Fic: Made Men, Entourage, Vince/Eric, NC-17, 6/6
Continued from Part 5.
About 4 am, Vince wakes to the sound of Eric throwing up. He peels himself off of the couch and goes into the bathroom, which is a huge Jacuzzi-inclusive number with a separate little closet for the toilet. Vince stops at the door and can see Eric inside, one hand on his forehead and the other on the toilet. He gags again, and Vince winces and turns around, fills a cup with water at the tap. He’s sitting on the edge of the Jacuzzi when Eric stumbles out, straight over to the sink, where he turns on the water and ducks his head underneath.
“E?”
Eric sputters, spits water into the sink, and groans. He sinks to his knees, rests his head against the marble countertop. “Don’t look,” he says, his voice raspy.
Vince gets up and turns the sink off. He turns, then sits on the floor next to Eric. Eric’s skin is green and shiny with sweat. Vince watches him swallow. He’s been this hungover before - or this drunk, it’s hard to tell which side of it Eric’s on - and he knows that even touching him will probably send him over the edge. So he just sits there, very still, until Eric swallows again, takes a few slow, deep breaths, and then opens his eyes.
“You all right?” Vince asks quietly.
Eric lifts one shoulder. He peels back from the counter, slowly, and rubs his forehead with a shaking hand. “Feel like death,” he mutters, the hand now covering his mouth.
“Gonna be sick again?”
He lifts his shoulder another time. Vince reaches over, very tentatively, and puts his hand on Eric’s ribcage. His shirt is wet and cold with sweat. “C’mon,” Vince says. “We’ll get you back to bed.”
Eric shakes his head. He says, “Towel,” so Vince grabs a big bath towel from a stack nearby and hands it over. Eric whispers something that might be a thank you, then drops it on the floor. He lowers himself to the ground and rests his head on it, turning on his side.
“OK, seriously, that can’t be comfortable.”
“I’m fine,” Eric mutters. His eyes are already closed again. “Not your problem.”
Vince stares at him for a second, then gets up. Maybe Eric’s not even here to see him. Maybe he just came out of obligation. Vince walks back into the suite and sits on the couch. Eric isn’t his responsibility anymore, right?
He leans back. The light is still on in the bathroom, which is making it kind of hard to sleep. He could move to the bed - Eric’s not using it, after all. So he gets up, and as he does, he sees Eric curled on the bathroom floor out of the corner of his eye.
Eric isn’t his responsibility. Like hell.
He drags a blanket off the bed and one of the pillows. When he walks into the bathroom, Eric moans a little.
“OK, here we go,” Vince says, pulling the blanket over him. He can see he’s shivering, and he takes care to tuck it around him, so there’s something between him and the cold marble floor. Vince crouches beside him, gets Eric to lift his head for a minute so he can get the pillow under him. His back’s still probably going to kill him in the morning, he thinks, but there’s not a lot he can do about that. “E? Are you all right?”
Eric swallows, then opens his eyes halfway. “Mmhm,” he says. “Go to bed.”
His voice is still rough, but it’s a little kinder. Vince squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll be right outside if you need me,” he says.
“Thanks.”
The next time Vince wakes up, it’s morning, and Eric’s lying beside him in the bed. He reaches out from habit he didn’t even know he still had, and Eric murmurs in his sleep and turns toward him. They’re on their usual sides - Vince on the right, Eric on the left - and when Eric’s hand falls onto Vince’s ribcage, he closes his eyes and thinks it could easily be seven months ago. It could be a year ago. He really, really wishes it was.
He turns and looks at Eric, and slowly, maybe from the movement or some sixth sense, Eric’s eyes open. “Oh,” he says, and swallows thickly. “Uh.”
“Hello,” Vince says.
Eric blinks. “Hi.”
“You’re in my bed.”
Eric nods. “Sorry. Sorry. I - Jesus, I’m not even sure what happened,” he says.
“How do you feel?”
“OK,” Eric says. It’s always been this way for Eric, even when they were teenagers - if he got drunk enough to throw up, he’d be fine the next day. “I was a mess, huh?”
“Pretty bad,” Vince agrees.
Eric closes his eyes again. “What happened?” he asks, very quietly. “Did I - did anything -”
“No,” Vince says. “I walked you here from the bar, you passed out, you woke up, you threw up -”
“I remember that.”
“And then here you are.”
“OK.” He frowns and pulls his hand away, carefully. “Sorry about that.”
Vince sighs. “E, what are you doing here?”
Eric’s hand clenches in front of him. “I don’t know. I came for the party. I wanted - I felt like -” He opens his eyes, but he doesn’t look at Vince. “I felt like I owed it to Drama. But, then I got here, and I - I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t… see me?” Eric shrugs. Vince feels a tiny thrill over the steady, nauseating nervousness. “So you drained a bottle of whiskey?”
“And maybe like a dozen of its closest friends,” Eric says. “Stupid. I know.”
“Really stupid,” Vince says.
Eric looks up at him, just briefly, a tiny, near-smile on his face. “Though it got me back in your bed.”
Vince shakes his head. “It’s not that easy. It’s not going to be this easy.”
“I know,” Eric says, then, “Wait. Going to be?” There’s a tiny warble of hope in his voice.
Vince looks down. “I don’t know.”
“Do you - do you think there’s any way -” Eric clears his throat, and his hands fidget on the blankets. “Don’t answer that, all right?”
“I don’t even know what you were going to ask.”
“Vince.” Vince looks over, and sees desperation and exhaustion on Eric’s face, hope and despair. Love. Eric looks away. “I ought to go.”
Vince nods, though he’s thinking no, no, no. Eric sits up and puts his legs over the side of the bed, and Vince raises his hand, wants to touch the broad expanse of his back, but he can’t, not quite. Not now.
“Stay,” he says, instead. “Stay for breakfast.” Eric looks back over his shoulder, and Vince avoids meeting his eyes. “Johnny’ll want you here.”
Eric nods, after a moment. “Yeah, all right.” He gets up and rubs his head, then says, “You mind if I, uh, I should maybe take a shower.”
“Sure.”
He watches Eric walk to the bathroom and doesn’t move until the door is closed. Then he covers his face for a second, trying to make himself think past the one obvious thought that’s running through his brain: it felt really, really good to have Eric back in bed with him. It felt fucking wonderful to wake up and have him there.
He figures he has two choices, right now. He can get up, go out into the suite and eat breakfast with the guys, wait for Eric to show up, and they can all sit around awkwardly and not talk about the break-up elephant in the room. And Eric will go home, and Vince will go home, and they’ll dance around each other at the wedding and eventually things will get less awkward and maybe, in a year or so, they’ll be friends again. They’ll see each other at industry events and whenever Turtle decides to throw a party, and they might even reach a place where they can joke around again, where it won’t take a crate of bourbon to get Eric into the same room with him, where it won’t take a prescription for Vince to fall asleep alone. Vince can get up and walk back into his old life. He can accept that love is hard, too hard, has too many possibilities for unhappy endings , and he can just float through, fuck whoever he wants, not worry about this kind of stuff ever again.
Or he can do this:
He gets up and pushes the bathroom door open. The shower is running - an amazing contraption in and of itself, with eight shower heads and no real door, just a stone opening that you walk around to get to the main shower, which is square and has two little benches built into the side. He wishes there was a curtain, something to pull back to make a dramatic entrance, because as it is, when he rounds the corner, still wearing his pajamas, Eric has his back to him, one arm braced on the shower wall, the water rushing down his bare, muscled back.
Vince shifts, shuffles his feet, finally clears his throat, and Eric jumps. “Jesus Christ!” he yelps, and then turns and his eyes go very wide. “Vince? What the - what the fuck?”
And Vince steps forward, into the spray from all eight jets, hit suddenly in the head and the stomach and the chest and everywhere, all at once, by clean warm water and then, very soon after that, by being this close to Eric, naked and wide-eyed and definitely, clearly wanting him.
“You’re in my shower,” Eric says, his hands at his sides.
“You were in my bed,” Vince says, and puts his hands on Eric’s bare waist and ducks to kiss him.
Eric kisses back like he’s afraid they’re on a deadline. He nearly pushes Vince over, in fact, frantically tugging at his wet T-shirt. Vince pushes Eric back, onto one of the benches, then peels his shirt off and drops it on the floor. Eric wipes water from his face, reaches out and slaps off the shower jets. He’s breathing fast and staring up at Vince, half-scared, Vince can see. He kneels in front of him and watches Eric swallow, puts his hands on Eric’s sides, feels the thundering of his heart. Eric’s hands come up and land gently on Vince’s shoulders, and Vince angles up for a kiss, then another, then another. He can feel Eric’s cock rubbing against his chest.
“I -” Eric starts, his hands tangled in Vince’s hair, and Vince pulls back and shakes his head, then lowers it and takes Eric in his mouth. Eric’s whole body seizes up, his head falls back, he curses. Vince keeps his hands steady on Eric’s thighs and his mouth firm and warm around Eric’s dick. He remembers everything Eric likes, traces the vein on the under side with his tongue, pays attention to the head, even inches his fingers back to tease Eric’s balls. He starts to push back, further, and Eric spreads his legs a little more, seems willing, but that’s not what Vince wants. Not after all this time. So he pulls back and looks up at Eric, who’s looking down at him in alarm.
Vince smiles. “Bedroom,” he says, and Eric nods fast, relieved. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says, rocking back onto his heels.
“Thank God.”
Vince leaves his pajamas in a sopping heap on the bathroom floor, then follows Eric into the bedroom and onto the bed. He worries, briefly, that they’re out of the moment, that Eric’s going to want to talk about what this means or what they’re doing, but Eric just immediately rolls Vince onto his back and starts kissing him again, their cocks meeting for a few electrifying seconds.
He would love to spend some time reacquainting himself with Eric's body, seeing if anything has changed in the last six months, if he's still ticklish behind his knees or automatically turned on by teeth on his earlobes, but he knows neither of them can last that long. So Vince pulls one of his legs up, clear invitation, and Eric groans, rubbing his hand over Vince’s taut thigh, then kissing the inside of his knee. He reaches for the bedside table - thank God the Palm thinks of everything - and Vince says, “Condom, too,” and Eric looks back, whip-fast, a tiny hitch of something - disappointment, surprise, jealousy - flashing across his face. But he masks it or works past it, and soon he’s slicking Vince up and kissing him at the same time, taking a moment to lave his nipples and run teasing bites across his collarbones. Fuck, no one fucks like Eric, Vince thinks as he pushes in. No words - and hardly any sounds - pass between them, but Eric knows exactly how to do things right, how to move precisely so that Vince’s back arches without him even thinking about it, in fact, how to move so that Vince isn’t thinking at all, he’s just reduced to a bucking, clenching, wanting nerve-ending, and Eric above him and in him is the only thing he knows.
He sees stars when he comes, and he holds Eric tight, close, doesn’t let him back off for a minute while he tries to get his head back on straight. Eric kisses his jaw, the tendons of his neck, licks at the sweat behind his ear, and Vince finally nods, finally lets him pull back and out and away.
Once they’ve both caught their breath, Vince swallows and says, “So. How’ve you been?”
Eric laughs. “Bad,” he says, once he’s calmed down. “You?”
“Yeah, pretty bad.” Vince shifts just a little, so his calf is against Eric’s. “I heard you’re fucking up on the job.”
“Yeah, I heard the same about you.”
“I’m not well managed.”
“Ha.”
Vince exhales hard, in a burst, then turns onto his side. Eric looks over at him, a funny, sexy once-over. “I did not expect this,” he says.
“Me either,” Vince says. “But - I think that’s sort of been our theme.”
Eric smirks. “Maybe so,” he says. One of his hands is resting on his chest, and Vince watches, fascinated, as it twitches up, then back, then up again.
Vince smiles, and slides his hand over Eric’s ribs, and Eric’s hand rests on his side, still jumpy. “You just fucked me, you can touch if you want,” he says, and Eric snorts, but his hand steadies.
“So - what does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” Vince says. He ducks to kiss Eric’s shoulder. “But I have missed the fuck out of you.”
“Christ, me too.”
The next round damn near costs Vince $25,000, because they fall asleep afterwards and sleep through check-out time. Luckily, the Palms media guy is so excited when Vince agrees to walk the carpet outside the hotel for promotional photos that he forgives the whole thing. Eric, blushing faintly at the ribbing he’s getting from the guys for being a $25K lay, stays pretty far back during that whole discussion.
“So, what do you think, you wanna ride back with us?” Vince asks, after the photos are over and they’re in the limo on the way to the airport. He hired a jet to take them out and back, just to add a little luxury. Johnny’s on the phone with Larissa, and Turtle and Dom are playing head-to-head on their PSPs.
Eric looks alarmed. “Uh.”
Vince sits back, just a little, feels a terrible jolt of something - rejection, fear, nerves - course through him. “What?”
“Nothing,” Eric says, shaking his head. “Of course. Yeah. I just, uh, I couldn’t remember where I left my car.”
Vince raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? You didn’t drive, did you?”
“No,” Eric says, shaking his head vigorously. “I’d love a ride. Yeah. Thanks.” And then he shifts over so his leg is again pressed to Vince’s, and Vince looks down and nearly laughs.
Instead, he just smiles and squeezes Eric’s knee. “Good.”
The guys take Eric in like he’s never been gone, so much so that Vince feels kind of bad, like he’s been depriving everyone of Eric’s company the past few months. And Eric looks so happy - so surprised, and so happy - to be on the plane, joking around, teasing Turtle and not taking any shit from Dom, that Vince wonders who he’s had to hang out with in the last few months, whether he’s had any fun at all.
When they land at Van Nuys, Eric hangs back a little as things are loaded into their car, and Vince turns. Eric’s typing furiously on his Blackberry; when he sees Vince looking, though, he clicks it shut instantly. “Sorry,” he says.
Vince shrugs. “E, I know you have a job.”
Eric nods. “But - I didn’t want you to think - “
“Are you riding with us? Or you have your car here?”
Eric gets a slightly guilty look on his face. “I, uh, actually, I need to catch a flight.”
“What?”
He blushes. “I have a meeting in Telluride tonight.”
Vince lets the limo door close. “Seriously?” Eric nods. He looks nervous, like he’s bracing for Vince to start yelling. Vince laughs. “You flew all the way back here just to - what, hang out with us?” Eric nods again, and Vince grins. He grabs Eric by the shoulders and kisses him, and though it takes a second, Eric kisses back. “Go, go. Go to your meeting,” he says. “But you’ll be back for the final fittings and stuff tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Already all arranged. I swear.” He smiles up at Vince. “Totally worth the trip, for that.”
“Oh, you got sappy in the last seven months, is that it?”
“Get in your car.”
So Vince climbs into the limo, where all three guys are facing him, silent, their expressions ranging from puzzled (Turtle) to vaguely disturbed (Dom). “We’re just leaving him?”
“He’s got a jet coming,” Vince says. “Meeting in Telluride tonight. But he’ll be there tomorrow, he said, don’t worry, Johnny.”
“I’m too hungover to worry,” Johnny says, leaning back into his seat. “Fuck, I could use a massage.”
“What my brother wants, my brother gets,” Vince says, clapping him on the shoulder. He’s happy to have the topic changed away from Eric, because as they drive away he can feel some of his own questions surfacing and he’s not ready to answer anything yet. He’s not ready to think about anything yet, beyond the fact that Eric, it seems, is back. So he suggests they go to the day spa that Johnny really likes, and even though Turtle rolls his eyes, that’s where they end up. Everyone gets a massage, even Dom, who decides that the hot stones are “pretty fucking cool,” and afterwards they take a car back to Vince’s place and continue celebrating Johnny’s real last week as a bachelor with good food, good weed, and a few drinks. Around eleven, Eric calls to say he’s back in town, and Vince says, “So come over, we’re just hanging out.” He arrives and, after a minute of nervous shuffling, takes a seat on the couch next to Vince, and within a very short time is actually sitting under Vince’s arm. When they all turn in, Eric follows Vince back to his room, and Vince pulls him onto the bed.
“We should -”
“No,” Vince says. “No talking. Not yet.”
“OK,” Eric agrees, kissing him.
The rest of the week is a pre-wedding blur. There’s the final fittings to go to, making sure everything looks right, and then the next day they all board a private jet to Jamaica. Vince’s mother and grandmother and two of his sisters arrive that night, and then they have fittings and shopping to do and family dinners to have and just, at every turn wedding things to accomplish. There’s no time to talk, even if Vince wanted to, but it’s OK because whenever he catches Eric’s eye during that week, he gets a sweet, meaningful smile in return, and he feels stupidly happy. And because they’re all staying in the same hotel - they have, in fact, pretty much taken over the resort for the wedding - Eric manages to sneak into his room every night, and that makes everything even better.
The rehearsal dinner is on Friday. Vince’s mom and Larissa’s mother, Shelly, get along really well, though her dad, Lawrence, is a bit of a mystery - he’s quiet, and Vince can’t tell if that’s just his general nature or if it’s a sign of reservations about the wedding. He hopes it’s not the latter. Johnny can be hard to take sometimes, and he doesn’t always make the best first impression, sure, but at heart he’s a great guy.
The dinner is paid for by the bride’s family - the only thing that they’re paying for, at Vince’s insistence - and it’s served family-style at the tables, everyone seated to best encourage the intermingling of the families. Vince is at a table with his cousin Danny and Turtle and four of Larissa’s cousins; Eric and Dom are at another cousin-rich table nearby, though Eric’s mother is also at his table, so Vince tries not to look over too often.
The food is good, even if the cousins - none of whom have apparently ever met a Real Live Movie Star before - are a bit overwhelming. Vince is suffering through about the eighth “I was in the school play” story he’s heard all night when there’s a glass clinked up at the head table.
“Um, excuse me, folks.” Larissa’s father is standing up, a glass held in his hands, looking both sheepish and dour. His voice carries nicely, at least; Vince turns his full attention to him in order to avoid the babbling cousin at his left.
“I know it’s more traditional for the father to speak at the reception, but - I figured, since you’re our guests tonight, maybe you can put up with me better here.”
There are a few polite chuckles, including one that’s a little too loud from Johnny. Vince glances at him, sees his face is pink and he’s staring eagerly up at his soon-to-be father-in-law, and he smiles a little to himself. Next to Johnny, their mother is smiling, too, one hand on Johnny’s shoulder.
“I just wanted to say a few things. Rissa’s our oldest, so this is a big moment for Shelly and I, seeing our first daughter get married, get ready to start a home of her own.”
Vince nods along and lets his mind drift a little as Lawrence talks about Larissa’s childhood, how proud they were of her making her way through college, all of that. His mother looks happy, and so does Johnny. When he sneaks a glance, Eric’s whispering something to his mother, who’s nodding.
“And so we sent her off to California, and we hoped for the best. We heard all kinds of things, but we just trusted our girl, like we always had, and pretty soon good things started happening, and then she called home and said, Mom, Dad, I’ve met this man, a television star. And a little while after that, she called and said, we’re getting married.
“But, now, of course, we’re practical people. We come from corn-growers, from people who plant and raise crops for a living. And when we heard that Johnny had proposed, I gave Larissa the same advice that my father gave me, when I proposed to Shelly. I told her, marriage is something you have to want. It’s something you have to work at. It’s like anything else you’d grow - you have to nurture it, you have to tend it. You’re gonna work every day to stay married, and if you’re not working then you’re probably going backwards, you’re letting the weeds creep in. But if you love someone that much, and you know your life is better with him than without him, then that work is gonna bring you quite a reward at the end.”
He pauses to smile down at his daughter, and Vince keeps looking straight ahead, afraid to turn lest he catches Eric’s eye. His heart is beating a little fast.
“And so I asked her the question my folks asked me. I said, honey, do you love him enough to do that work? Does he love you like that? Can the two of you make a life together, make things work? And when she said yes, without hesitating, that’s when we knew that things were gonna work out.” He pauses a little and there’s real emotion in his voice. “And we are so, so proud of her, and so, so happy that she’s found someone to share her life with, from this day - well, from tomorrow forward.” He chuckles. “Tonight, she’s still our little girl.”
There’s another rush of warm laughter from everyone, and then a toast and raised glasses, and Vince gulps his champagne and doesn’t look at Eric’s table, though he thinks he can feel Eric’s eyes on his back. Work, he thinks. Work can keep you together, work can tear you apart.
He thinks about getting drunk, but it seems like bad form. There are still cousins to entertain - he lets Turtle handle most of that and doesn’t comment when the stories about Hollywood are way overdrawn - and food to compliment, and when it’s time to mingle he manages to never be in exactly the same place that Eric is, probably through effort on both sides.
Then the whole thing is over, and Vince’s mother and Eric’s mother say they’re going to bed early for beauty rest, and Larissa tells Johnny he should do the same. “You guys coming?” Johnny asks his groomsmen.
“Uh, you guys go ahead,” Eric says. “I’m gonna get some air, first, I think.”
He walks off, toward the beach, and Vince finally lets himself look his way.
Dom starts to say something about a party, but Turtle elbows him hard. “We’re gonna go upstairs,” he says. “Definitely, uh, yeah, time for bed.” He claps Vince’s shoulder and says he’ll see him upstairs, Vince nods. It’s time, he realizes, for the talk.
Eric’s sitting on the beach, a few feet out of the water’s reach, knees up, staring at the ocean. He’s picked a dark spot in the sand, the faint string lights from the patio casting an ineffective yellowish glow that doesn’t intrude on the view of the dark water and the dark sky. Vince sits next to him, close, mimicking Eric’s position exactly.
“That speech, huh?” Vince says.
“Yeah. Pretty good.”
“I think he may actually like Johnny after all.”
“I think he likes whoever his daughter likes.”
“Good point,” Vince allows.
“She seems nice.”
Vince tips his head. Maybe this is the way to start. “I wish you knew her a little better.”
“Yeah,” Eric says. “I guess - I was thinking about that, I wasn’t ever around her much, huh?”
“You weren’t around much, period.”
“I know.” Eric clears his throat. “I get that I’m part of what went wrong,” he says. “The job, the working all the time - I get it. And if we’re gonna try this again, then, I can promise you I’ll try to do better.”
Vince takes a deep breath. What he thinks, first, is I don’t believe you, but he can’t say that. He knows that could end everything again. Before he can think of another response, though, Eric goes on. “I’ve got a better job now. I don’t work for Harvey. I still work a lot, but I work with guys who have families, guys who have wives and lives and all of that. And if we’re - if we’re gonna do this, then I want to do it where I can tell them, so I can make you, this, us a top priority. You know?”
Vince nods.
“The truth is, though,” Eric says, and Vince braces himself for something harsh, some explicit statement of what he’s thinking: there’s no guarantee. “The truth is, if you say the only way this is gonna work is if I quit my job, Vin, I’ll do it.” He looks over, and Vince can’t really see his face, but he’s not sure he wants to.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Vince says, quietly. “E - I know you. I know what having a job, what being a success, means to you.” He sighs, sifts a little sand through his fingers. “You know, I think you’re probably right, I do have a problem with you working, but it isn’t the problem you think. It’s not professional jealousy, or - whatever. I’ve never wanted anything for you but happiness, E. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for any of us.”
“I like working,” Eric says. “I’m good at my job. I’m - I’m actually, I’m great at it. When I’m on. I can’t - I don’t want to just stop that, and I don’t want to feel bad every time I’m working hard.”
“I don’t want that, either,” Vince says. “But I also don’t want to end up in a relationship and feeling lonely at the same time.” He shifts his body a little, so he’s facing Eric, but Eric stays looking out at the ocean. “You know what I missed the most? I missed having somebody to talk to. And I started missing that a long time before we broke up, because you stopped talking to me.”
“Because you stopped listening to me,” Eric says, and Vince flinches.
“I did not.”
“Yeah, you kind of did,” Eric says. “I’d start talking about stuff - work, or whatever - and you’d just glaze over.”
Vince sighs. “Because it was always Harvey this, Harvey that.”
“Vin, he was my boss. And it was hell working for him, a lot of the time, yeah. But you know what made it worse? I had to go through all of that alone, because if I wasn’t talking about your career, you didn’t seem to care what I had done every day.”
Vince wants to object, but he knows exactly what Eric’s talking about. He knows he tuned out the Harvey talk. “I thought - I guess I thought you didn’t want to talk about it,” he says slowly. “I thought the best I could do was distract you.”
Eric laughs, a quick, short laugh. “Yeah, well, you were good at that.”
Vince keeps looking at Eric, and Eric doesn’t turn. He gets a sinking feeling, thinking about all of this water under the bridge, all these ways they hurt each other without knowing or even intending to. He starts to say, “Do you think,” and then he’s not sure what he wants to ask. All he knows is that he wants Eric more than he’s afraid of wanting him.
“I can work on it,” Vince says, finally. “I’m willing to work on this.”
He still can’t really see Eric’s face, but he realizes he doesn’t need to. What he needs is this: he reaches over, grabs Eric’s hand where it’s resting on his knee, and threads his fingers between Eric’s. This is the question he wants to ask.
Eric makes a soft, surprised noise, and then he squeezes Vince’s fingers. “Yeah,” he says, leaning his shoulder against Vince’s. “Me, too.”
The wedding is the next day. Johnny’s a mess. He swears he’s not nervous, but Vince can hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes, and he finally takes him aside after he’s nearly dropped his second cup of coffee over breakfast in the suite. “Look, are you all right?” he asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine, bro. Just, you know, it’s a fairly complicated ceremony, I was thinking about - hey, do you have the rings?”
“In their boxes in the room safe,” Vince says.
“Good. That’s good, she’d never fucking forgive me if those - not that she’s not a forgiving girl, I mean, she puts up with me, right, so she’s gotta be -” He looks down at his hands. “Why do you think, I mean, is it weird at all that we’re doing this? Too soon? Too late? I’m 45, bro, she’s only in her thirties, we might - we’ve barely even talked about kids, and -”
“Johnny. Seriously. She’s a great girl. Are you really having second thoughts, or is this just jitters?”
Johnny meets his eyes. “No,” he says. “No second thoughts.”
“OK,” Vince says, nodding, and Johnny starts to nod along. “Because you love her. I know it, you know it. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
Johnny smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, I know it.” He leans in fast and hugs Vince, and Vince hugs him back. He’s so fucking proud of Johnny, so grateful to have him as an older brother. “Good day, right?”
“Great day,” Vince says as he pulls back. Johnny nods and takes a deep breath, and then pats Vince on the back and leads him back to the kitchen.
“And hey - congrats, you and E. That’s fucking great, man, I’m glad you got him back.”
Vince shrugs. He looks up as they walk into the kitchen, sees Eric sitting at the dining table, reading something on his laptop and smirking a little at whatever Turtle’s saying. They didn’t talk much last night, but Vince feels like some corner has been turned, that they’ve acknowledged their problems and said they’re going to fix them, not just give up. “We’ll see,” he says.
The wedding goes off without a hitch. Larissa has a beautiful dress she designed and made herself, white on white on a faint, shimmery pink, and next to Johnny in his dark sharp tux, she positively glows. Johnny’s voice trembles a little as he gives her the ring, but it’s touching, not nervous. Their mother and grandmother, sitting on the front row, both cry.
Afterward there’s a crush of family and friends around, and Vince can’t really drink too much because his mother’s there. Beyond that, Vince is so conscious of Eric in the room that he’s afraid to touch the champagne, in case it goes to his head and he finds himself making out with Eric on the dance floor.
He makes it through the reception, or most of it, before he catches Eric’s eye across the room and tips his head in the direction of the elevators. Ten minutes later, they’re in Eric’s room, and Eric says, “That was so fucking subtle, Jesus, I’m glad you don’t make your money in any kind of performance industry.”
“Fuck you,” Vince says, working on Eric’s fly.
“Not enough time, but a good idea for later.”
They make it back to the party just as Johnny’s pulling the garter off of Larissa’s leg, and though Larissa’s cousins all shove Vince toward the crowd it’s Dom who catches the thing. “The fuck am I gonna do with this?” he asks, flinging it toward Eric, who looks mildly alarmed when he catches it.
Vince laughs and Eric winks at him, which makes him laugh even harder. He’s feeling nicely relaxed, now, post-sex, so he takes some champagne when it comes by and then dutifully dances with half of the bridesmaids. At the end of the night they pelt Johnny and Larissa with rice as they dash toward the limo that will take them to the airport, and Vince puts one hand on Eric’s shoulder, ostensibly to steady himself, as they watch them drive away.
“Long fucking day,” Turtle says, when they’re all back upstairs in his suite. He’s methodically packing the bong while the other three guys work on stripping off the non-essential parts of the tux: Dom is in his undershirt and unbelted pants, while Eric only loses the tie and jacket and shoes.
“Long fucking week,” Dom says, flopping into an armchair. “I gotta admit, I’m surprised they went through with it.”
“Really?” Vince asks. He takes a seat on the couch. Eric’s at the fridge, getting them all beers. “You didn’t think Johnny would?”
“I didn’t think she would,” he says. “Didn’t think I’d live to see the day when Johnny fucking Chase found a decent girl to settle down with.”
“They’re a good match,” Vince says. Eric hands the beers around, then sits on Vince’s couch. “I’m glad he found her.”
“Yeah,” Turtle says, “though I gotta admit, I love the guy, but I never thought he’d be the first one of us to get married.”
Eric takes a sip of his beer, then says, “Yeah, Turtle, who’d you think -”
“You,” Dom and Turtle say in unison, and Vince snickers.
“And if you woulda got your fucking act together a little sooner, you totally could have beat him,” Turtle says.
Eric rolls his eyes, but then Dom says, “Nah, he’s right, man, you two shoulda got gay-married a long fucking time ago and saved us all these months of whiny bullshit.”
“Hey -” Vince starts.
“He’s right, Vin,” Turtle says. “I would never call you whiny, but the two of you, it’s a fucking drag when you’re fighting. So listen, don’t do that shit again, OK?”
Eric looks over at Vince. Vince wags his eyebrows, grinning until Eric smiles back and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Fine, we’ll try it your way. No fighting.”
“No fighting,” Vince says, and he shakes Eric’s hand, then kisses him. “Instead, I’ll just always be right.”
“Like old times.”
The next day all of the extended family leaves early in the morning, giving Vince a little time with his mother. Eric’s mother is still around, too, so she joins them for a family brunch catered in to Vince’s suite. While Eric’s showing her how to work the in-room cappuccino maker at the bar, Vince’s mother comes over and takes a seat beside him. “So when am I going to get one of these out of you?” she asks.
“You need a cappuccino maker?”
“Don’t get smart with me,” she says. She waves her hands around. “A wedding, Vincent.”
Vince shrugs. “As soon as E’s rich enough to spring for one.”
Eric nearly drops the cappuccino he’s holding. “Yeah, very funny, Vince,” he says, giving him a quick, sharp, evil eye.
“What?” Eric’s mother says. “You live in the right state for it, at least.” Vince stares at her, just like Eric is, trying to figure out if she’s joking. She shrugs. “You think the old folks are so blind, is that it? A year and a half, you’re living at his house, and then you break up and move out and you don’t think your own mother noticed?”
Vince glances at his mother, who has a similarly stern, disbelieving look. “You knew?” he asks.
“My darling, I love you and you’re a great actor, but to your mother, you’re practically see-through,” she says. Vince laughs, nervously, and looks over at Eric, who still seems shell-shocked.
“So your brother says you’re patching things up,” his mom continues.
“Johnny’s got a big mouth,” Vince mumbles, and his mother smacks his arm. “What? He does.”
“He’s a good boy. A married boy - married man. And if you’d take his lead, you wouldn’t spend all your time trying to escape horny Nebraska cousins all night. That’s what the ring is for, baby.”
“Where were all of you people with your advice seven months ago?” Vince asks, and Eric’s mother laughs.
“You boys haven’t listened to us since you were eight.”
“Doesn’t mean we have to stop trying,” Vince’s mom says. “Is it so terrible, a mother wants her son settled down and happy? I know you don’t have a problem with commitment, Eric.”
Eric sets his cup down on the counter. “Give us a break, Rita,” he says. “We’re still figuring things out.”
“That’s how it works,” Eric’s mother says. “There’s never a perfect time. You wait for that and I’m gonna be dead before I get any grandchildren from you.”
Vince looks up. “You’re relentless,” he says, and Eric’s mother smiles.
“Now you know where he gets it,” she says, pinching Eric’s cheek.
“We love you boys,” Vince’s mother says. “We just want you to be happy. And we want at least six months’ notice on the wedding so we have some time to plan. I’m sorry, you’re good boys, but neither one of you has the style to pull off a wedding.”
“It really is a girl thing,” Eric’s mom says, and Eric meets Vince’s eyes and they both laugh.
When they get back to L.A., Eric comes home with Vince. They don’t talk about it, it just happens, and Vince is enormously glad. Eric sits on his side of the bed, where his pillow is still waiting, and says, “So I have to work in the morning.”
“OK,” Vince says. “I should probably do some of that, too. I guess.”
Eric raises an eyebrow. “You gonna do those interviews after all?”
“Yeah,” Vince says, shrugging. “How’d you know?”
“Ari called me to see if I could convince you.” Eric smirks. “I’ve always sort of loved telling him no.”
Vince gets up with Eric in the morning and has coffee with him before he leaves. He gets the full run of Eric’s day and really listens, so that when he sees him that night, he can ask how the meeting with Berg’s people went. Eric, in turn, gets home at a decent hour and takes an active interest in how Vince’s interviews ran.
“You want me to come to New York with you?” he asks later that week, when they’re talking about Vince’s upcoming spots on “Letterman” and “The Daily Show.”
Vince can see that it’s an honest offer, so he asks an honest question. “Do you really have time?”
Eric shrugs. “No. But I can make time, if you want.”
Vince kisses the side of his head. “I can go one night,” he says, “if you promise me you’ll be home Saturday.”
“Deal.”
Compromises like that make things work and, soon, become second-nature. Though Vince gets a little ribbing from the guys for all of the “E-rules” that he seems to follow (for instance, if he’s going to get drunk with Turtle and Dom, he has to call and let Eric know so that he can either stay later at work or cut out to join them), things really work. Vince feels happy and settled and certain in and of their relationship in a way he hasn’t before.
Two months after Johnny’s wedding, they finally have a double-date with Johnny and Larissa. It’s fun, the four of them hanging out, teasing each other, talking about little coupley things that the other guys don’t get. As they’re waiting for their car, Eric puts his arm around Vince’s waist in full view of the valets and other people waiting in the garage. Vince says, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Eric says. “I’m ready if you are.”
That weekend, they go to a premiere for one of Eric’s movies. Vince still makes the bigger splash on the red-carpet, but inside, everyone’s eyes are on Eric. It’s good, Vince decides. It’s where they’ve been headed.
“Nice turn-out,” Eric says, taking his seat beside Vince.
“You’re a star,” Vince says, and Eric looks over, a question in his eyes. Vince smiles. “Hey, you’ve earned it.”
Eric raises an eyebrow. “What have you earned?”
Vince reaches over and takes Eric’s hand, and then leans across and, in full view of the rows of producers and Hollywood glitterati behind them, in full view of Harvey, who he can already hear bellowing, he kisses him. “This,” he says, and Eric blushes.
“Yeah,” he says, still looking at Vince, just at Vince, not at anyone around them. “I think we both have.”
[The End]
About 4 am, Vince wakes to the sound of Eric throwing up. He peels himself off of the couch and goes into the bathroom, which is a huge Jacuzzi-inclusive number with a separate little closet for the toilet. Vince stops at the door and can see Eric inside, one hand on his forehead and the other on the toilet. He gags again, and Vince winces and turns around, fills a cup with water at the tap. He’s sitting on the edge of the Jacuzzi when Eric stumbles out, straight over to the sink, where he turns on the water and ducks his head underneath.
“E?”
Eric sputters, spits water into the sink, and groans. He sinks to his knees, rests his head against the marble countertop. “Don’t look,” he says, his voice raspy.
Vince gets up and turns the sink off. He turns, then sits on the floor next to Eric. Eric’s skin is green and shiny with sweat. Vince watches him swallow. He’s been this hungover before - or this drunk, it’s hard to tell which side of it Eric’s on - and he knows that even touching him will probably send him over the edge. So he just sits there, very still, until Eric swallows again, takes a few slow, deep breaths, and then opens his eyes.
“You all right?” Vince asks quietly.
Eric lifts one shoulder. He peels back from the counter, slowly, and rubs his forehead with a shaking hand. “Feel like death,” he mutters, the hand now covering his mouth.
“Gonna be sick again?”
He lifts his shoulder another time. Vince reaches over, very tentatively, and puts his hand on Eric’s ribcage. His shirt is wet and cold with sweat. “C’mon,” Vince says. “We’ll get you back to bed.”
Eric shakes his head. He says, “Towel,” so Vince grabs a big bath towel from a stack nearby and hands it over. Eric whispers something that might be a thank you, then drops it on the floor. He lowers himself to the ground and rests his head on it, turning on his side.
“OK, seriously, that can’t be comfortable.”
“I’m fine,” Eric mutters. His eyes are already closed again. “Not your problem.”
Vince stares at him for a second, then gets up. Maybe Eric’s not even here to see him. Maybe he just came out of obligation. Vince walks back into the suite and sits on the couch. Eric isn’t his responsibility anymore, right?
He leans back. The light is still on in the bathroom, which is making it kind of hard to sleep. He could move to the bed - Eric’s not using it, after all. So he gets up, and as he does, he sees Eric curled on the bathroom floor out of the corner of his eye.
Eric isn’t his responsibility. Like hell.
He drags a blanket off the bed and one of the pillows. When he walks into the bathroom, Eric moans a little.
“OK, here we go,” Vince says, pulling the blanket over him. He can see he’s shivering, and he takes care to tuck it around him, so there’s something between him and the cold marble floor. Vince crouches beside him, gets Eric to lift his head for a minute so he can get the pillow under him. His back’s still probably going to kill him in the morning, he thinks, but there’s not a lot he can do about that. “E? Are you all right?”
Eric swallows, then opens his eyes halfway. “Mmhm,” he says. “Go to bed.”
His voice is still rough, but it’s a little kinder. Vince squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll be right outside if you need me,” he says.
“Thanks.”
The next time Vince wakes up, it’s morning, and Eric’s lying beside him in the bed. He reaches out from habit he didn’t even know he still had, and Eric murmurs in his sleep and turns toward him. They’re on their usual sides - Vince on the right, Eric on the left - and when Eric’s hand falls onto Vince’s ribcage, he closes his eyes and thinks it could easily be seven months ago. It could be a year ago. He really, really wishes it was.
He turns and looks at Eric, and slowly, maybe from the movement or some sixth sense, Eric’s eyes open. “Oh,” he says, and swallows thickly. “Uh.”
“Hello,” Vince says.
Eric blinks. “Hi.”
“You’re in my bed.”
Eric nods. “Sorry. Sorry. I - Jesus, I’m not even sure what happened,” he says.
“How do you feel?”
“OK,” Eric says. It’s always been this way for Eric, even when they were teenagers - if he got drunk enough to throw up, he’d be fine the next day. “I was a mess, huh?”
“Pretty bad,” Vince agrees.
Eric closes his eyes again. “What happened?” he asks, very quietly. “Did I - did anything -”
“No,” Vince says. “I walked you here from the bar, you passed out, you woke up, you threw up -”
“I remember that.”
“And then here you are.”
“OK.” He frowns and pulls his hand away, carefully. “Sorry about that.”
Vince sighs. “E, what are you doing here?”
Eric’s hand clenches in front of him. “I don’t know. I came for the party. I wanted - I felt like -” He opens his eyes, but he doesn’t look at Vince. “I felt like I owed it to Drama. But, then I got here, and I - I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t… see me?” Eric shrugs. Vince feels a tiny thrill over the steady, nauseating nervousness. “So you drained a bottle of whiskey?”
“And maybe like a dozen of its closest friends,” Eric says. “Stupid. I know.”
“Really stupid,” Vince says.
Eric looks up at him, just briefly, a tiny, near-smile on his face. “Though it got me back in your bed.”
Vince shakes his head. “It’s not that easy. It’s not going to be this easy.”
“I know,” Eric says, then, “Wait. Going to be?” There’s a tiny warble of hope in his voice.
Vince looks down. “I don’t know.”
“Do you - do you think there’s any way -” Eric clears his throat, and his hands fidget on the blankets. “Don’t answer that, all right?”
“I don’t even know what you were going to ask.”
“Vince.” Vince looks over, and sees desperation and exhaustion on Eric’s face, hope and despair. Love. Eric looks away. “I ought to go.”
Vince nods, though he’s thinking no, no, no. Eric sits up and puts his legs over the side of the bed, and Vince raises his hand, wants to touch the broad expanse of his back, but he can’t, not quite. Not now.
“Stay,” he says, instead. “Stay for breakfast.” Eric looks back over his shoulder, and Vince avoids meeting his eyes. “Johnny’ll want you here.”
Eric nods, after a moment. “Yeah, all right.” He gets up and rubs his head, then says, “You mind if I, uh, I should maybe take a shower.”
“Sure.”
He watches Eric walk to the bathroom and doesn’t move until the door is closed. Then he covers his face for a second, trying to make himself think past the one obvious thought that’s running through his brain: it felt really, really good to have Eric back in bed with him. It felt fucking wonderful to wake up and have him there.
He figures he has two choices, right now. He can get up, go out into the suite and eat breakfast with the guys, wait for Eric to show up, and they can all sit around awkwardly and not talk about the break-up elephant in the room. And Eric will go home, and Vince will go home, and they’ll dance around each other at the wedding and eventually things will get less awkward and maybe, in a year or so, they’ll be friends again. They’ll see each other at industry events and whenever Turtle decides to throw a party, and they might even reach a place where they can joke around again, where it won’t take a crate of bourbon to get Eric into the same room with him, where it won’t take a prescription for Vince to fall asleep alone. Vince can get up and walk back into his old life. He can accept that love is hard, too hard, has too many possibilities for unhappy endings , and he can just float through, fuck whoever he wants, not worry about this kind of stuff ever again.
Or he can do this:
He gets up and pushes the bathroom door open. The shower is running - an amazing contraption in and of itself, with eight shower heads and no real door, just a stone opening that you walk around to get to the main shower, which is square and has two little benches built into the side. He wishes there was a curtain, something to pull back to make a dramatic entrance, because as it is, when he rounds the corner, still wearing his pajamas, Eric has his back to him, one arm braced on the shower wall, the water rushing down his bare, muscled back.
Vince shifts, shuffles his feet, finally clears his throat, and Eric jumps. “Jesus Christ!” he yelps, and then turns and his eyes go very wide. “Vince? What the - what the fuck?”
And Vince steps forward, into the spray from all eight jets, hit suddenly in the head and the stomach and the chest and everywhere, all at once, by clean warm water and then, very soon after that, by being this close to Eric, naked and wide-eyed and definitely, clearly wanting him.
“You’re in my shower,” Eric says, his hands at his sides.
“You were in my bed,” Vince says, and puts his hands on Eric’s bare waist and ducks to kiss him.
Eric kisses back like he’s afraid they’re on a deadline. He nearly pushes Vince over, in fact, frantically tugging at his wet T-shirt. Vince pushes Eric back, onto one of the benches, then peels his shirt off and drops it on the floor. Eric wipes water from his face, reaches out and slaps off the shower jets. He’s breathing fast and staring up at Vince, half-scared, Vince can see. He kneels in front of him and watches Eric swallow, puts his hands on Eric’s sides, feels the thundering of his heart. Eric’s hands come up and land gently on Vince’s shoulders, and Vince angles up for a kiss, then another, then another. He can feel Eric’s cock rubbing against his chest.
“I -” Eric starts, his hands tangled in Vince’s hair, and Vince pulls back and shakes his head, then lowers it and takes Eric in his mouth. Eric’s whole body seizes up, his head falls back, he curses. Vince keeps his hands steady on Eric’s thighs and his mouth firm and warm around Eric’s dick. He remembers everything Eric likes, traces the vein on the under side with his tongue, pays attention to the head, even inches his fingers back to tease Eric’s balls. He starts to push back, further, and Eric spreads his legs a little more, seems willing, but that’s not what Vince wants. Not after all this time. So he pulls back and looks up at Eric, who’s looking down at him in alarm.
Vince smiles. “Bedroom,” he says, and Eric nods fast, relieved. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says, rocking back onto his heels.
“Thank God.”
Vince leaves his pajamas in a sopping heap on the bathroom floor, then follows Eric into the bedroom and onto the bed. He worries, briefly, that they’re out of the moment, that Eric’s going to want to talk about what this means or what they’re doing, but Eric just immediately rolls Vince onto his back and starts kissing him again, their cocks meeting for a few electrifying seconds.
He would love to spend some time reacquainting himself with Eric's body, seeing if anything has changed in the last six months, if he's still ticklish behind his knees or automatically turned on by teeth on his earlobes, but he knows neither of them can last that long. So Vince pulls one of his legs up, clear invitation, and Eric groans, rubbing his hand over Vince’s taut thigh, then kissing the inside of his knee. He reaches for the bedside table - thank God the Palm thinks of everything - and Vince says, “Condom, too,” and Eric looks back, whip-fast, a tiny hitch of something - disappointment, surprise, jealousy - flashing across his face. But he masks it or works past it, and soon he’s slicking Vince up and kissing him at the same time, taking a moment to lave his nipples and run teasing bites across his collarbones. Fuck, no one fucks like Eric, Vince thinks as he pushes in. No words - and hardly any sounds - pass between them, but Eric knows exactly how to do things right, how to move precisely so that Vince’s back arches without him even thinking about it, in fact, how to move so that Vince isn’t thinking at all, he’s just reduced to a bucking, clenching, wanting nerve-ending, and Eric above him and in him is the only thing he knows.
He sees stars when he comes, and he holds Eric tight, close, doesn’t let him back off for a minute while he tries to get his head back on straight. Eric kisses his jaw, the tendons of his neck, licks at the sweat behind his ear, and Vince finally nods, finally lets him pull back and out and away.
Once they’ve both caught their breath, Vince swallows and says, “So. How’ve you been?”
Eric laughs. “Bad,” he says, once he’s calmed down. “You?”
“Yeah, pretty bad.” Vince shifts just a little, so his calf is against Eric’s. “I heard you’re fucking up on the job.”
“Yeah, I heard the same about you.”
“I’m not well managed.”
“Ha.”
Vince exhales hard, in a burst, then turns onto his side. Eric looks over at him, a funny, sexy once-over. “I did not expect this,” he says.
“Me either,” Vince says. “But - I think that’s sort of been our theme.”
Eric smirks. “Maybe so,” he says. One of his hands is resting on his chest, and Vince watches, fascinated, as it twitches up, then back, then up again.
Vince smiles, and slides his hand over Eric’s ribs, and Eric’s hand rests on his side, still jumpy. “You just fucked me, you can touch if you want,” he says, and Eric snorts, but his hand steadies.
“So - what does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” Vince says. He ducks to kiss Eric’s shoulder. “But I have missed the fuck out of you.”
“Christ, me too.”
The next round damn near costs Vince $25,000, because they fall asleep afterwards and sleep through check-out time. Luckily, the Palms media guy is so excited when Vince agrees to walk the carpet outside the hotel for promotional photos that he forgives the whole thing. Eric, blushing faintly at the ribbing he’s getting from the guys for being a $25K lay, stays pretty far back during that whole discussion.
“So, what do you think, you wanna ride back with us?” Vince asks, after the photos are over and they’re in the limo on the way to the airport. He hired a jet to take them out and back, just to add a little luxury. Johnny’s on the phone with Larissa, and Turtle and Dom are playing head-to-head on their PSPs.
Eric looks alarmed. “Uh.”
Vince sits back, just a little, feels a terrible jolt of something - rejection, fear, nerves - course through him. “What?”
“Nothing,” Eric says, shaking his head. “Of course. Yeah. I just, uh, I couldn’t remember where I left my car.”
Vince raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? You didn’t drive, did you?”
“No,” Eric says, shaking his head vigorously. “I’d love a ride. Yeah. Thanks.” And then he shifts over so his leg is again pressed to Vince’s, and Vince looks down and nearly laughs.
Instead, he just smiles and squeezes Eric’s knee. “Good.”
The guys take Eric in like he’s never been gone, so much so that Vince feels kind of bad, like he’s been depriving everyone of Eric’s company the past few months. And Eric looks so happy - so surprised, and so happy - to be on the plane, joking around, teasing Turtle and not taking any shit from Dom, that Vince wonders who he’s had to hang out with in the last few months, whether he’s had any fun at all.
When they land at Van Nuys, Eric hangs back a little as things are loaded into their car, and Vince turns. Eric’s typing furiously on his Blackberry; when he sees Vince looking, though, he clicks it shut instantly. “Sorry,” he says.
Vince shrugs. “E, I know you have a job.”
Eric nods. “But - I didn’t want you to think - “
“Are you riding with us? Or you have your car here?”
Eric gets a slightly guilty look on his face. “I, uh, actually, I need to catch a flight.”
“What?”
He blushes. “I have a meeting in Telluride tonight.”
Vince lets the limo door close. “Seriously?” Eric nods. He looks nervous, like he’s bracing for Vince to start yelling. Vince laughs. “You flew all the way back here just to - what, hang out with us?” Eric nods again, and Vince grins. He grabs Eric by the shoulders and kisses him, and though it takes a second, Eric kisses back. “Go, go. Go to your meeting,” he says. “But you’ll be back for the final fittings and stuff tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Already all arranged. I swear.” He smiles up at Vince. “Totally worth the trip, for that.”
“Oh, you got sappy in the last seven months, is that it?”
“Get in your car.”
So Vince climbs into the limo, where all three guys are facing him, silent, their expressions ranging from puzzled (Turtle) to vaguely disturbed (Dom). “We’re just leaving him?”
“He’s got a jet coming,” Vince says. “Meeting in Telluride tonight. But he’ll be there tomorrow, he said, don’t worry, Johnny.”
“I’m too hungover to worry,” Johnny says, leaning back into his seat. “Fuck, I could use a massage.”
“What my brother wants, my brother gets,” Vince says, clapping him on the shoulder. He’s happy to have the topic changed away from Eric, because as they drive away he can feel some of his own questions surfacing and he’s not ready to answer anything yet. He’s not ready to think about anything yet, beyond the fact that Eric, it seems, is back. So he suggests they go to the day spa that Johnny really likes, and even though Turtle rolls his eyes, that’s where they end up. Everyone gets a massage, even Dom, who decides that the hot stones are “pretty fucking cool,” and afterwards they take a car back to Vince’s place and continue celebrating Johnny’s real last week as a bachelor with good food, good weed, and a few drinks. Around eleven, Eric calls to say he’s back in town, and Vince says, “So come over, we’re just hanging out.” He arrives and, after a minute of nervous shuffling, takes a seat on the couch next to Vince, and within a very short time is actually sitting under Vince’s arm. When they all turn in, Eric follows Vince back to his room, and Vince pulls him onto the bed.
“We should -”
“No,” Vince says. “No talking. Not yet.”
“OK,” Eric agrees, kissing him.
The rest of the week is a pre-wedding blur. There’s the final fittings to go to, making sure everything looks right, and then the next day they all board a private jet to Jamaica. Vince’s mother and grandmother and two of his sisters arrive that night, and then they have fittings and shopping to do and family dinners to have and just, at every turn wedding things to accomplish. There’s no time to talk, even if Vince wanted to, but it’s OK because whenever he catches Eric’s eye during that week, he gets a sweet, meaningful smile in return, and he feels stupidly happy. And because they’re all staying in the same hotel - they have, in fact, pretty much taken over the resort for the wedding - Eric manages to sneak into his room every night, and that makes everything even better.
The rehearsal dinner is on Friday. Vince’s mom and Larissa’s mother, Shelly, get along really well, though her dad, Lawrence, is a bit of a mystery - he’s quiet, and Vince can’t tell if that’s just his general nature or if it’s a sign of reservations about the wedding. He hopes it’s not the latter. Johnny can be hard to take sometimes, and he doesn’t always make the best first impression, sure, but at heart he’s a great guy.
The dinner is paid for by the bride’s family - the only thing that they’re paying for, at Vince’s insistence - and it’s served family-style at the tables, everyone seated to best encourage the intermingling of the families. Vince is at a table with his cousin Danny and Turtle and four of Larissa’s cousins; Eric and Dom are at another cousin-rich table nearby, though Eric’s mother is also at his table, so Vince tries not to look over too often.
The food is good, even if the cousins - none of whom have apparently ever met a Real Live Movie Star before - are a bit overwhelming. Vince is suffering through about the eighth “I was in the school play” story he’s heard all night when there’s a glass clinked up at the head table.
“Um, excuse me, folks.” Larissa’s father is standing up, a glass held in his hands, looking both sheepish and dour. His voice carries nicely, at least; Vince turns his full attention to him in order to avoid the babbling cousin at his left.
“I know it’s more traditional for the father to speak at the reception, but - I figured, since you’re our guests tonight, maybe you can put up with me better here.”
There are a few polite chuckles, including one that’s a little too loud from Johnny. Vince glances at him, sees his face is pink and he’s staring eagerly up at his soon-to-be father-in-law, and he smiles a little to himself. Next to Johnny, their mother is smiling, too, one hand on Johnny’s shoulder.
“I just wanted to say a few things. Rissa’s our oldest, so this is a big moment for Shelly and I, seeing our first daughter get married, get ready to start a home of her own.”
Vince nods along and lets his mind drift a little as Lawrence talks about Larissa’s childhood, how proud they were of her making her way through college, all of that. His mother looks happy, and so does Johnny. When he sneaks a glance, Eric’s whispering something to his mother, who’s nodding.
“And so we sent her off to California, and we hoped for the best. We heard all kinds of things, but we just trusted our girl, like we always had, and pretty soon good things started happening, and then she called home and said, Mom, Dad, I’ve met this man, a television star. And a little while after that, she called and said, we’re getting married.
“But, now, of course, we’re practical people. We come from corn-growers, from people who plant and raise crops for a living. And when we heard that Johnny had proposed, I gave Larissa the same advice that my father gave me, when I proposed to Shelly. I told her, marriage is something you have to want. It’s something you have to work at. It’s like anything else you’d grow - you have to nurture it, you have to tend it. You’re gonna work every day to stay married, and if you’re not working then you’re probably going backwards, you’re letting the weeds creep in. But if you love someone that much, and you know your life is better with him than without him, then that work is gonna bring you quite a reward at the end.”
He pauses to smile down at his daughter, and Vince keeps looking straight ahead, afraid to turn lest he catches Eric’s eye. His heart is beating a little fast.
“And so I asked her the question my folks asked me. I said, honey, do you love him enough to do that work? Does he love you like that? Can the two of you make a life together, make things work? And when she said yes, without hesitating, that’s when we knew that things were gonna work out.” He pauses a little and there’s real emotion in his voice. “And we are so, so proud of her, and so, so happy that she’s found someone to share her life with, from this day - well, from tomorrow forward.” He chuckles. “Tonight, she’s still our little girl.”
There’s another rush of warm laughter from everyone, and then a toast and raised glasses, and Vince gulps his champagne and doesn’t look at Eric’s table, though he thinks he can feel Eric’s eyes on his back. Work, he thinks. Work can keep you together, work can tear you apart.
He thinks about getting drunk, but it seems like bad form. There are still cousins to entertain - he lets Turtle handle most of that and doesn’t comment when the stories about Hollywood are way overdrawn - and food to compliment, and when it’s time to mingle he manages to never be in exactly the same place that Eric is, probably through effort on both sides.
Then the whole thing is over, and Vince’s mother and Eric’s mother say they’re going to bed early for beauty rest, and Larissa tells Johnny he should do the same. “You guys coming?” Johnny asks his groomsmen.
“Uh, you guys go ahead,” Eric says. “I’m gonna get some air, first, I think.”
He walks off, toward the beach, and Vince finally lets himself look his way.
Dom starts to say something about a party, but Turtle elbows him hard. “We’re gonna go upstairs,” he says. “Definitely, uh, yeah, time for bed.” He claps Vince’s shoulder and says he’ll see him upstairs, Vince nods. It’s time, he realizes, for the talk.
Eric’s sitting on the beach, a few feet out of the water’s reach, knees up, staring at the ocean. He’s picked a dark spot in the sand, the faint string lights from the patio casting an ineffective yellowish glow that doesn’t intrude on the view of the dark water and the dark sky. Vince sits next to him, close, mimicking Eric’s position exactly.
“That speech, huh?” Vince says.
“Yeah. Pretty good.”
“I think he may actually like Johnny after all.”
“I think he likes whoever his daughter likes.”
“Good point,” Vince allows.
“She seems nice.”
Vince tips his head. Maybe this is the way to start. “I wish you knew her a little better.”
“Yeah,” Eric says. “I guess - I was thinking about that, I wasn’t ever around her much, huh?”
“You weren’t around much, period.”
“I know.” Eric clears his throat. “I get that I’m part of what went wrong,” he says. “The job, the working all the time - I get it. And if we’re gonna try this again, then, I can promise you I’ll try to do better.”
Vince takes a deep breath. What he thinks, first, is I don’t believe you, but he can’t say that. He knows that could end everything again. Before he can think of another response, though, Eric goes on. “I’ve got a better job now. I don’t work for Harvey. I still work a lot, but I work with guys who have families, guys who have wives and lives and all of that. And if we’re - if we’re gonna do this, then I want to do it where I can tell them, so I can make you, this, us a top priority. You know?”
Vince nods.
“The truth is, though,” Eric says, and Vince braces himself for something harsh, some explicit statement of what he’s thinking: there’s no guarantee. “The truth is, if you say the only way this is gonna work is if I quit my job, Vin, I’ll do it.” He looks over, and Vince can’t really see his face, but he’s not sure he wants to.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Vince says, quietly. “E - I know you. I know what having a job, what being a success, means to you.” He sighs, sifts a little sand through his fingers. “You know, I think you’re probably right, I do have a problem with you working, but it isn’t the problem you think. It’s not professional jealousy, or - whatever. I’ve never wanted anything for you but happiness, E. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for any of us.”
“I like working,” Eric says. “I’m good at my job. I’m - I’m actually, I’m great at it. When I’m on. I can’t - I don’t want to just stop that, and I don’t want to feel bad every time I’m working hard.”
“I don’t want that, either,” Vince says. “But I also don’t want to end up in a relationship and feeling lonely at the same time.” He shifts his body a little, so he’s facing Eric, but Eric stays looking out at the ocean. “You know what I missed the most? I missed having somebody to talk to. And I started missing that a long time before we broke up, because you stopped talking to me.”
“Because you stopped listening to me,” Eric says, and Vince flinches.
“I did not.”
“Yeah, you kind of did,” Eric says. “I’d start talking about stuff - work, or whatever - and you’d just glaze over.”
Vince sighs. “Because it was always Harvey this, Harvey that.”
“Vin, he was my boss. And it was hell working for him, a lot of the time, yeah. But you know what made it worse? I had to go through all of that alone, because if I wasn’t talking about your career, you didn’t seem to care what I had done every day.”
Vince wants to object, but he knows exactly what Eric’s talking about. He knows he tuned out the Harvey talk. “I thought - I guess I thought you didn’t want to talk about it,” he says slowly. “I thought the best I could do was distract you.”
Eric laughs, a quick, short laugh. “Yeah, well, you were good at that.”
Vince keeps looking at Eric, and Eric doesn’t turn. He gets a sinking feeling, thinking about all of this water under the bridge, all these ways they hurt each other without knowing or even intending to. He starts to say, “Do you think,” and then he’s not sure what he wants to ask. All he knows is that he wants Eric more than he’s afraid of wanting him.
“I can work on it,” Vince says, finally. “I’m willing to work on this.”
He still can’t really see Eric’s face, but he realizes he doesn’t need to. What he needs is this: he reaches over, grabs Eric’s hand where it’s resting on his knee, and threads his fingers between Eric’s. This is the question he wants to ask.
Eric makes a soft, surprised noise, and then he squeezes Vince’s fingers. “Yeah,” he says, leaning his shoulder against Vince’s. “Me, too.”
The wedding is the next day. Johnny’s a mess. He swears he’s not nervous, but Vince can hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes, and he finally takes him aside after he’s nearly dropped his second cup of coffee over breakfast in the suite. “Look, are you all right?” he asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine, bro. Just, you know, it’s a fairly complicated ceremony, I was thinking about - hey, do you have the rings?”
“In their boxes in the room safe,” Vince says.
“Good. That’s good, she’d never fucking forgive me if those - not that she’s not a forgiving girl, I mean, she puts up with me, right, so she’s gotta be -” He looks down at his hands. “Why do you think, I mean, is it weird at all that we’re doing this? Too soon? Too late? I’m 45, bro, she’s only in her thirties, we might - we’ve barely even talked about kids, and -”
“Johnny. Seriously. She’s a great girl. Are you really having second thoughts, or is this just jitters?”
Johnny meets his eyes. “No,” he says. “No second thoughts.”
“OK,” Vince says, nodding, and Johnny starts to nod along. “Because you love her. I know it, you know it. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
Johnny smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, I know it.” He leans in fast and hugs Vince, and Vince hugs him back. He’s so fucking proud of Johnny, so grateful to have him as an older brother. “Good day, right?”
“Great day,” Vince says as he pulls back. Johnny nods and takes a deep breath, and then pats Vince on the back and leads him back to the kitchen.
“And hey - congrats, you and E. That’s fucking great, man, I’m glad you got him back.”
Vince shrugs. He looks up as they walk into the kitchen, sees Eric sitting at the dining table, reading something on his laptop and smirking a little at whatever Turtle’s saying. They didn’t talk much last night, but Vince feels like some corner has been turned, that they’ve acknowledged their problems and said they’re going to fix them, not just give up. “We’ll see,” he says.
The wedding goes off without a hitch. Larissa has a beautiful dress she designed and made herself, white on white on a faint, shimmery pink, and next to Johnny in his dark sharp tux, she positively glows. Johnny’s voice trembles a little as he gives her the ring, but it’s touching, not nervous. Their mother and grandmother, sitting on the front row, both cry.
Afterward there’s a crush of family and friends around, and Vince can’t really drink too much because his mother’s there. Beyond that, Vince is so conscious of Eric in the room that he’s afraid to touch the champagne, in case it goes to his head and he finds himself making out with Eric on the dance floor.
He makes it through the reception, or most of it, before he catches Eric’s eye across the room and tips his head in the direction of the elevators. Ten minutes later, they’re in Eric’s room, and Eric says, “That was so fucking subtle, Jesus, I’m glad you don’t make your money in any kind of performance industry.”
“Fuck you,” Vince says, working on Eric’s fly.
“Not enough time, but a good idea for later.”
They make it back to the party just as Johnny’s pulling the garter off of Larissa’s leg, and though Larissa’s cousins all shove Vince toward the crowd it’s Dom who catches the thing. “The fuck am I gonna do with this?” he asks, flinging it toward Eric, who looks mildly alarmed when he catches it.
Vince laughs and Eric winks at him, which makes him laugh even harder. He’s feeling nicely relaxed, now, post-sex, so he takes some champagne when it comes by and then dutifully dances with half of the bridesmaids. At the end of the night they pelt Johnny and Larissa with rice as they dash toward the limo that will take them to the airport, and Vince puts one hand on Eric’s shoulder, ostensibly to steady himself, as they watch them drive away.
“Long fucking day,” Turtle says, when they’re all back upstairs in his suite. He’s methodically packing the bong while the other three guys work on stripping off the non-essential parts of the tux: Dom is in his undershirt and unbelted pants, while Eric only loses the tie and jacket and shoes.
“Long fucking week,” Dom says, flopping into an armchair. “I gotta admit, I’m surprised they went through with it.”
“Really?” Vince asks. He takes a seat on the couch. Eric’s at the fridge, getting them all beers. “You didn’t think Johnny would?”
“I didn’t think she would,” he says. “Didn’t think I’d live to see the day when Johnny fucking Chase found a decent girl to settle down with.”
“They’re a good match,” Vince says. Eric hands the beers around, then sits on Vince’s couch. “I’m glad he found her.”
“Yeah,” Turtle says, “though I gotta admit, I love the guy, but I never thought he’d be the first one of us to get married.”
Eric takes a sip of his beer, then says, “Yeah, Turtle, who’d you think -”
“You,” Dom and Turtle say in unison, and Vince snickers.
“And if you woulda got your fucking act together a little sooner, you totally could have beat him,” Turtle says.
Eric rolls his eyes, but then Dom says, “Nah, he’s right, man, you two shoulda got gay-married a long fucking time ago and saved us all these months of whiny bullshit.”
“Hey -” Vince starts.
“He’s right, Vin,” Turtle says. “I would never call you whiny, but the two of you, it’s a fucking drag when you’re fighting. So listen, don’t do that shit again, OK?”
Eric looks over at Vince. Vince wags his eyebrows, grinning until Eric smiles back and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Fine, we’ll try it your way. No fighting.”
“No fighting,” Vince says, and he shakes Eric’s hand, then kisses him. “Instead, I’ll just always be right.”
“Like old times.”
The next day all of the extended family leaves early in the morning, giving Vince a little time with his mother. Eric’s mother is still around, too, so she joins them for a family brunch catered in to Vince’s suite. While Eric’s showing her how to work the in-room cappuccino maker at the bar, Vince’s mother comes over and takes a seat beside him. “So when am I going to get one of these out of you?” she asks.
“You need a cappuccino maker?”
“Don’t get smart with me,” she says. She waves her hands around. “A wedding, Vincent.”
Vince shrugs. “As soon as E’s rich enough to spring for one.”
Eric nearly drops the cappuccino he’s holding. “Yeah, very funny, Vince,” he says, giving him a quick, sharp, evil eye.
“What?” Eric’s mother says. “You live in the right state for it, at least.” Vince stares at her, just like Eric is, trying to figure out if she’s joking. She shrugs. “You think the old folks are so blind, is that it? A year and a half, you’re living at his house, and then you break up and move out and you don’t think your own mother noticed?”
Vince glances at his mother, who has a similarly stern, disbelieving look. “You knew?” he asks.
“My darling, I love you and you’re a great actor, but to your mother, you’re practically see-through,” she says. Vince laughs, nervously, and looks over at Eric, who still seems shell-shocked.
“So your brother says you’re patching things up,” his mom continues.
“Johnny’s got a big mouth,” Vince mumbles, and his mother smacks his arm. “What? He does.”
“He’s a good boy. A married boy - married man. And if you’d take his lead, you wouldn’t spend all your time trying to escape horny Nebraska cousins all night. That’s what the ring is for, baby.”
“Where were all of you people with your advice seven months ago?” Vince asks, and Eric’s mother laughs.
“You boys haven’t listened to us since you were eight.”
“Doesn’t mean we have to stop trying,” Vince’s mom says. “Is it so terrible, a mother wants her son settled down and happy? I know you don’t have a problem with commitment, Eric.”
Eric sets his cup down on the counter. “Give us a break, Rita,” he says. “We’re still figuring things out.”
“That’s how it works,” Eric’s mother says. “There’s never a perfect time. You wait for that and I’m gonna be dead before I get any grandchildren from you.”
Vince looks up. “You’re relentless,” he says, and Eric’s mother smiles.
“Now you know where he gets it,” she says, pinching Eric’s cheek.
“We love you boys,” Vince’s mother says. “We just want you to be happy. And we want at least six months’ notice on the wedding so we have some time to plan. I’m sorry, you’re good boys, but neither one of you has the style to pull off a wedding.”
“It really is a girl thing,” Eric’s mom says, and Eric meets Vince’s eyes and they both laugh.
When they get back to L.A., Eric comes home with Vince. They don’t talk about it, it just happens, and Vince is enormously glad. Eric sits on his side of the bed, where his pillow is still waiting, and says, “So I have to work in the morning.”
“OK,” Vince says. “I should probably do some of that, too. I guess.”
Eric raises an eyebrow. “You gonna do those interviews after all?”
“Yeah,” Vince says, shrugging. “How’d you know?”
“Ari called me to see if I could convince you.” Eric smirks. “I’ve always sort of loved telling him no.”
Vince gets up with Eric in the morning and has coffee with him before he leaves. He gets the full run of Eric’s day and really listens, so that when he sees him that night, he can ask how the meeting with Berg’s people went. Eric, in turn, gets home at a decent hour and takes an active interest in how Vince’s interviews ran.
“You want me to come to New York with you?” he asks later that week, when they’re talking about Vince’s upcoming spots on “Letterman” and “The Daily Show.”
Vince can see that it’s an honest offer, so he asks an honest question. “Do you really have time?”
Eric shrugs. “No. But I can make time, if you want.”
Vince kisses the side of his head. “I can go one night,” he says, “if you promise me you’ll be home Saturday.”
“Deal.”
Compromises like that make things work and, soon, become second-nature. Though Vince gets a little ribbing from the guys for all of the “E-rules” that he seems to follow (for instance, if he’s going to get drunk with Turtle and Dom, he has to call and let Eric know so that he can either stay later at work or cut out to join them), things really work. Vince feels happy and settled and certain in and of their relationship in a way he hasn’t before.
Two months after Johnny’s wedding, they finally have a double-date with Johnny and Larissa. It’s fun, the four of them hanging out, teasing each other, talking about little coupley things that the other guys don’t get. As they’re waiting for their car, Eric puts his arm around Vince’s waist in full view of the valets and other people waiting in the garage. Vince says, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Eric says. “I’m ready if you are.”
That weekend, they go to a premiere for one of Eric’s movies. Vince still makes the bigger splash on the red-carpet, but inside, everyone’s eyes are on Eric. It’s good, Vince decides. It’s where they’ve been headed.
“Nice turn-out,” Eric says, taking his seat beside Vince.
“You’re a star,” Vince says, and Eric looks over, a question in his eyes. Vince smiles. “Hey, you’ve earned it.”
Eric raises an eyebrow. “What have you earned?”
Vince reaches over and takes Eric’s hand, and then leans across and, in full view of the rows of producers and Hollywood glitterati behind them, in full view of Harvey, who he can already hear bellowing, he kisses him. “This,” he says, and Eric blushes.
“Yeah,” he says, still looking at Vince, just at Vince, not at anyone around them. “I think we both have.”
[The End]