FIC: Accept What You Cannot Change, AU, Entourage, Vince/E, R, 2/2

[fourteencandles]

Continued from Part 1.



Eric snuck out of the office again and went straight back to his hidden motel. He spent the evening eating room service and reviewing wedding plans. The plans were elaborate and expensive and, according to Lloyd, so top secret that none of the guests even knew that they were going to a wedding. It seemed strange to him that there was so much detail laid out here, so many should-be-romantic touches, but the more he read about it, the more cold he felt. This wasn’t the way a wedding should be between two people in love, he thought. It was a production, not a real ceremony. In spite of all the flowers and music, this read like a business merger. Eric put the papers away, drained another tiny bottle of Jack and, within a few minutes, fell asleep.

He was woken by strong hands on his shoulders, shaking him. “Eric, Jesus, wake the fuck up,” Vince was saying.

Eric opened his eyes, hoping he’d be looking up into the scraggly hair of his own Vince, in his own world. Instead he saw bright eyes and sharp cheekbones and a flush of anger and fear on the face above him. Fuck, he thought, and then said it. “What the fuck, Vince?”

“Have you been drinking?”

Eric blinked. “Uh, a little,” he said, and Vince’s eyes got even wider. He snapped back from him, stood up, crossed his arms. Eric sat up. “What are you doing here? Are you OK?”

Vince shook his head. “You promised,” he said. “You fucking - “ He stopped, very suddenly, and turned away, took two deep breaths. When he turned around, Eric could tell he was acting because the tension had left his voice, but not his shoulders. “OK. It’s OK, everyone has slip-ups. Right? So, we’ll just - have you called Clarence already?”

Eric flinched. “About what?” He couldn’t be talking about that afternoon, could he? How could he already know? “No, not tonight.”

“We’ll do that. We’ll - I’ll get some coffee sent up, and then, it’ll be fine. We’ll call him, we’ll get you to a meeting tomorrow. OK?”

A meeting. Those were words from childhood. Both Eric’s dad and Vince’s had gone to meetings, back in the day; neither had had much success with them, but just the mention of it made Eric feel a little queasy. I’m an alcoholic? he thought. Would’ve been nice of Lloyd to mention that.

Vince sat on the bed, and through the calm acting mask Eric could sense his worry. “You can come home,” he said quietly. “We’ll get through this, OK?”

“Vince,” Eric said, and then he wasn’t sure what more to say. He couldn’t go home with him, not now, not yet. He couldn’t just go because Vince wanted to keep an eye on him. “What are you doing here?”

Vince laughed abruptly. “Clarence,” he said. “He was worried. So I called Lloyd.”

“He told you where I was?”

Vince frowned. “Don’t take it out on him, all right? I practically threatened to set him on fire. And he was worried, too. He said you were here and I should come talk to you, that was the only part that made sense,” Vince said. “I guess - did he know you were drinking?”

“I wasn’t drinking,” Eric said. “I had a drink. One.”

“It always starts with one,” Vince said.

“No, seriously,” Eric said. “Check the garbage. Check the minibar.”

Vince looked at him funny for a minute, then stood up and did just that. He counted the bottles in the minibar, even opened and tasted the booze. “OK, that’s not water,” he said, wincing as he set down a tiny Absolut right next to the papers Eric had been reviewing. Right next to, Eric realized too late, the wedding plans.

Vince looked over at Eric, his expression guarded. “You were working on wedding stuff?” he asked.

“Sort of.”

He nodded, just once. His fingers were resting on the top sheet, and he looked there instead of at Eric. “You, uh, why? Are you changing things again?”

Eric shook his head. “I wouldn’t change anything without talking to you first,” he said, and realized how out-of-character that was when Vince turned to look at him. “I mean. Anything more.” Vince looked back at the plans, started rifling through them. “Actually,” Eric said, his voice quiet, “after today, I was sort of wondering if you even - I mean, if -”

“If we should go through with it?” Vince asked. He was still looking at the pages. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

Eric took a fast breath. “What do you think?” he asked.

Vince shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. His voice was soft and somehow more familiar than the strident voice he’d heard since arriving in this world. He dropped the paper he was looking at abruptly, then took a few steps back and sat on the edge of Eric’s bed. “Things are pretty fucked up.”

Eric nodded, then realized Vince couldn’t see that. “Look,” he said, “it’s still a while away. And hardly anyone knows.”

“What, you wanna wait and see?” Vince asked, turning to look at Eric over his shoulder.

“I want - I want some time to fix things,” Eric said, feeling desperate, suddenly, like his relationship here and in his own world depended on Vince saying yes to this.

Which, after a moment, he did, albeit with a shrug. “What do you want me to do?” Vince asked.

“Nothing,” Eric said. He wanted to reach over and touch him, but he couldn’t tell if that would be welcome or normal. So he just said, “I just want you to give me another chance.”

Vince sighed. “Eric,” he said, his voice quiet and tired, “I already said you could come home. Do we have to go through this all tonight?”

“I don’t want to come home,” Eric said, and Vince flinched. “Not yet,” Eric said quickly, “not, uh, not like this. Not - not just because you think you have to keep an eye on me, or whatever.” He took a deep breath, then plunged forward. “I think - just give me a little time. I can fix things,” he said. “I swear I can fix things.”

Vince looked back at him. “I guess if anybody could,” he said, and Eric nodded. Then Vince stood up and looked around. “But seriously, can’t we at least get you a better hotel room? This place is depressing as fuck.”

Maybe that’s what I deserve, Eric thought, but he shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m just sleeping here. Otherwise I’ve got the office.”

Vince frowned. He walked to the fridge, opened it, and began taking out all of the alcohol bottles, stacking them in the ice bucket. “Don’t argue,” he said, when Eric stood and walked over.

“I won’t,” Eric said.

Vince shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he said quietly. “I don’t get it, but - if you’re serious, Eric -”

“I am,” he said, and now he did touch Vince, just on the shoulder, just to get him to turn and look at him. “I’m gonna fix things,” he said.

Vince frowned but nodded, then picked up the bucket of booze bottles. He looked down. “I want you to call me tomorrow,” he said. “OK? Will you?”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “I promise.” Vince nodded, and Eric could tell, somehow, that he didn’t believe him. “I will,” Eric said again. “When do you want me to call?”

“Whenever,” Vince said. He looked up just briefly, then glanced to the side, gripping the bucket tighter. “I’m gonna go. I should go.”

“OK,” Eric said. He kept his hands at his sides, though he wanted, again, to reach out. Vince stood still, and Eric finally realized that he was blocking his path out, and that Vince wasn’t going to move while he was there. He stepped to the side, and Vince, without saying anything, walked around him and out the door.

Eric sat on the bed. He felt shaky and a little nauseated. Vince really was afraid of him, and afraid for him. There was clearly something worth saving here, at least - which was better than what Eric had been thinking for part of the day, which was that he should find a way for this Eric to get the fuck out of Vince’s life altogether. He remembered Vince’s forced calm, remembered the way he’d said they’d get through Eric’s drinking. Fuck, somehow they’d fallen into every trap their parents had. Eric had become his own father. He couldn’t think of anything worse to discover about himself.

The next day, he had a teleconference that couldn’t be avoided, but Lloyd provided him a pretty good hand-written script as they went along and he muddled through. The end result was that he secured backing for some major project that neither he nor Vince would be directly involved in, but that would, Lloyd assured him, make a tidy profit next year, “particularly internationally.”

“This is all, like, way out of my league,” Eric admitted, leaning back in his amazingly comfortable desk chair.

“You did fine,” Lloyd said.

Eric closed his eyes. “I’m really good at this, huh?” He knew it was true without hearing Lloyd’s obedient, expected yes. He’d felt it, a surge of - well, like a spark of knowing, or mastery, or vision, when he’d been on the conference call. He could tell that somewhere within this Eric there was a deep, comfortable familiarity with his role, here, a kind of confidence that he didn’t always have in his real life. The kind of confidence that came from power.

He sat up, abruptly, and opened his eyes. “I should get out of here,” he said. He didn’t like the feeling because, well, he liked it too much. As he stood, he wondered if maybe this Eric had replaced drinking with a different addiction, and knew the answer. He grabbed his phone off the desk, remembered his promise to call Vince. Lloyd was already standing up, and Eric waved at him to stop while Vince’s phone rang.

“Hey,” Vince said.

“Hey,” Eric said, trying to match his cautious tone. “Uh. I just wanted, I guess, uh, I said I’d call.”

“Oh,” Vince said, and he almost sounded disappointed, or resigned. Eric realized he probably didn’t call him much during the day. “Right. OK.”

“I, uh, did I, were you doing anything? Am I interrupting -”

“Eric, do you need something?”

He held the mouthpiece away and sighed. He felt like he had, so far, walked into everything with Vince exactly wrong. All of these defenses had been built up between them. All of these layers of history. They needed a fresh start so badly, Eric thought, but - where did people generally start?

“You wanna grab lunch?” he asked, and then held his breath.

“Uh, OK,” Vince said, after a minute. “That’d be good.”

They met at some place Vince suggested, a bistro that served Asian seafood dishes. Eric didn’t know what to order - nothing looked good, because none of it was food he’d ever heard of before. Vince ordered quickly and fluently, and Eric just said, “Uh, yeah, what he’s having.”

Vince frowned and held up a hand. “No, he won’t,” he said to the waiter.

Eric swallowed. Shit. Had he just walked into some kind of fight? What the fuck? “It sounded good,” Eric said, and Vince shook his head, then turned with a smile to the waiter.

“He’ll have his usual,” he said, and the waiter nodded and hurried away. Vince turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “You want to be sick?”

“What?”

“It’s like an eight on the spice scale. You’ll be up all night if you eat that stuff.”

Eric smiled at the familiar care in Vince’s voice. “You’re right,” he said, and Vince caught his eye. For a second, Eric saw a promising flicker there - the same spark he’d felt when Vince had taken his hand at the house, on his first day - but then Vince looked down, one of his hands going to his forehead.

“What are we doing?” Vince asked, quietly. “I mean, seriously, Eric, what are we doing here?”

Eric put his hands flat on the table, trying to look as serious and open and honest as he could. “We’re - trying,” Eric said. “That’s all I want, Vince. I just - I want us to sit here, and have lunch, and just, uh, not fight. I mean, can’t we do that? We - we used to,” Eric said, and for a second, looking at Vince’s tipped down head, Eric wondered if that was even true.

The waiter came back with two cups of soup, and Vince’s head popped up. He smiled at the guy, thanked him, looked, for a second, perfectly happy.

“See,” Eric said, when the guy went away. “Like that, except not fake.”

Vince offered a small smile. “If we’re gonna be nice,” he said, “what does that leave us to talk about?”

Finally, Eric thought, safe ground. “Old stuff,” he said, and he was rewarded by Vince’s smile.

They settled into a pattern, after that. Eric worked mornings, and with Lloyd close by he faked his way through a fair amount of important business. They cooked up a story about him doing some kind of charity film so that he could more freely cancel things without raising anyone’s ire, and he spent his afternoons wooing Vince. That was actually how Vince put it, too: “It’s like you’re wooing me,” he said one afternoon, when they’d walked out of Barney’s, Vince with two new shirts on order to be delivered the next day. Eric had bought them, after complimenting how much they brought out his eyes.

“Maybe, a little,” Eric said, and he took Vince’s hand as they walked out. He’d noticed by now that when they were out in public, Vince would often reach for his hand, and he knew it was an automatic gesture more than any sign of affection. Still, he liked it, liked being pulled along through a crowd or taking his turn, leading Vince to the car. He even liked the practiced fond look that Vince gave him whenever there were cameras around.

Which was why, when they got in the car, it hurt a little when Vince pulled away and his face slunk back into an inexpressive mask. He was less angry than he’d been on Eric’s first day, but he wasn’t any happier, and Eric couldn’t blame him.

But he had to keep trying. So they went to lunch and went shopping. They went to movies - not just premieres, but those too, and parties. Once, they went to dinner, but it was so awkward at the end of the meal when Vince went home and Eric went back to his hotel that Eric didn’t really want to try it again.

One afternoon, Eric looked across the table at Vince, who was concentrating on his grilled chicken and steamed vegetables, and wondered if Vince even actually loved him anymore. It didn’t seem like it, really. They talked easily enough, about work, about day-to-day crap, even, very carefully, about Turtle, but they didn’t laugh. They weren’t friends anymore, Eric realized, and the he had to concentrate on his food so that Vince wouldn’t see the panic on his face.

They left the restaurant and Vince got in Eric’s car, but held out a hand to keep him from pulling away. “We should talk about the wedding,” Vince said, and Eric nodded.

He wasn’t willing to cede Vince the home turf, so he said, “Come back to my place?” and Vince made a face, but nodded.

At the hotel, Eric badly wanted to offer Vince a drink, so that he could have one himself, but instead while Vince was in the bathroom he got them each a bottle of water, then went to get ice. When he came back, Vince was standing in front of the open fridge. Eric set the ice down, started to tell him he’d already grabbed him some water, but he realized what Vince was doing, checking for alcohol, and he found it strangely touching. He wondered if it would be OK to touch Vince, at this moment, this Vince who still obviously cared some for him, and he decided that it really couldn’t make anything worse, so that’s what he did - leaned in, let his hand rest in the middle of Vince’s back, and then kissed the ball of his shoulder. Vince smelled like something sweet and green, cucumbers, maybe, and under that like the sharp athletic scent of deodorant. This care, with the attention to the drinking, this was the nicest, most couple-like thing he’d seen Vince do since he’d been back, and he liked it. He had to admit, he loved it.

It surprised him when Vince turned to him, cupped his face, and kissed him. Eric was startled, but he quickly got it together and kissed back, put his hands on Vince’s slender waist and drew him closer. “Shitty, shitty motel,” Vince said, and then gripped Eric’s shoulders and pushed him back onto the bed. “If you weren’t such a stubborn fucker, we could be doing this at home.”

And then there it was, this beautiful Vince’s beautiful body, laid out on the crappy hotel bed just for him. Eric couldn’t really believe it, didn’t even trust himself to speak, just got right down to the business of worshipping that body, touching every inch he could reach with his hands and mouth. He wondered, as he heard Vince moan his name, quietly, if this was what he’d been sent here for, if this was the reconciliation they needed - and if so, if this was going to be his only chance. He put his hands on Vince’s evenly-tanned waist and kissed a line down from his navel to his cock, then took it carefully in his mouth. He didn’t have a lot of experience with this, but this Eric apparently did, because it was like a soundtrack running in the background, the way he knew what to do, how to touch Vince just right, how to move so that the moaning grew richer, louder, and finally, finally, Vince said, “E, yes,” instead of Eric, and he came.

Eric backed off and kissed his way up Vince’s heaving chest. When Vince tried to turn over he stopped him, looked him right in the eyes, and kissed him, and they did that, just that, until Vince was hard again and even then, they stayed face to face as Eric bent one of Vince’s legs up and fucked him, as slowly as he could manage with stars sparkling behind his eyes. When he came, he was shuddering and his arms wouldn’t hold him, so he slumped to his side, eyes closed, breath racing, and slid his hand down to finish Vince off again.

After a minute, Eric pulled himself together enough to look at Vince’s face. He looked - well, Eric couldn’t tell. His face was red, his eyes were closed, and he had one hand up over his mouth, touching his own lips, gently.

“Vin?” Eric said, softly. He touched his face, and Vince turned toward him, opened his eyes, and looked right at Eric. Eric had the feeling he was being searched, like Vince was looking into him, looking for something. So Eric put everything he felt into his face, every bit of affection he felt for Vince in this world or his own. And he saw Vince nod, just a tiny bit, and then he leaned up on his elbows, turned, and kissed Eric, softly, but for a long, long time.

Then, finally, Vince pulled Eric close, buried his face against Eric’s neck, and Eric stroked his back. He wanted to say something meaningful, something like how much he loved him, how much he wanted things to work. He had his mouth open when Vince slid a leg over his and said, “So Lloyd was right, huh?”

Eric cleared his throat. “About what?”

Vince rubbed his chest. “You totally switched bodies.”

“What?”

“Lloyd, earlier, he said - he said you said you’d switched bodies, like, you were some other Eric from some other time. I thought you were playing a joke on him, or - something, but - you meant it, huh?” Vince looked up at him.

He didn’t look afraid, or freaked out, so Eric said, “How could you tell?”

Vince smiled and set his head back down. “You haven’t given me a blow job in three years.”

Eric gasped, and then laughed. “Holy fuck,” he said.

“You kiss different, too,” Vince said.

“Better?”

“Different.” Eric turned to look at him, saw his eyes were closed. “More like when we first got together.”

Eric cleared his throat. “So when - when was that, exactly?”

Vince’s mouth twitched down into a frown. “In New York,” he said. “High school. I knew I wanted to come out here, Johnny said I should, but you - you were going to stay behind in New York.”

Eric got a story, then, that explained a lot: Instead of letting him stay behind, this Vince had asked Eric to come to L.A. not just as his friend or his guy, but as his boyfriend. Eric had to admit that would’ve worked on him in any world; he’d always wanted a commitment from Vince, had always wanted more definition in their relationship.

They’d struck a bargain, and Eric had been Vince’s manager right from the start. They’d stayed briefly with Drama, but Eric had worked night and day - catering and bartending, mostly - so that they could get a place of their own. He’d been the one who got Vince’s audition tape into the right hands, who’d found Ari, who’d found Sellout, Vince’s breakout hit. The rest of the story, Eric had heard from Lloyd already, except for the parts that really, at this point, seemed to matter.

“So what happened with us?” Eric asked. He was leaning on one elbow, looking down at Vince, his hand resting on the blanket where his fingers could just brush Vince’s forearm.

Vince sighed. “Everything,” he said. “It’s just - been harder, these last few years, to really connect. I mean - it’s not really as bad as it seems, it’s just -”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Eric said. “Look, I’m not the world’s perfect guy, but - this Eric, he’s a fucking prick.”

“Hey,” Vince said, but Eric shook his head.

“No, I’m serious. I saw Turtle, I got the rundown from Lloyd. And -” He wondered whether to say this out loud, decided that silence wasn’t getting them anywhere. So he put his hand gently on Vince’s arm and said, “And you’re afraid of him.”

“I’m not really,” Vince said. Eric kept looking at him. “What do you want me to say? He’s a forceful guy sometimes, he -”

“He hits you,” Eric said, and even though he expected it, it still stung a little when Vince shrugged, then, finally, nodded.

“If he’s been drinking,” Vince said.

“Christ,” Eric muttered, and drew away. “Jesus Christ. I’m my father.”

“No,” Vince said. “You don’t really understand.”

“I don’t? This guy - I - he’s scared away your friends, you’re afraid of him, hell, from what Lloyd’s said half the town is, too.” Vince shrugged again, and Eric could see that his anger was bothering him. He took a few breaths to calm himself down, tried to remind himself that this Eric wasn’t really him, that this wasn’t his real life or his future or any of that.

“What’s it like where you’re, uh, from?” Vince asked.

Eric sighed. He settled on his back, still close to Vince. “It’s different. We aren’t - like this.”

“Not married?”

“Not even together,” Eric said. “I’m your manager. I don’t direct movies or anything.”

“Weird,” Vince said. “So it’s just business?”

“No,” Eric said, though it had started to feel a bit that way recently. “We’re friends, too.” Eric had been so focused on fixing things, professionally, for Vince that they hadn’t done much real hanging out of late. He spent most of his time working on the movies, the contracts, the paychecks. Was that what this was all supposed to teach him? That he needed to spend more time with Vince, as a friend? Or that he needed to pursue some deeper relationship? Surely not, he thought, thinking of the clinical wedding plans, the unhappiness here. “We still hang out. All of us. Turtle, and Drama, and you and I.”

“Johnny?” Vince’s voice got a little high. “What’s - he’s around, in your world?”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “All the time. He’s got a TV show he’s on, he’s actually doing pretty well.” He didn’t dare glance over. “What, uh, what happened with him?”

Vince sighed. “Eric doesn’t know this, but - he’s in Florida. He’s been doing dinner theater, stuff like that. I send him some money, when I can, but - it’s hard. You - he keeps a pretty close eye on money stuff.”

“Oh, yeah,” Eric said. “I meant to tell you. I switched some stuff with Clarence, about how that all works.”

“I know,” Vince said, calmly. “That’s what made me talk to Lloyd. It’s pretty out of character for you.”

“I gather.” He rubbed his face with both hands, then sat up. The reflection in the mirror was his own, but also not. “I really am a jerk,” he said.

“Sometimes,” Vince said. “But I’ve got my issues, too.”

Eric looked back at him. “When did things go so bad? When did I ever start thinking I could hurt you?”

Vince leaned back against the headboard. “The start of it all?” he said, and Eric nodded. “I skipped a meeting with a studio head to get fucked up with Turtle.” He shook his head. “You were so angry when I got back, and you’d been drinking, and you asked why I didn’t go. I told you I didn’t feel like going. You kept on about it and I, fuck, I was still kind of wasted, you know? I didn’t have any good reason for not going, I just didn’t want to, and I said that, and I said I wasn’t going to apologize and they could go fuck themselves and so could you. You just - “ he mimed a punch, then touched his cheek. “The next day -”

“Don’t,” Eric said, shaking his head, and Vince put his hand on Eric’s shoulder. “I don’t want to hear I was sweet, I was nice to you, whatever.”

“You never apologized,” he said. “If you’d been nice about it, I would have left you right then. But the next day, it was like we’d had a fight back home, it was like we both knew we’d crossed some line - which we had, I had - and that was what happened.” Eric looked back at him, and Vince shrugged. “We sat down for dinner and you said, ‘Here’s how it’s going to work,’ and you laid out a plan. You said you were through with fucking around, that if I couldn’t get my goddamned pretty ass off the fucking couch to guarantee us both a future then you were going to find some other way to play the game. You said you didn’t come out here to watch me piss everything away and you didn’t think that was why I’d asked you to come.”

“What’d you say?”

Vince shrugged again. “I said I’d do whatever you wanted, and I’d do whatever it took to make things work for us. And the agreement was, kind of, as long as I did that and you did that, we’d be OK. And so it’s only ever been when I’m not, uh, doing what I’m supposed to, or when you’ve been drinking, that we’ve had problems.”

“You’re afraid of me,” Eric murmured, and Vince put his arms around Eric from behind.

“Not you,” he said. “Him.”

“I’m the same -”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Vince said. “Look, my Eric, he’s had some shit happen that you haven’t.”

“Don’t make excuses,” Eric said savagely.

Vince held on. “Early on, when we came out here. I think - he’s never said, but I think he did some stuff, everything he could, stuff he didn’t want to, to make sure I got a break. I think - I sometimes think we’re both still paying for that now.”

“Oh, Christ,” Eric said. It made sense to him, in a way that nothing else about this had: he would do anything for Vince, in this time or his own.

Vince kissed the back of his neck. “He’s a good man,” he said. “But he’s had a hard time.”

“I want you to be safe from him,” Eric said. “I want - I want him to be -”

“I’m fine,” Vince said. “I needed this break. Who knows what happens after this, right? But if I wake up tomorrow and I’m back with my guy, my E, then - at least, I think it’s maybe not too late for us. Because I remember, you know? He needs me as much as I need him.” He pulled back, and Eric turned to look at him. “Do you miss me? I mean, the me in your world?”

Eric swallowed. “A lot,” he said. It was strange, but he almost had to close his eyes to picture his Vince back home, his happy, safe Vince, with the beautiful messy hair and the beautiful messy career.

“I know you’ll think I’m nuts,” Vince said, “but I miss my you, too.”

Eric nearly laughed. “I do think you’re a little nuts,” he said. “But - I get it. I get what you’ve both given up, what you’re both willing to give. It’s - that’s the same, in either place.”

“Yeah,” Vince said. “Do you think you’re staying much longer?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said.

“What do you think - why do you think you’re here?”

Eric shrugged. “I thought it was, maybe, to make this all better.” He looked down at where Vince was holding him, at the way his hands folded so perfectly together with Eric’s own. “But I can’t fix this,” he said, his voice rough.

“Some things can’t get fixed,” Vince said. “It doesn’t mean they’re completely broken, though, you know? It just means - some things have to limp along. Nothing you can do.”

He bowed his head, let Vince kiss his shoulder and then rest his head there. He felt powerless, here, despite all of the power that this Eric had, powerless to stop the bad things from happening. In his own world, he’d felt that way sometimes, too, and he’d combatted it exactly the same way this Eric had, by trying harder to control things, by working harder to fix it, fix everything. There has to be a balance, he thought. There has to be a way to understand what I can do and what I can’t.

“I love him,” Vince said. “That’s been enough for me for a long time, and it’s gonna keep being enough even after you leave. But I think - you’ve done what you can, you know? So now, maybe it’s up to me.”

“I want you to be happy,” Eric said.

Vince smiled against his neck. “Now that sounds like my Eric,” he said. “Lay back down, OK?”

Eric let himself be pulled back into the bed. As he curled up with this Vince, he thought about what he’d said, about what could be fixed here. He’d done what he could. Sometimes, maybe, that was the best that could be said.

He woke up to the sound of the ringing telephone, and reached out, expecting to connect with the hotel phone, thinking it was his wake-up call. Instead, his hand collided with a lamp and he heard the thud of it hitting the carpeted floor. Eric opened his eyes.

His lamp. His room. His world.

He sat up, already shaking. The ringing phone was his cell phone, and Ari’s face was flashing on the screen. “If you’ve recovered from your terrible elevator ordeal yesterday, can we please finally get a fucking signature on this contract? Unless you want to lose ten million dollars -”

“Drama’s gotta be in the contract,” Eric said.

“I thought you were going to fix that.”

“No.” Eric sat up. His heart was pounding. “Ari, either Drama’s in or Vince is out. I’m not going to try and talk him into dumping his brother. If this guy wants Vince in his movie, it’s a package deal.” His hands were shaking, and Eric was worried that his voice was going to fail. “Call me back when you have that fixed,” he said, and hung up.

In the bathroom, the eyes that met his were definitely his own, as was the less freakishly fit torso and the less sculpted hair. Eric splashed water on himself to make sure he was really awake, then took a shower to be even more certain. Still in his own world. The television confirmed what Ari had said - no time had been lost. It was the morning after the day of the elevator ride, the day when Eric had wondered what it would have been like if he’d just followed Vince to L.A. the first time.

Vince. Eric needed to see him, right away. He needed to - well, he wasn’t even sure what he needed to tell him, but what he really needed, more than anything, was to be sure he was OK, that things between them were OK. So he dressed carefully in slacks and a flattering shirt, then got in his car. His hands were sweating on the wheel, but he called Vince anyway and managed to keep his voice steady as he asked about lunch. On the way over, he tried to come up with a plan, but he realized he couldn’t think of anything to say. Everything sounded ridiculous: Vince, I had a dream we were married. Vince, I think maybe in some other world I’m a bastard to you. Hey, remember that elevator ride yesterday? I think it fucked up my brain.

He wasn’t any closer to a story or a decision by the time he arrived, but he still rushed inside. Vince was waiting in the kitchen, and his smile was so bright and eager and unafraid that Eric felt momentarily almost woozy with relief. Thank God, he thought, thank God, he didn’t have the same dream. He realized he didn’t want to tell Vince about the world he’d been to, because he didn’t want Vince to think he was capable of any of that. He didn’t really want to believe it himself.

“Hey,” Eric said. He looked great - not the physically perfect Vince of the other world, but the comfortable Vince Eric was used to, the one he loved most. He swallowed just thinking the word love, and wondered if that was going to be a new problem for him.

“Hey, E.” Vince was still smiling at him, and Eric took a few nervous steps forward. His mind, of its own accord, flashed briefly to his memories of the night before, and he glanced away, took a seat at the island. “What are you hungry for?”

Eric suggested pizza, because he wasn’t up to going out in public right then. He just wanted to stay at the house and be with Vince and not think about the dream. Vince made them both coffee, and then started to pour brandy into the cups, but he paused, and Eric flashed to Vince emptying out the minibar.

"You OK?" he asked, moving closer, trying to figure out what was going on. What if Vince had had some kind of similar dream, too? What if he was just remembering now?

Vince put his hand on Eric's shoulder. "I need to tell you some stuff," Vince said, and Eric's stomach lurched.

"Me, too, actually," he said. "Let's go sit down."

Vince nodded. Eric carried their drinks to the living room and took a seat on the couch. Vince sat close, so their knees brushed when Eric moved, and that was strangely reassuring. He couldn’t think of how to broach the topic of the dream, exactly, and he didn’t want to bring it up unless Vince did. So he said, as brightly as he could manage, "So, uh, are you feeling OK?"

"I don't know," Vince said. "What is today?"

"Thursday." Eric’s heart was pounding again. He wanted to ask why, to say, what, you don’t know what day it is?, but he knew before Vince even spoke what that meant. He’d had a dream, too. Maybe - maybe they weren’t even dreams. He felt ill at the sudden idea that this could all happen again, that he could be sent back.

"Have you ever -- had a dream, or like, something like a dream, that sort of -- you know, felt more real than, I guess, reality?"

"Last night," Eric said, and he had to put his drink down or risk spilling it, as his hands started to shake again.

Vince’s voice was eager. "Were you in New York, too?" 


New York? Eric thought. Home? "No, I was here. But -- not here like here,” he tried to explain. “Here like, if something had gone wrong." He tried to imagine what Vince was talking about. "You dreamed about New York?"

Vince nodded. "Like you said, it was sort of -- like an alternate universe New York."

He didn’t seem angry, Eric thought - that had to be a good sign. Surely, if he’d met the Eric that was from his world, Vince wouldn’t be sitting so close. Maybe he’d had a happy story, Eric thought. He shifted a little closer, touched Vince’s shoulder. When he didn’t startle, Eric felt relieved. “You wanna tell me?"


“We never left," Vince said. "We had an apartment. And, you worked in a warehouse, and I was doing theater, Off-Broadway. We were -- together," he said.

"Together," Eric murmured. He couldn’t quite look over at Vince, because he so wanted to believe he knew what that meant.

"We were in love, E," Vince said, his voice soft and serious.

"Yeah." Eric's relief expanded to his chest. They’d been in love. Vince had that same memory. Maybe - maybe it would be enough, maybe these dreams had been enough to make things happen here, too. He squeezed Vince’s shoulder. "In mine, too."

"What was yours?"

Eric didn’t know quite what to say. He didn’t want to talk about the bad stuff, not yet. Not until he knew what Vince’s dream had been like. "We were still here. I came out with you, from high school, and -- we were both famous." He forced a smile. "I was a director, you believe it?"

"I always knew you had that in you."

"Yeah?" Eric tried to keep smiling, but he shuddered, instead. Suddenly he didn’t want his own Vince to think anything like the Vince of that world. He wanted to show that his had been an impossible scenario. "But things were bad. With us. With everything, really. The guys -- " He shook his head. "It was just really bad," he said. "You were leaving me." He looked for some sign of disgust or recognition on Vince’s face, and was met only with curiosity and puzzlement. "Were things bad, in your dream?"

"No," Vince said. "Well, I mean -- there was bad stuff.” He told Eric that they’d been kicked out as teenagers, that they’d found some shitty apartment, that Vince had been mugged and beat up on the way home from the subway and left with permanent scars. Eric reached for Vince without event thinking about it.

"We took care of each other,” Vince said. “It was -- I don't know, E, it was kind of sweet."

"Sounds like a dream,” Eric said, his voice already breaking, “compared --" He couldn’t go any further. How could he tell Vince that in his world, the guy who’d hurt Vince the most was Eric? He had to turn away. It was too fresh, still, the stories, the hurt in Vince’s voice, how fucked up and broken they’d become.

Vince put his hands on Eric’s shoulders, then started, gently, to rub. He made a soft, soothing noise, and Eric nodded. I’m here, he thought, I’m here, we’re safe, he’s fine. We’re OK. He put his hand over Vince’s, just to remind himself, and then was struck by how unusual this was - before last night, they’d never even talked about hooking up, and now Eric wanted to turn around and wrap his arms around Vince, cuddle in close, intimate. And Vince seemed willing, if the kiss that fell onto Eric’s neck was any sign.

He cleared his throat, still not trusting that everything was OK, that anything could be easy. Maybe he was reading things wrong. "So what now?"

"Now we learn from our mistakes," Vince said.

Eric felt all of the tension in his shoulders just fall out, down into his chest, and as he tried to breathe in he sobbed instead. He didn’t want to ever go back to where he’d come from; he didn’t ever want to be without this Vince, his Vince, ever again. He pulled him closer, looked down at the hands that were so much the same as those of the Vince he’d left behind. He wondered how he was doing. “I would never - the stuff - it was terrible,” Eric said.

“You’re here, now,” Vince said. “We’re here to stay. E, we’ve made all the right decisions. That’s what I learned. What’d you learn?“

“I need to be nicer to Drama,” Eric said, and Vince laughed, but Eric couldn’t bring himself to do anything but hold still and wish that his eyes would dry up. He wanted to tell Vince everything, so that he could apologize, so that he could somehow make it better, make it less real in his own mind.

But before he could say anything, Vince started talking against his shoulder. “I love you, E. You know? I loved you in New York, in my dream, but - right now, here, you make me happy and I love you. I love what we’ve got, what we’ve done, what we’re going to do.”

“Yeah,” Eric said, tears so tight in his throat that he could barely speak. He ducked and kissed Vince’s hands, instead of talking, and Vince squeezed him and then let him turn around and do exactly as he’d wanted, curl up against him, tight in his arms. Eric was afraid to close his eyes, in case this was the dream, in case he was going to wake up back in the fucked up world, but Vince held onto him and told him more about his New York, and Eric finally started to relax. He slipped into sleep without even noticing it, and woke in the morning in the exact same place, both arms still tight around Vince’s chest, Vince’s heartbeat under his ear.

“I love you, too,” Eric said, and when Vince woke up he was already smiling.

“I know,” Vince said. “I pretty much always knew.”

“Even lately, when you wanted to kill me?” Eric asked.

Vince laughed. “Even then. You - I know you’re just trying to make things better, make things happen.”

Eric frowned. “I know I get kind of crazy about business stuff some times,” he said. “I swear, I’m gonna work on it. I can change. I don’t want that to be my life. Our life.”

“Our life,” Vince said, and he smiled. “I like the sound of that.”

“Yeah? Me, too,” Eric said.

“Good, because I’m not sure after all this I can really let you out of my grasp for a while,” Vince said.

Eric laughed, for the first time in what felt like years. “I’m OK with that,” he said, his hand cupping Vince’s chin, and then he kissed him, and it wasn’t at all like the other world; it was better, because it was real.

[The End!]