Fic: the code breakers
the code breakers
rpf ; ellen page/jgl ; 3,440 words, r.
and all the cool kids say: this is how you roll in the hills. imagine if hollywood had rules.
notes: LIES. THESE ARE ALL LIES. Because this RPF, and this is apparently, again, how I roll. You don’t really have to read it, but it’s the same verse that different bodies lives in. For vinylroad. She’s an instigator and I love her, very much, for it.
-
Joe leaves her in a bar. This is half the story. Paris is strangely cool in the early morning, and when Ellen starts walking back to her hotel, she wears his jacket. He won’t know until she finds his wallet and his cigarettes in the morning, in a horribly ironic sort of way.
“He’s an idiot,” she tells Marion when she calls, and feels awkwardly responsible for everything, for calling and telling the woman this. There’s a laugh and she imagines Marion, somewhere at home, shrugging delicately over cigarettes and a bottle of wine.
“Boys are boys, darling,” the woman tells her.
This doesn’t make Ellen feel better, of course.
You wonder where Joe starts, really. Ellen doesn’t call him Joe. Leo calls him Joe. Tom calls him Joe. Christopher Nolan calls him Joe. So for an entire year of her life, she thought of him as nothing but Joe.
When she flies into LA, he picks her up. They both smile at the cameras with their teeth and Ellen remembers to put on her sunglasses. There are things that she is still learning how to practice.
“You’re still an asshole,” she mutters at the baggage claim. They face the sign that says delay and he turns, standing in front of her. When he smirks, she rolls her eyes. “I mean it,” she says too. “You’re an asshole. The worst part of it? You know you’re an asshole and you enjoy rubbing it in, dude.”
“Just with you,” he says.
“Thanks.”
They both know that she has a hotel reservation in the city that she’ll never make. In a few days, she has to show up for work.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
She raises an eyebrow and he leans in, closer. There are cameras somewhere, elsewhere. This is Los Angeles and photography is for people who care way too much. Ellen doesn’t understand it, but she knows he gets a kick out of it.
“That,” she says, and then points at his face. They are not dating, she reminds herself. Her hand never waivers. “That look.”
He grins again. He reaches for her and his fingers curl around her arm, the slide up to rest against her shoulders. He leans into her space too and then dips forward, down, and brushes his mouth over hers. It’s a touch, just touch, and when he laughs softly, she can taste it.
“I can’t help it,” he murmurs, and she’s sure, sure, her publicist is just going to check her into some facility when she sees this. But Joe’s mouth opens again and she sort of sighs anyway, half-kissing him back.
He tastes like too much coffee and all his cigarettes and Ellen, Ellen hates herself for that thought alone. It’s as romantic as she’s going to get.
When he pulls away, he’s grinning. “A little trouble’s healthy, Page.”
It doesn’t matter that they really started in a hotel room, somewhere between premieres, or not between premieres; it depends on who remembers it and who decides that they’re remembering it right.
His apartment is a strange side of his personality. Ellen thinks she’s read this book before. You know: boy in the city, the very dangerous city, wide-eyed and suddenly jaded at the promise of his prospects. She imagines him as the anti-hero, even though she knows him, or thinks she knows him, because that’s the kind of guy she’d write him right into.
She drops her bag in the bedroom, when he’s standing behind her, and looks around, surveying the clean colors and the shelves, all lined with books. She is curious, but she doesn’t tell him. Ellen doesn’t tell him a lot of things.
“It’s kinda … unexpected?” she lies, and doesn’t face him. “Your place,” she says. “I don’t know. I was expecting some bizarre homage to the Rat Pack. Or a shrine. You look like you’d have a shrine.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he says.
His fingers brush against the small of her back, her hip, and then move to her shoulders. Gently, he tugs her jacket off of her. He tosses it to the side as she turns, looking down at her in amusement.
“So.”
She bites her lip. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
“The sex?”
She hits him and he laughs, stumbling into her instead of back. Her legs hit the bed and she lets a giggle out, small and too soft, even for her. Joe grabs her hand though and they sort of steady each other, haphazardly.
“I’m serious,” she says to him. She remembers work and then forgets it. They do have a show in the morning, super early. She hopes no one thinks they’re picking her up at the hotel.
“You’re too serious, Page.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Really,” he says. “You know what? You’re one of those girls, well not really a girl - I feel like if I started singing girl, you’ll be a woman soon, you might punch me in the face. I kinda like that about you. You’ve got spunk -”
She snorts. “Please don’t ever use that word referring to me again.”
He ignores her though, as he does often. His hands rise and frame her face, his thumbs sliding under her jaw. He looks at her and her mouth twists, just slightly. She wants to smile.
“I forget what I was going to say, you know.”
“Oh no,” she says dryly.
“Tragic, right?” he asks, and he seems to soften, leaning forward and brushing his mouth against hers. The kiss is soft, almost absent. His mouth is sweet, sticky, and she should remember why; it wasn’t a long drive. But his hand is in her hair and when his mouth opens, deepens the kisses, she feels him smile too. It still makes her sigh and lean into him.
It feels like they’ve been doing this too long, way too long. Ellen is okay with this.
You should know that they miss the morning alarm, the next morning, where they have to work and talk about mindfucks and dreams and well, it’s been such a pleasure to work with so and so. Ellen wears black and Joe sits at her elbow; the morning is bright-eyed, bleary, and she’s said this more than once to him, “dude, this coffee taste like shit.”
They get to that interview though. The cameras are high-enough, waist high, when the interviewer asks them about a sequel.
“Us?” Joe asks, and he grins, looking at her. His fingers brush against her knee and she jumps, only slightly. Her mind wanders to her elbow, her arm, her mouth, her breast and then, oh god, she’s thinking about his fingers slipping between her thighs. This is what happens when he touches her and it isn’t fair.
The interviewer laughs before Joe can finish. Joe winks at her too.
“Yeah, right, sure. If we had a sequel, I’d totally do it. Committing crimes with Juno, totally.”
Ellen’s eyes narrow as the interviewer laughs again. “Right, of course,” she says. “Except, I think I’d be too trigger happy to work with you again.”
Joe leans forward, over her chair. When he laughs, it’s too low.
“Promise?”
It doesn’t matter how she answers. She still blushes then.
(The thing is, and you should know, is that their morning was really an hour and a half, where he’s between her legs - he’s a legs man, and everybody knows - and she’s not entirely sure what’s going on because she’s still twenty-three and boys are still supposed to be idiot to her. But this is Joe, and remember, god, remember that Joe does this thing with his fingers that starts, twist, and pushes her hips back, into the bed, in a slow, steady plea. He gets her to say his name this way.)
She stays in Los Angeles because she has to work. After San Diego, there’s this excitement, this weird excitement, that she hasn’t had in a long time and sort of hates herself for it. She doesn’t get Hollywood and lately, she’s been reminded of that fact.
They have lunch though, even though her bag lives at his place. The two of them sit outside and it’s too warm in LA for Christmas lights, but the bar behind them has them anyway. Ellen orders water. Joe gets two beers.
“I like you because you’re different,” he tells her too. “You’re cool.”
Her eyes roll. “We keep having this conversation, you know. We’ve had it several times, in fact, drunk and sober.”
“I like revisiting, sue me.”
He shrugs too, as if to make a point. Ellen leans back in her seat, curls her legs underneath her. She picks up her coffee, but doesn’t drink it.
“You don’t have to tell me you like me,” she says dryly. “I believed you the first time. I think. At least, you made some kind of case.”
“You’re completely charmed,” he says.
“Obviously.”
These are the weirder moments, she decides. Those moments where it’s the two of them and it doesn’t make any sense to her. Looking around too, she catches a few glances, a recognition game that is plastered all over some people’s faces.
But Joe leans over the table and snaps in her face. She jumps, startled. Her fingers tighten around the coffee cup and some of it spills over her jeans and her hand. She hisses and it’s hot, narrowing her eyes at him.
“Really?”
His mouth curls. “What?”
“I don’t get you,” she mutters. She reaches for her napkin and wrings her hands with it. The fabric pulls over her skin and there’s this soft welt against the back of her hand. “You’re, like - I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t get you, man. I don’t get what’s happening here and I don’t think I’ll ever get it.”
“Stop.”
Her eyes narrow. “Dude, you spilled coffee all over me. Allow me to panic.”
He laughs and the sound is low, too low and she stares at him, watching as his mouth slides over her hand. She’s going to kill him, she thinks. Then his tongue darts out and brushes over her skin. She makes a sound, her eyes widening. Her fingers curl around his hand.
“I hate you,” she breathes, and he laughs.
It’s complicated, she guesses. They get to Paris. She’s visiting. He may be working. They don’t arrive together. This time, he lives in her room.
“So you have work?” she asks, and he gets back into bed, leaning over her. His mouth slides over hers and she sighs, half-smiling against his. “Seriously,” she murmurs, “I’m trying to talk to you.”
He shrugs. There is an astray by the bed. It catches enough light to spread over his head and she feels lazy, suddenly, strangely so.
When he says nothing still, she doesn’t push. She lets her fingers brush against his face, curiously, shyly. He makes her feel so many things, she thinks. Then she stops. He lets his mouth brush over her throat and she sighs instead.
“You don’t want to talk,” he says, and against her skin. His fingers spread over her stomach, under her shirt, and she makes another sound. “If you talk,” he tells her, “you’ll get angry, and when you get angry, you’re kind of a bust to be around - ”
She snorts. “Whatever.”
“I’m serious. You look at me and I feel like I’ve kicked a puppy. It’s not sexy, Page. I feel like an asshole when you think too much.”
“So then what is this?” she asks, and his knuckles skim her stomach. She turns to him, her eyes wide. He gives her a smile, a small one, the kind that she’s not supposed to see when it comes to him. She gets that.
“Does it matter?”
He counters and she shifts out from underneath him. She knocks over a book, from somewhere in the bed. Gatsby creases into the carpet on the floor and it’s Joe’s. Ellen doesn’t have a phase like that. She cares very little for phases.
“It has to,” she insists too, and straddles his hips. He smirks and she shakes her head. “Things matter,” she says and laces her fingers through his. She pins them over his head lightly. She still feels shy. “Things always matter,” she says.
“You’re a romantic, Page.”
He grins and leans up, trying to kiss her. Ellen pulls back.
“I don’t know how to take that,” he says. “It’s cute, kind of sexy? I mean, I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t even know what to think of you.”
She rolls her eyes. It still makes her stomach sink; it’s kind of funny being here, being this way, halfway into something that she’s completely and utterly unprepared for. They both know this.
Later they’re kissing outside her room. His hand is wrapped around her thigh and she suddenly feels like one of those girls, annoyed and half-swept off of her feet. His hips jerk forward and she laughs into his mouth, drunk and dizzy too.
“You’re such an idiot,” she breathes, and it makes her feel better, just a little better, twisting her fingers in his hair. He grunts and she presses wrinkles into his back, down his jacket as he kisses her again. He sinks his teeth into her lip again and she wants to laugh, she decides, really laugh in that kind of stupid, irresponsible way that she’s supposed to be staying far away from.
The truth is that the hallway is empty and she hears him growl, smiling into his teeth. His tongue traces her lip and her hand picks, stumbles, and then helps pull at his belt
“Shut up,” he mutters. Ellen feels his hand push her dress up her thigh. His nails tap along her skin and there’s a tear, a tiny sound. She feels him laugh against her throat and she arches, presses into him as he pushes back, harder, spreading her against the wall.
They’re a mess, she thinks. She’s a mess, she thinks too. She doesn’t know why she’s doing this. The thrill, the push - not being this girl, this kind of girl, the ones that are parties and premieres and coo through their it’s such a great kind of life, being an actress. She is not that girl and there are more of them than anybody really realizes.
But whatever she is now, he’s helped make her that way.
(She has very few secrets left. Ellen will not bring him home for this reason: he is hot, thick, and when he slides inside of her, his mouth opens and slips his tongue along her collarbone. It makes her sticky and ready for pleading, pleading to him to hurry the fuck up because she is really just as impatient as he is. He knows this too.)
This is still Paris. There is a crowd. Ellen is at a bar. Her dress shapes itself around her hips and hits her knee, just barely. She’s watching Joe across the room, standing Tom and a few girls, talking and laughing. She feels like an idiot.
“Hey lady.” A guy comes up to her and stands by her knees, even after she crosses them. It’s one of those moments where she wishes for a girlfriend, or to be one of those girls that has one of those ridiculous entourages. “You look so familiar,” the guy says too. “Really familiar.”
“Right,” Ellen mutters.
She catches Joe’s gaze from across the bar. The music changes into something louder. When he flashes a grin, she shakes her head.
“You’re -”
“Juno,” she says, looking back at the guy. “I’m the chick that got knocked-up in high school, did Michael Cera in a chair that belongs in a junkyard, actually, no, somebody should burn it and the hoodie too.”
The guy grins at her and she swears his eyes roll back. She can smell the booze. Joe’s jacket is somewhere behind her and she’s unimpressed, really, at how this whole night decided to begin. She doesn’t even remember how it started.
“Would you like to dance?” the guy asks, and she shakes her head. He leans forward and she wrinkles her nose. “Really, I am a good dancer. “
“You’re gross,” she says.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
She looks at him in surprise. It’s one of those questions; you get them a lot, you get people trying to figure out who you are or where you belong, as if that whole thing is supposed to make some kind of sense. When she looks at the guy, really looks at him, there’s nothing remotely attractive either. When he leans into her space, his fingers brush against her shoulder,
“No.”
He laughs. “So,” he says, and over his shoulder, she sees Joe and Joe leaning into another girl. There’s Tom, winking at her and she, in turn, gives them both the finger. She imagines laughter over the music, simply because this is what the two of them do when they’re together. Then they’re gone.
“I’m not interested,” she says, and she slips off the stool. Without thinking, she grabs Joe’s jacket and slides into it. She fits her hands into the pockets and stares at the guy, nearly amused.
It takes a lot of energy to ignore someone calling her name, or thinking that that they called her name. It’s Ellen and someone tries to stop her at the door. She feels like an ass, but she pretends. She looks again too, trying to see the boys, but they’re gone and she doesn’t feel like sitting at the bar, being that girl.
Ellen doesn’t chase. That much is true.
Marion welcomes her at the door. She smiles sympathetically.
“Are you sure he left you?” she asks, and Ellen’s head is still kind of spinning. Stupid bar, she thinks. She pulls at her dress. Stupid dress, she thinks too. Marion catches her by the elbow and she remembers she has another interview in the morning. “It does not sound like him,” the other woman says too.
Ellen feels like crying. Or laughing. She stares helplessly at Marion, who leads her into a sitting room. There is a small television and too many books and it almost, almost makes feel Ellen comfortable until she sees Marion’s boyfriend spread over the couch.
“Sorry,” Ellen mutters.
Marion laughs and the man, Guillaume, she remembers, laughs softly. He shifts slowly and then stands. He gives them a small bow.
“I won’t be a bother,” he says and Marion snorts, amused as she looks at him. They share a look and Ellen feels so ridiculously out of place, in a way that she’s not really ready to understand. She blushes too.
The woman leans in and whispers to Ellen, loudly. “Do not mind him,” she murmurs. “He is a show-off, no?”
Ellen manages to shrug.
It’s a bit of a whirlwind after that. She’s lead to sit down, settle on the couch as Marion disappears with promises of something stronger. She smells like the bar still, Ellen realizes, and she kind of hates everything about that.
“I’m a goddamn mess,” she says out loud.
She feels impossibly small, she decides. The dress is too tight and she’s taking to black again, she realizes. She runs her fingers over her knees, then rubs her knuckles into her skin, drawing her hands back and into the pockets. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes out.
Joe, she thinks and sighs. When Marion comes in with a beer, Ellen downs it without thinking. Her eyes are closed. “I don’t like the way he makes me feel,” she says.
Marion laughs softly. “This is how it starts, ma cherie.”
It doesn’t matter what happens after. Really. It’ll happen again and she’ll feel too many things, and try to cope. This is what Ellen does well. She copes.
But picture this, the morning after: Joe is waiting for her in the morning, in her room, ridiculously hung over. Their suitcases are by the door when she walks in and the sun’s coming up, rising over the windows for the normal people, for the people with real lives. There are no wrinkles and his clothes and too many in hers as he reaches for her hand.
Their fingers curl. “I’m an asshole,” he says. His mouth presses against her knuckles and he studies her, just for the moment. She doesn’t smile, but she looks at him. They are a mess, she thinks. Then she thinks it again.
She squints when sun hits the window. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, dude. You are.”
rpf ; ellen page/jgl ; 3,440 words, r.
and all the cool kids say: this is how you roll in the hills. imagine if hollywood had rules.
notes: LIES. THESE ARE ALL LIES. Because this RPF, and this is apparently, again, how I roll. You don’t really have to read it, but it’s the same verse that different bodies lives in. For vinylroad. She’s an instigator and I love her, very much, for it.
-
Joe leaves her in a bar. This is half the story. Paris is strangely cool in the early morning, and when Ellen starts walking back to her hotel, she wears his jacket. He won’t know until she finds his wallet and his cigarettes in the morning, in a horribly ironic sort of way.
“He’s an idiot,” she tells Marion when she calls, and feels awkwardly responsible for everything, for calling and telling the woman this. There’s a laugh and she imagines Marion, somewhere at home, shrugging delicately over cigarettes and a bottle of wine.
“Boys are boys, darling,” the woman tells her.
This doesn’t make Ellen feel better, of course.
You wonder where Joe starts, really. Ellen doesn’t call him Joe. Leo calls him Joe. Tom calls him Joe. Christopher Nolan calls him Joe. So for an entire year of her life, she thought of him as nothing but Joe.
When she flies into LA, he picks her up. They both smile at the cameras with their teeth and Ellen remembers to put on her sunglasses. There are things that she is still learning how to practice.
“You’re still an asshole,” she mutters at the baggage claim. They face the sign that says delay and he turns, standing in front of her. When he smirks, she rolls her eyes. “I mean it,” she says too. “You’re an asshole. The worst part of it? You know you’re an asshole and you enjoy rubbing it in, dude.”
“Just with you,” he says.
“Thanks.”
They both know that she has a hotel reservation in the city that she’ll never make. In a few days, she has to show up for work.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
She raises an eyebrow and he leans in, closer. There are cameras somewhere, elsewhere. This is Los Angeles and photography is for people who care way too much. Ellen doesn’t understand it, but she knows he gets a kick out of it.
“That,” she says, and then points at his face. They are not dating, she reminds herself. Her hand never waivers. “That look.”
He grins again. He reaches for her and his fingers curl around her arm, the slide up to rest against her shoulders. He leans into her space too and then dips forward, down, and brushes his mouth over hers. It’s a touch, just touch, and when he laughs softly, she can taste it.
“I can’t help it,” he murmurs, and she’s sure, sure, her publicist is just going to check her into some facility when she sees this. But Joe’s mouth opens again and she sort of sighs anyway, half-kissing him back.
He tastes like too much coffee and all his cigarettes and Ellen, Ellen hates herself for that thought alone. It’s as romantic as she’s going to get.
When he pulls away, he’s grinning. “A little trouble’s healthy, Page.”
It doesn’t matter that they really started in a hotel room, somewhere between premieres, or not between premieres; it depends on who remembers it and who decides that they’re remembering it right.
His apartment is a strange side of his personality. Ellen thinks she’s read this book before. You know: boy in the city, the very dangerous city, wide-eyed and suddenly jaded at the promise of his prospects. She imagines him as the anti-hero, even though she knows him, or thinks she knows him, because that’s the kind of guy she’d write him right into.
She drops her bag in the bedroom, when he’s standing behind her, and looks around, surveying the clean colors and the shelves, all lined with books. She is curious, but she doesn’t tell him. Ellen doesn’t tell him a lot of things.
“It’s kinda … unexpected?” she lies, and doesn’t face him. “Your place,” she says. “I don’t know. I was expecting some bizarre homage to the Rat Pack. Or a shrine. You look like you’d have a shrine.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he says.
His fingers brush against the small of her back, her hip, and then move to her shoulders. Gently, he tugs her jacket off of her. He tosses it to the side as she turns, looking down at her in amusement.
“So.”
She bites her lip. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
“The sex?”
She hits him and he laughs, stumbling into her instead of back. Her legs hit the bed and she lets a giggle out, small and too soft, even for her. Joe grabs her hand though and they sort of steady each other, haphazardly.
“I’m serious,” she says to him. She remembers work and then forgets it. They do have a show in the morning, super early. She hopes no one thinks they’re picking her up at the hotel.
“You’re too serious, Page.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Really,” he says. “You know what? You’re one of those girls, well not really a girl - I feel like if I started singing girl, you’ll be a woman soon, you might punch me in the face. I kinda like that about you. You’ve got spunk -”
She snorts. “Please don’t ever use that word referring to me again.”
He ignores her though, as he does often. His hands rise and frame her face, his thumbs sliding under her jaw. He looks at her and her mouth twists, just slightly. She wants to smile.
“I forget what I was going to say, you know.”
“Oh no,” she says dryly.
“Tragic, right?” he asks, and he seems to soften, leaning forward and brushing his mouth against hers. The kiss is soft, almost absent. His mouth is sweet, sticky, and she should remember why; it wasn’t a long drive. But his hand is in her hair and when his mouth opens, deepens the kisses, she feels him smile too. It still makes her sigh and lean into him.
It feels like they’ve been doing this too long, way too long. Ellen is okay with this.
You should know that they miss the morning alarm, the next morning, where they have to work and talk about mindfucks and dreams and well, it’s been such a pleasure to work with so and so. Ellen wears black and Joe sits at her elbow; the morning is bright-eyed, bleary, and she’s said this more than once to him, “dude, this coffee taste like shit.”
They get to that interview though. The cameras are high-enough, waist high, when the interviewer asks them about a sequel.
“Us?” Joe asks, and he grins, looking at her. His fingers brush against her knee and she jumps, only slightly. Her mind wanders to her elbow, her arm, her mouth, her breast and then, oh god, she’s thinking about his fingers slipping between her thighs. This is what happens when he touches her and it isn’t fair.
The interviewer laughs before Joe can finish. Joe winks at her too.
“Yeah, right, sure. If we had a sequel, I’d totally do it. Committing crimes with Juno, totally.”
Ellen’s eyes narrow as the interviewer laughs again. “Right, of course,” she says. “Except, I think I’d be too trigger happy to work with you again.”
Joe leans forward, over her chair. When he laughs, it’s too low.
“Promise?”
It doesn’t matter how she answers. She still blushes then.
(The thing is, and you should know, is that their morning was really an hour and a half, where he’s between her legs - he’s a legs man, and everybody knows - and she’s not entirely sure what’s going on because she’s still twenty-three and boys are still supposed to be idiot to her. But this is Joe, and remember, god, remember that Joe does this thing with his fingers that starts, twist, and pushes her hips back, into the bed, in a slow, steady plea. He gets her to say his name this way.)
She stays in Los Angeles because she has to work. After San Diego, there’s this excitement, this weird excitement, that she hasn’t had in a long time and sort of hates herself for it. She doesn’t get Hollywood and lately, she’s been reminded of that fact.
They have lunch though, even though her bag lives at his place. The two of them sit outside and it’s too warm in LA for Christmas lights, but the bar behind them has them anyway. Ellen orders water. Joe gets two beers.
“I like you because you’re different,” he tells her too. “You’re cool.”
Her eyes roll. “We keep having this conversation, you know. We’ve had it several times, in fact, drunk and sober.”
“I like revisiting, sue me.”
He shrugs too, as if to make a point. Ellen leans back in her seat, curls her legs underneath her. She picks up her coffee, but doesn’t drink it.
“You don’t have to tell me you like me,” she says dryly. “I believed you the first time. I think. At least, you made some kind of case.”
“You’re completely charmed,” he says.
“Obviously.”
These are the weirder moments, she decides. Those moments where it’s the two of them and it doesn’t make any sense to her. Looking around too, she catches a few glances, a recognition game that is plastered all over some people’s faces.
But Joe leans over the table and snaps in her face. She jumps, startled. Her fingers tighten around the coffee cup and some of it spills over her jeans and her hand. She hisses and it’s hot, narrowing her eyes at him.
“Really?”
His mouth curls. “What?”
“I don’t get you,” she mutters. She reaches for her napkin and wrings her hands with it. The fabric pulls over her skin and there’s this soft welt against the back of her hand. “You’re, like - I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t get you, man. I don’t get what’s happening here and I don’t think I’ll ever get it.”
“Stop.”
Her eyes narrow. “Dude, you spilled coffee all over me. Allow me to panic.”
He laughs and the sound is low, too low and she stares at him, watching as his mouth slides over her hand. She’s going to kill him, she thinks. Then his tongue darts out and brushes over her skin. She makes a sound, her eyes widening. Her fingers curl around his hand.
“I hate you,” she breathes, and he laughs.
It’s complicated, she guesses. They get to Paris. She’s visiting. He may be working. They don’t arrive together. This time, he lives in her room.
“So you have work?” she asks, and he gets back into bed, leaning over her. His mouth slides over hers and she sighs, half-smiling against his. “Seriously,” she murmurs, “I’m trying to talk to you.”
He shrugs. There is an astray by the bed. It catches enough light to spread over his head and she feels lazy, suddenly, strangely so.
When he says nothing still, she doesn’t push. She lets her fingers brush against his face, curiously, shyly. He makes her feel so many things, she thinks. Then she stops. He lets his mouth brush over her throat and she sighs instead.
“You don’t want to talk,” he says, and against her skin. His fingers spread over her stomach, under her shirt, and she makes another sound. “If you talk,” he tells her, “you’ll get angry, and when you get angry, you’re kind of a bust to be around - ”
She snorts. “Whatever.”
“I’m serious. You look at me and I feel like I’ve kicked a puppy. It’s not sexy, Page. I feel like an asshole when you think too much.”
“So then what is this?” she asks, and his knuckles skim her stomach. She turns to him, her eyes wide. He gives her a smile, a small one, the kind that she’s not supposed to see when it comes to him. She gets that.
“Does it matter?”
He counters and she shifts out from underneath him. She knocks over a book, from somewhere in the bed. Gatsby creases into the carpet on the floor and it’s Joe’s. Ellen doesn’t have a phase like that. She cares very little for phases.
“It has to,” she insists too, and straddles his hips. He smirks and she shakes her head. “Things matter,” she says and laces her fingers through his. She pins them over his head lightly. She still feels shy. “Things always matter,” she says.
“You’re a romantic, Page.”
He grins and leans up, trying to kiss her. Ellen pulls back.
“I don’t know how to take that,” he says. “It’s cute, kind of sexy? I mean, I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t even know what to think of you.”
She rolls her eyes. It still makes her stomach sink; it’s kind of funny being here, being this way, halfway into something that she’s completely and utterly unprepared for. They both know this.
Later they’re kissing outside her room. His hand is wrapped around her thigh and she suddenly feels like one of those girls, annoyed and half-swept off of her feet. His hips jerk forward and she laughs into his mouth, drunk and dizzy too.
“You’re such an idiot,” she breathes, and it makes her feel better, just a little better, twisting her fingers in his hair. He grunts and she presses wrinkles into his back, down his jacket as he kisses her again. He sinks his teeth into her lip again and she wants to laugh, she decides, really laugh in that kind of stupid, irresponsible way that she’s supposed to be staying far away from.
The truth is that the hallway is empty and she hears him growl, smiling into his teeth. His tongue traces her lip and her hand picks, stumbles, and then helps pull at his belt
“Shut up,” he mutters. Ellen feels his hand push her dress up her thigh. His nails tap along her skin and there’s a tear, a tiny sound. She feels him laugh against her throat and she arches, presses into him as he pushes back, harder, spreading her against the wall.
They’re a mess, she thinks. She’s a mess, she thinks too. She doesn’t know why she’s doing this. The thrill, the push - not being this girl, this kind of girl, the ones that are parties and premieres and coo through their it’s such a great kind of life, being an actress. She is not that girl and there are more of them than anybody really realizes.
But whatever she is now, he’s helped make her that way.
(She has very few secrets left. Ellen will not bring him home for this reason: he is hot, thick, and when he slides inside of her, his mouth opens and slips his tongue along her collarbone. It makes her sticky and ready for pleading, pleading to him to hurry the fuck up because she is really just as impatient as he is. He knows this too.)
This is still Paris. There is a crowd. Ellen is at a bar. Her dress shapes itself around her hips and hits her knee, just barely. She’s watching Joe across the room, standing Tom and a few girls, talking and laughing. She feels like an idiot.
“Hey lady.” A guy comes up to her and stands by her knees, even after she crosses them. It’s one of those moments where she wishes for a girlfriend, or to be one of those girls that has one of those ridiculous entourages. “You look so familiar,” the guy says too. “Really familiar.”
“Right,” Ellen mutters.
She catches Joe’s gaze from across the bar. The music changes into something louder. When he flashes a grin, she shakes her head.
“You’re -”
“Juno,” she says, looking back at the guy. “I’m the chick that got knocked-up in high school, did Michael Cera in a chair that belongs in a junkyard, actually, no, somebody should burn it and the hoodie too.”
The guy grins at her and she swears his eyes roll back. She can smell the booze. Joe’s jacket is somewhere behind her and she’s unimpressed, really, at how this whole night decided to begin. She doesn’t even remember how it started.
“Would you like to dance?” the guy asks, and she shakes her head. He leans forward and she wrinkles her nose. “Really, I am a good dancer. “
“You’re gross,” she says.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
She looks at him in surprise. It’s one of those questions; you get them a lot, you get people trying to figure out who you are or where you belong, as if that whole thing is supposed to make some kind of sense. When she looks at the guy, really looks at him, there’s nothing remotely attractive either. When he leans into her space, his fingers brush against her shoulder,
“No.”
He laughs. “So,” he says, and over his shoulder, she sees Joe and Joe leaning into another girl. There’s Tom, winking at her and she, in turn, gives them both the finger. She imagines laughter over the music, simply because this is what the two of them do when they’re together. Then they’re gone.
“I’m not interested,” she says, and she slips off the stool. Without thinking, she grabs Joe’s jacket and slides into it. She fits her hands into the pockets and stares at the guy, nearly amused.
It takes a lot of energy to ignore someone calling her name, or thinking that that they called her name. It’s Ellen and someone tries to stop her at the door. She feels like an ass, but she pretends. She looks again too, trying to see the boys, but they’re gone and she doesn’t feel like sitting at the bar, being that girl.
Ellen doesn’t chase. That much is true.
Marion welcomes her at the door. She smiles sympathetically.
“Are you sure he left you?” she asks, and Ellen’s head is still kind of spinning. Stupid bar, she thinks. She pulls at her dress. Stupid dress, she thinks too. Marion catches her by the elbow and she remembers she has another interview in the morning. “It does not sound like him,” the other woman says too.
Ellen feels like crying. Or laughing. She stares helplessly at Marion, who leads her into a sitting room. There is a small television and too many books and it almost, almost makes feel Ellen comfortable until she sees Marion’s boyfriend spread over the couch.
“Sorry,” Ellen mutters.
Marion laughs and the man, Guillaume, she remembers, laughs softly. He shifts slowly and then stands. He gives them a small bow.
“I won’t be a bother,” he says and Marion snorts, amused as she looks at him. They share a look and Ellen feels so ridiculously out of place, in a way that she’s not really ready to understand. She blushes too.
The woman leans in and whispers to Ellen, loudly. “Do not mind him,” she murmurs. “He is a show-off, no?”
Ellen manages to shrug.
It’s a bit of a whirlwind after that. She’s lead to sit down, settle on the couch as Marion disappears with promises of something stronger. She smells like the bar still, Ellen realizes, and she kind of hates everything about that.
“I’m a goddamn mess,” she says out loud.
She feels impossibly small, she decides. The dress is too tight and she’s taking to black again, she realizes. She runs her fingers over her knees, then rubs her knuckles into her skin, drawing her hands back and into the pockets. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes out.
Joe, she thinks and sighs. When Marion comes in with a beer, Ellen downs it without thinking. Her eyes are closed. “I don’t like the way he makes me feel,” she says.
Marion laughs softly. “This is how it starts, ma cherie.”
It doesn’t matter what happens after. Really. It’ll happen again and she’ll feel too many things, and try to cope. This is what Ellen does well. She copes.
But picture this, the morning after: Joe is waiting for her in the morning, in her room, ridiculously hung over. Their suitcases are by the door when she walks in and the sun’s coming up, rising over the windows for the normal people, for the people with real lives. There are no wrinkles and his clothes and too many in hers as he reaches for her hand.
Their fingers curl. “I’m an asshole,” he says. His mouth presses against her knuckles and he studies her, just for the moment. She doesn’t smile, but she looks at him. They are a mess, she thinks. Then she thinks it again.
She squints when sun hits the window. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, dude. You are.”