t come. She’s always okay. This is the nature of the beast, or something like it.
But her phone rings inside the elevator, and she doesn’t answer it. She’s wearing jeans and they cut into her hip. She has a boy’s body, she decides, studying her reflection. The elevator doors are gold and it’s the strangest of things, moving into this in a gold elevator. There’s a song, there’s the irony, and all of this isn’t lost to her. She’s older and she’s tired and maybe, maybe, the first time this happened, this felt different. Maybe it’s supposed to.
When she finds the room, she walks in and finds Christian sitting on the bed.
“This isn’t over,” he says, and it’s later, when there’s scotch. Rebecca drinks it because she doesn’t want wine. He’s watching her from the window now and she lights a cigarette, dropping to the bed and watching the smoke rise into the air. “I don’t want this to finish,” he says tiredly, and she thinks he’s lying to her, “and it’s fucking impossible to tell you this, but -”
“Don’t,” she says. Her voice is flat.
The mattress presses into her back, ready. There’s laughter too, lodged into her throat and deep. She feels ready to swallow.
“I think about leaving my wife a lot,” he says.
Rebecca laughs then, nearly chokes, and closes her eyes as she presses her arm over them. There’s this bitter taste in her mouth and the scotch is somewhere by the bed. She thinks Christian may be smiling.
“You’re a liar,” she says.
“The very best.” He moves, or she listens to him move, just a little. Suddenly, she feels his legs pressing into her knees. “I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be anymore. It’s fucked, you know. It’s all fucked.”
“Batman,” she says dryly.
“I heard the news.”
There are rumors and more rumors, there are always rumors, and that’s the fact when it comes to work; she’s shown interest in the script, she wants to say, and wants to say it seriously to his face, but that’s a different conversation, another one of those that they can’t have yet.
Instead she sighs. She is trying to remember the last time they talked, if there was ever a time that she talked to him. She feels tired and pushes her arm from her face. Her eyes open and she looks at him, lazily, catching his smile. His mouth twists and tenses and it’s not a real smile, but it’s as close as he’ll get.
“You’re impossible,” she says, and she means it, means it with as much affection as she can muster, as if she did love him or does. They mean the same thing. She feels older and wiser again, somehow, instead of passing, the feeling makes her return to being sensible.
“You’re here,” he says.
“I am.”
“That must mean something. I’m not saying that it has to. But it must. You’re the kind of person that makes things mean something.”
She laughs. He frowns. She laughs again, shaking her head.
“You’re not paying attention,” she says to him. She sits up and slides her cigarette into her mouth. “You never pay attention,” she says gently, and her fingers brush against the buttons of his shirt.
He says nothing.
“I played your wife,” she continues. “Sort of ironic, right? Now, if I were to play - well, it doesn’t matter. It would be some sort of oversexed version of what we’re doing now, where you fucking brood by the window so that you don’t snap and I chain smoke because I never really wanted to leave stage acting. I might’ve had a life then, you know.”
“I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me,” he mutters.
This is why we don’t talk, she thinks. Then, she wants to laugh at herself.
“You don’t get it,” she says.
She turns away from him, stretching and putting her cigarette out on a tray by the bed. It’s silver and there is ash in it already. Christian always starts early.
But the bed sinks, when he sits, his weight rolling her closer to him. She turns and he’s looking down at her. He reaches forward and brushes his fingers against the buttons of her shirt. She wants to laugh and cry, do both because it’ll drive him mad and maybe that’s why he’s here, he’s here because he’s made her just as mad as he is - angry and sad, desperate and alive. She can’t hate him for that.
“We make excuses,” he says. He’s saying it, saying it, but it’s not something she wants to hear, not like this, not here between to places, one to where he belongs and the other, farther, where she’s still trying to figure herself out. He doesn’t understand that, not yet. She knows.
Her eyes close though and she catches his hand when it flattens over her breast. Her fingers slide over his skin, then against his knuckles. His mouth presses against her throat and she leans into him.
She swallows before she tells him. “I know,” she says.
It’s not important, the first time they meet, and that they are sitting off the set. There are elaborate machines and orders. Rebecca’s buttons are digging into her skin and she feels so, so impossibly small.
When he offers her a coffee and she says no, to be polite and practical. He still hands it to her and she still takes it, her hand brushing over his and his mouth splitting into that low, lazy smile that she knew him by, that they all knew him by. Then they are calling him the actor’s actor, something old and something rare.
He laughs when she tells him later. Remember, they knew then.
rpf ; rebecca hall/christian bale ; 3,100 words ; R
there is nothing about them you don’t recognize. some faces aren’t for the lighthearted.
notes: for falseeeyelashes. MICHELLE. I know I promised you robots, but I’m quickly entering 10k territory and I feel like, what the hell, two presents are just as fun as one. Anyways, you’re amazing. I’m glad you had a great birthday. This is happened. ILU. ♥
-
SONG: chief - night & day
Forget the first time they meet.
It’s not important. They knew then.
It’s always sunny in LA. High sun, the kind of sun that squats, sticks, and burns into your window. In her hotel room, Rebecca squints and studies the city.
There’s something gray about the city, she thinks. The buildings stare back at her and she blinks, tracing her fingers against the glass.
“How’s your daughter?” she calls.
“Fine,” he says, and emerges from the bathroom. She watches his reflection: towel in his hair, jeans slung low on his hips. Bastard, she thinks. “She’s doing well,” he adds.
“Good,” she says.
“But you don’t want to talk about my daughter,” he says. He’s amused. There are hints of him, the accent. She finds the whole thing rather odd. There is a memory there too, but neither of them wants to talk about that.
“Not really,” she agrees.
They have been here since Thursday. He lives in the city. She is supposed to be running to New York. In the corner of the room, there’s dinner, untouched and dried rotten, as if they have been here for more than just days.
“Don’t have one of those moments,” he says, and she watches his mouth in the window. It opens and his tongue slides along his lip. There’s a smile, or so she thinks. Then she remembers that he rarely does it.
“What moments?”
He sighs and sits on the bed. She turns, her mouth curling. Her back presses against the glass. They study each other, almost thoughtfully. They do this a lot. For Rebecca, these are the moments when he’s entirely too kind.
“You’re being passive-aggressive,” he says. He doesn’t accuse. Not with her, she thinks. “And if you really wanted to know about my daughter, my wife even, we would be having an entirely different conversation.”
“You mean you wouldn’t be sleep with me.”
His gaze is even. He stretches back into the bed. She sees her bra, peeking out from the sheets. The strap is broken.
“I didn’t start this.”
She laughs. She thinks of him as handsome for that moment.
“Of course,” she mutters. She moves to her suitcase. Her fingers press into the buttons of his shirt and she claws them off. It falls by her feet and the air picks at her skin. “Of course,” she keeps talking, picking through her clothes, “this would be my fault, because it were your fault, you’d be in bloody therapy, having these sorts of conversations with your therapist. Maybe you’d fuck her too, consider your issues with anger and acceptance. And maybe, maybe in the end it would be her fault - god, you snap around men, women you fuck.”
She means it to be crass. She listens, her hands still over her clothes, but she doesn’t hear him stand. She’s naked and she doesn’t care. The air sinks into her skin and it’s cold, it hurts, and she sighs loudly.
“You’re fucking me,” she adds. He doesn’t answer.
Instead, he’s behind her. His hands curl into her hips, but then he presses one into her back. She’s bent then, over her clothes and the leather off her bag. She laughs and feels him press into her ass, jeans scraping against her skin.
“I don’t understand you,” he breathes.
When she comes, he has her by the hair, his hand grasping her at her breast, as her hips grind back into his. She’s wet and slick and he’s inside her, deep inside her; she feels him as he begins to pull out, finally, slowly before her knees give out. She laughs too, breathlessly, even with her nails clawing into the wall.
The suitcase is on the floor. His cock brushes against her thigh. “I know,” she says.
Rebecca tries to do the right thing. Maybe this is why she said yes to Woody in the first place. It’s a universal truth, reluctance and Woody, someone tells her. There is wise, wise advice.
“He’s a notorious pervert,” Rose says to her. They are having lunch in New York. In any case, Rebecca knows Matthew, Matthew knows Rose and Diane. This is how she learns not to sleep with him. Or get girlfriends, it seems.
“It was a long time ago,” she says, sighing. They are waiting for Diane. The heat in the city is starting to glisten against her wine glass. “At any rate,” she says too. “His heart belongs to Scarlett.”
Rose snorts. Rebecca shakes her head. They neither laugh nor share a look; the other woman doesn’t like her, that much does know, and earlier, they’re mistaken for some kind of sisters and Rose makes an odd reference to careers.
“How’s Matthew?” Rebecca asks, still and remembering. She watches the other woman with her sunglasses, too dark even for a window seat. “I saw him, briefly,” she says, “but that was months ago.”
Rose’s eyes narrow. She picks up her glass. “Still mystified by you,” she says. “And by Diane, but I’m not touching that.”
Their waiter passes the table and she stops, staring. She seems to be looking for someone, but Rebecca doesn’t ask.
“I see,” she says instead.
There’s something odd about the restaurant she’s picked, she thinks too, one of those corner cafés, in between neighborhoods where you can be seen and unseen. She’d rather ignore it all together, but she’s learning, learning quickly that all Rose does isn’t without an edge.
“We’re in a movie together though.”
Rebecca feels surprised. Rose’s mouth twists and shifts.
“When?” she asks the other woman.
“I go back tomorrow,” Rose says, and says it like a woman running away, as if it were the most important thing she was doing. There’s something in that Rebecca recognizes, but doesn’t touch. There’s a little bit of a coward in all of them.
It makes all of this something stranger. Rebecca tries to remember the party they were introduced at - there was Matthew, there was wine, and there was too many corners to really pinpoint the necessity of this introduction.
They’re here, she thinks. This isn’t the first time either.
“You?” the other woman asks, but Rebecca doesn’t share. Rose leans forward and picks up her wine glass. Behind her, Rebecca picks out Diane walking to them. “I imagine there’s something you have to get to,” Rose says.
They stop talking when Diane comes to the table. Rose straightens and Rebecca watches, fascinated. They say women aren’t meant to be friends.
Rose looks at Diane as she sits. “It’s Christian,” she says. They all know.
There is a party in London. There is wine and she meets the wife, strained into a corner of the room. Rebecca decided to go last minute.
She has to work though, she has to smile and talk about what’s next; in theory, there should be nothing about her job that speaks to time. But Rebecca still wears black and feels too thin in her heels, walking to the corner where there is wine and the wife.
“These things,” the woman mutters. They wait, both, for red. Last minute again, Rebecca changes for a white.
“I know,” she says sympathetically, and the other woman turns to her to laugh. They smile at each other, Rebecca tight-lipped. “I hate coming to these things.”
Across the room, there’s Christian, standing arm to arm with someone else. She knows the man, but never pays attention; names are names only if it’s necessary. They call that a business tool.
When she catches his gaze though, she’s standing off to the side. The wife moves to her and they don’t smile. For a minute, she searches for concerned but he looks tired and she needs to disconnect.
But there is music and laughter too, and when she meets the wife’s smile, the crowd has begun to mull around the two of them.
“Do I know you?” the other woman asks her, and Rebecca shakes her head. She lies. They may have meet years ago and at the premiere, the first. “I’m sure,” the woman says. “You look ridiculously familiar,” she says too.
Rebecca shakes her head again. “I have that face.”
Later Christian comes to her flat. It’s after one and she swallows the whiskey after he kisses her. He has her dress in a fist.
“You’re bloody stupid,” she breathes, and he grunts. They’re both angry and she forgets why. His trousers drop to the floor though. She draws her nails over his stomach. “She’s a lovely, lovely woman, but you brought her here. You’re so fucking stupid.”
“Here I am,” he says.
He’s breathless and boyish. He grins at her, sliding to his knees and spreading her legs with his palms. He pulls one of her legs to his shoulder. Her dress is somewhere by the door, her glass of wine too; she hates herself for this, for him, and there’s nothing else she can do.
His tongue slides over her clit. She grits her teeth.
“You’re already wet,” he laughs.
Diane takes her shopping when she comes to London. She shares her cigarettes. This is a good thing. For the moment even, she thinks.
They walk along the park, away from the shops. The day is warmer than they both like, but neither mentions that of course. Diane looks in place too, bright eyes and smile; she catches a few looks before they find a bench to sit on.
Rebecca lights their second cigarette. Between them, Diane places her bag.
“Rose hates me,” Rebecca says, for conversation. She neither cares nor needs to know if the other woman hates her or not. But Diane laughs lightly, smiles even, and shakes her head. “I just get that impression,” Rebecca adds.
“It isn’t you,” Diane says.
“Then?”
Diane’s eyes close. She slides on sunglasses. Her head falls back and the sun catches the arch of her frames. When her hair starts to spill against her shoulders, Rebecca begins to think of her as entirely too romantic.
“Rose hates everyone,” Diane says, and laughs again. “She hates you, she hates her parents, she hates me and I’ve been her longest - friend. Rose hates Matthew so much she’s in love with him.”
“Matthew,” Rebecca echoes, and the other woman nods.
“It’s strange,” she says too. “You can be in love, then you grow up in this business, then you think you’re too jaded to be in love. Then it happens with the right one, but then you meet the wrong one -”
“I don’t understand.”
She hands Diane her cigarette, finally. It’s the first time she means it, she thinks too. Diane looks at her. She flicks the cigarette to the side.
Ash drops. She’s serious. “You do,” she says.
Rebecca walks Diane back to her hotel later. The sun is high and Rebecca carries a new bag from the shops, but doesn’t remember what it is that she’s bought. She remembers LA for some reason then, and when the other woman stops, next to her, she catches a glimpse of a man waiting at the doors.
He’s tall and awkward. Michael, she remembers. She read the reviews. When he sees them, there’s some sort of smile too. Next to her Diane tenses, but shakes her head. Rebecca looks between the two of them and feels like she’s supposed to understand.
“The wrong one,” she guesses.
Diane sighs. “And he’s late,” she says. Rebecca does understand this one.
Often she thinks about the first time she met him. It’s irrelevant; she can say so many useless things: I was young, this was the beginning of my career, I thought I was in love, and it was supposed to make sense.
But Christian is Christian, he’s liar not an actor, and somehow she feels like she’s looking at herself instead of away. There’s nothing impulsive, he’s there and she’s there, and usually, she’ll walk away with the taste of him in her mouth, the sensation of his fingers inside her, and her fingers, trembling, because she’s marked him too hard. They know each other best this way.
There is no going back.
Christian invites her to New York. This isn’t out of the blue. They used to do this, she remembers, when she was younger and these things could still speak to her. She goes because she doesn’t know how she can’t.
Their room is under Anderson. She laughs when she tells the desk attendant. The woman doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, she thinks. She still says, “your husband is upstairs,” like it matters and it’s because she has to. Rebecca wonders if the woman is the better actor.
She walks to the elevator though and her suitcase feels lazy. She remembers too that she likes the city, like everyone else, and she’ll be okay if he doesn’t come. She’s always okay. This is the nature of the beast, or something like it.
But her phone rings inside the elevator, and she doesn’t answer it. She’s wearing jeans and they cut into her hip. She has a boy’s body, she decides, studying her reflection. The elevator doors are gold and it’s the strangest of things, moving into this in a gold elevator. There’s a song, there’s the irony, and all of this isn’t lost to her. She’s older and she’s tired and maybe, maybe, the first time this happened, this felt different. Maybe it’s supposed to.
When she finds the room, she walks in and finds Christian sitting on the bed.
“This isn’t over,” he says, and it’s later, when there’s scotch. Rebecca drinks it because she doesn’t want wine. He’s watching her from the window now and she lights a cigarette, dropping to the bed and watching the smoke rise into the air. “I don’t want this to finish,” he says tiredly, and she thinks he’s lying to her, “and it’s fucking impossible to tell you this, but -”
“Don’t,” she says. Her voice is flat.
The mattress presses into her back, ready. There’s laughter too, lodged into her throat and deep. She feels ready to swallow.
“I think about leaving my wife a lot,” he says.
Rebecca laughs then, nearly chokes, and closes her eyes as she presses her arm over them. There’s this bitter taste in her mouth and the scotch is somewhere by the bed. She thinks Christian may be smiling.
“You’re a liar,” she says.
“The very best.” He moves, or she listens to him move, just a little. Suddenly, she feels his legs pressing into her knees. “I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be anymore. It’s fucked, you know. It’s all fucked.”
“Batman,” she says dryly.
“I heard the news.”
There are rumors and more rumors, there are always rumors, and that’s the fact when it comes to work; she’s shown interest in the script, she wants to say, and wants to say it seriously to his face, but that’s a different conversation, another one of those that they can’t have yet.
Instead she sighs. She is trying to remember the last time they talked, if there was ever a time that she talked to him. She feels tired and pushes her arm from her face. Her eyes open and she looks at him, lazily, catching his smile. His mouth twists and tenses and it’s not a real smile, but it’s as close as he’ll get.
“You’re impossible,” she says, and she means it, means it with as much affection as she can muster, as if she did love him or does. They mean the same thing. She feels older and wiser again, somehow, instead of passing, the feeling makes her return to being sensible.
“You’re here,” he says.
“I am.”
“That must mean something. I’m not saying that it has to. But it must. You’re the kind of person that makes things mean something.”
She laughs. He frowns. She laughs again, shaking her head.
“You’re not paying attention,” she says to him. She sits up and slides her cigarette into her mouth. “You never pay attention,” she says gently, and her fingers brush against the buttons of his shirt.
He says nothing.
“I played your wife,” she continues. “Sort of ironic, right? Now, if I were to play - well, it doesn’t matter. It would be some sort of oversexed version of what we’re doing now, where you fucking brood by the window so that you don’t snap and I chain smoke because I never really wanted to leave stage acting. I might’ve had a life then, you know.”
“I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me,” he mutters.
This is why we don’t talk, she thinks. Then, she wants to laugh at herself.
“You don’t get it,” she says.
She turns away from him, stretching and putting her cigarette out on a tray by the bed. It’s silver and there is ash in it already. Christian always starts early.
But the bed sinks, when he sits, his weight rolling her closer to him. She turns and he’s looking down at her. He reaches forward and brushes his fingers against the buttons of her shirt. She wants to laugh and cry, do both because it’ll drive him mad and maybe that’s why he’s here, he’s here because he’s made her just as mad as he is - angry and sad, desperate and alive. She can’t hate him for that.
“We make excuses,” he says. He’s saying it, saying it, but it’s not something she wants to hear, not like this, not here between to places, one to where he belongs and the other, farther, where she’s still trying to figure herself out. He doesn’t understand that, not yet. She knows.
Her eyes close though and she catches his hand when it flattens over her breast. Her fingers slide over his skin, then against his knuckles. His mouth presses against her throat and she leans into him.
She swallows before she tells him. “I know,” she says.
It’s not important, the first time they meet, and that they are sitting off the set. There are elaborate machines and orders. Rebecca’s buttons are digging into her skin and she feels so, so impossibly small.
When he offers her a coffee and she says no, to be polite and practical. He still hands it to her and she still takes it, her hand brushing over his and his mouth splitting into that low, lazy smile that she knew him by, that they all knew him by. Then they are calling him the actor’s actor, something old and something rare.
He laughs when she tells him later. Remember, they knew then.