Fic: Made Men, Entourage, Vince/Eric, NC-17, 1/6
Title: Made Men
Author: fourteencandles
Fandom/Pairing: Entourage, Vince/E
Rating, Warnings: NC-17.
Series? No.
Length: About 39,000 words. Six parts. Complete.
Spoilers: Season 1, Season 2.
Summary: This was written for entourage_fest, for my request from (dancinbutterfly: At Sundance, Vince and Eric decide they should do Tapping the Source with Harvey Weinstein instead of take a risk on Aquaman. How does their life(second half of Season 2 onwards) change because of this decision? There's so many ways their lives could have been different. Show me what you think. E/V is the only must. I hope it's what you want!
Notes: This tries to stay true to the events of Season 2 that were *not* directly Vince-related, so if you haven't seen S2, it may not make as much sense. Weirdly. What fun, though! Thanks to shoshannagold for the read-through today.
Made Men
Eric says, I can’t keep telling you to take these crazy risks, you need a job, man, and so Vince signs with Harvey to do Tapping the Source. It ends up being a great move; Cameron only spends ten minutes at the Queens Boulevard screening and ends up casting Austin fucking Nichols as Aquaman and Mandy Moore as Aquagirl. Vince can only imagine how awkward that would have been for him. He spends a little time moping and thinking about the road not taken, right up until Eric walks out of his bedroom in L.A., script in hand, and says, “You know what, Ari’s right, this thing is your fucking Oscar,” and then he decides that if Eric’s cool with it, so is he.
Australia is beautiful, just like Ari said: Melbourne, the Gold Coast, all of it. They spend three months there. Professionally, it’s a totally rewarding experience all around: The movie really is that good. The script is polished and effective and the shots are well-choreographed. He picks up surfing like it’s second nature, so much so that his instructor gives him a board at the end of their lessons and encourages him to keep going once he’s back in L.A. Beyond all of that, he gets to work with Taylor Hackford, hot off of Ray, and the rest of the cast is just phenomenal as well. He’s pretty sure Eric’s right: this might be the real thing, the real Oscar ticket.
Personally, however, the filming is trying, for a single reason: Harvey. He’s on set nearly every day in the final two months, having taken over a house in Perth for the duration, and his presence is hard to miss. Luckily, he lets Hackford work with a great amount of autonomy, so Vince’s performance is off-limits from Harvey’s constant comment. Everything else, however, is Harvey’s domain, from the food being served to the quality of the lightbulbs to the way that the PAs dress. Eric somehow gets caught in the middle, time and time again, because he’s one of the only people on set who can stay calm in the face of Harvey’s bluster. The usual rumors of unrest leak out, and Ari starts calling more often because of them, so nearly every time Vince sees Eric, he’s got a phone to his ear and a scowl on his face. Occasionally, Harvey explodes on set, which Eric has to fix, and a few times Harvey even blows up at Eric. He’s intimidating enough that even Turtle and Drama start spending most of their time at the hotel, away from the set. Vince considers getting in the middle of it, but before he can try, an assistant director suggests that maybe Harvey should lighten up about his parking space and gets fired from the movie.
“You’re all replaceable!” Harvey shouts, turning around, and Vince swears his eyes stop on him for a second. “Every single fucking one of you!”
Eric, of course, doesn’t work for Harvey, so he can’t be fired - which might be why Hackford and Harvey use him as their go-between. Vince tries not to worry about it, instead spending most of his time in his trailer with noise-canceling headphones, working on lines and doing push-ups. It doesn’t hurt to be better toned for this movie, and his next project, a sick Taxi Driver-esque seventies piece called Coaster about a guy working at Coney Island, calls for some bulk, too, though Vince could do without the constant soreness in his arms and shoulders.
“Yeah, boo-fucking-hoo, you’re gonna have to get another massage,” Eric says, smoking his second cigarette in thirty minutes. “You’ll be on People’s Top Ten again.”
“Uh-huh. You gonna eat that or ash in it?”
Eric rolls his eyes and pushes the plate - three-quarters of a pretty decent hamburger still sitting on it - away. He’s lost about ten pounds during filming, replacing food with coffee, cigarettes, and stress. Vince reaches over and grips him by the neck, rubs a little. “Ease up, man, OK?”
Eric nods. The other effect of the Australia experience, so far, has been a new level of - something, between the two of them. Vince wants to call it closenesss, but he and Eric have always been close. It’s something else, something more. Intimacy, maybe. He’s not exactly sure how or why it’s happened - he’s thinks it’s the combination of watching Eric be assertive all day, which he finds indescribably hot, and watching Eric sort of melt at night, become a little more vulnerable as the exhaustion and stress wears on him. It’s totally alluring. Vince has always kind of had a thing for Eric, but he’s never done anything about it (unless you count a couple random hook-ups with short, red-haired guys back in L.A.).
Now, maybe because they’re thousands of miles from home, maybe because Eric’s free and clear of Kristen, maybe because Vince has been thinking about the only other time in his life that he nearly settled down - with another sharp red-head - Vince feels like the time has come for them to give it a try. But he hasn’t been able to bring himself to say that, exactly, while Eric’s under so much stress from Harvey. Instead, he tries to make the cues subtle, just test the waters. Like now. He leans over and rests his cheek on Eric’s shoulder, and Eric nods, squeezes Vince’s knee and then lets his hand rest there.
“Seriously, E,” Vince says. “You want we should talk to Brenner?” Their other executive producer is about the only person Harvey seems to have any respect for, maybe because his studio is ponying up a lot of the production money.
“No. No. I just have to make it through the next month, get this thing finished. What doesn’t kill you, right?”
“What if it does kill you?”
Eric laughs, though it’s a little empty. “You know, it’s not gonna be me. Comes down to it, I’ll tear the head off that fat fuck.”
Vince smiles. That sounds more like it. “And then we’ll take a vacation,” Vince promises, and Eric nods tiredly.
His phone rings, and he pulls away slowly. “Harvey,” he says, and stands up to take the call outside. Vince can hear Harvey yelling even before Eric has a word out. It’s just not fucking fair. He picks up his own phone and calls Ari, who, when he complains, gives him the usual “yeah, Harvey’s a psycho, but he’s a goddamned brilliant psycho” speech.
“Ari, he’s fucking killing E, though,” Vince says. “It’s like he holds him personally responsible for everything going on.”
“I admit, the shine Harvey’s taken to your boy is a little excessive even by Harvey standards. But I swear to you, Vince, it’s probably a good thing. He’s a bastard, but he respects people who tolerate him. This could end up being a gold mine for your little man.”
“Or a bleeding ulcer,” Vince says, but he gets what Ari isn’t saying: If Eric doesn’t want to get Brenner involved, then there’s nothing else to be done.
So Vince works on his lines and keeps his head down, and he doesn’t say anything when Eric adds a new food group (Tums) to his repertoire. He also doesn’t say anything when Eric falls asleep with his head on Vince’s shoulder in the trailer during the day, or when, one night, he crashes in Vince’s bedroom while they’re watching a few clips Hackford has released for review. The next morning, Eric wakes up and looks briefly disoriented. “Uh, hey,” he says, rubbing his face.
“Yo,” Vince says, reaching across him to turn off the alarm clock. He settles back onto his side of the bed, on his back, with a sigh. The rest of the suite - it has four bedrooms, one for each of them - is still quiet. “What time do we start today?”
“Eleven,” Eric says. “What time is it now?”
“Nine.”
“Jesus, really?” Vince hears him shift around, checking the nightstand, then his pockets. “Harvey’s probably been calling all morning.”
“I plugged your phone in in your room,” Vince says. “It needed to charge.” He turns onto his side, looking down at Eric. “Did you sleep OK?”
Eric sighs. “Yeah, actually.”
“You look better.”
Eric raises an eyebrow. “Better than -?”
“Usual,” Vince says. “E, you gotta relax. I feel like this movie’s gonna kill you.”
“I feel like that, too, sometimes,” Eric says, closing his eyes.
“So put your phone away at night,” Vince says.
“They just call my room.”
“So stay in here,” he says. Eric’s eyes snap open again. “What, you said you slept fine.”
“Yeah, but - Vin, I can’t just sleep over all the time. We aren’t in grade school any more.”
Vince keeps looking right at Eric, and he eases his hand forward a little so the backs of his knuckles are brushing Eric’s biceps. “I’m aware,” he says.
Eric snorts. “Uh huh. I start sleeping with you, people are gonna talk.”
“The only people who’d know would be Turtle and Johnny,” Vince says. “And who are they gonna tell?”
Eric sits up a little. “Wait a second. Who are they gonna tell what?”
Vince lets a little smile spread on his face. The hand that was brushing Eric’s arm now creeps over to his thigh. “Well. That’s something we could work out, huh?”
“Vin?”
“C’mon,” Vince says. “You’re seriously telling me you haven’t thought about this?”
“This. This being, you, what, going insane and hitting on me?”
Vince rolls his eyes and keeps staring, watching Eric blush bright red even as his mouth makes a thin white line. His hand is midway up Eric’s thigh, now. He rolls to his stomach, so he’s looking up at Eric, and his whole right side is pressed against Eric’s thigh and leg. “I’m not insane.”
“Uh huh.”
He licks his lips, sees Eric watching him do it. “Tell me,” he says, “that the last couple of months, you haven’t been thinking about this every day.”
Eric doesn’t say anything, but he’s looking at Vince like he’s trying to decide whether to leap out of bed or -
“Vin,” he says, quietly, and puts his hand tentatively on Vince’s shoulder. Vince lowers his eyelids, saying yes, and Eric’s hand moves to his neck, then, with more confidence, to his hair. His fingers comb through, and Vince closes his eyes, just briefly, making sure to keep his mouth open. He knows exactly what he looks like, knows how well this face works on nearly everyone he’s been with and every movie goer who’s seen his last two films. It doesn’t surprise him - though it pleases him - when Eric’s hand moves to cup his jaw. “OK,” he says.
Vince looks up at him through his eyelashes. “OK?”
“I could stay over, some,” Eric says, and Vince laughs.
“Are we still talking about that?” he asks.
“What did you want to talk about?”
Vince gets his arms under him, does a perfect pushup that has the unintended consequence of making Eric’s hand fall away, and then, holding himself up with one arm, he puts one hand on Eric’s right side, then lowers himself again. Eric obligingly (or maybe out of instinct, because his eyes are so wide he doesn’t look capable of logical thought) draws his knees apart, so Vince settles between them. He rests his hands on Eric’s rib cage; his chin is on level with his navel. “What if we stop talking, for a while,” Vince says.
Eric nods rapidly. Now he licks his lips, and though he doesn’t lose the look like he can’t quite believe this is happening, his voice is firm, solid Eric. “Is the door locked?”
“Yeah,” Vince says. “Scoot down.”
He does exactly as Vince asks, and within seconds, their bodies are perfectly aligned. It’s surprisingly easy - it actually surprises Vince how little he has to think about what happens next, because in his mind, he’s planned exactly how he’d seduce Eric, step-by-step. It’s not that Vince is a planner - he just wanted to make sure everything would go OK, wanted to make things perfect, wanted to use everything he’d learned over the years. But it turns out, all of that stuff flies out of his head the minute Eric, his eyes still wide, tilts his head up for a kiss. Because holy fuck, he’s kissing Eric, his best friend, the guy who’s been with him his whole life, and if this doesn’t work out, if this doesn’t -
“Vince?” Eric’s hands are on his shoulders, and he’s looking up at Vince with a new expression, puzzled, worried, totally turned on.
It’s Eric. His best friend. “I want you,” Vince says. “E, these last two months, I just - I really want you.”
“Good,” Eric says, and he puts his hands on either side of Vince’s head, tangles his fingers in Vince’s hair again. He shifts his legs just so, and Vince’s cock rubs against Eric’s nearly perfectly. “I want you, too.”
They don’t really do much, just rut against each other and kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and for about the first time since high school, that’s all Vince needs to get off. He dozes for a while after that, his head on Eric’s shoulder, and wakes up to Eric rubbing his neck.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is so soft that Vince feels a little shaky. He looks up, and Eric’s watching him, still, with that wary, wondrous expression. “Time to get going.”
Vince nods. He pushes himself up, but he takes a moment to kiss Eric, and he doesn’t even have to think about it. When he gets out of the shower, Eric’s gone, but fifteen minutes later when he walks out to the common area, Eric’s there, cleaned up and dressed up, his cell phone against his ear. Turtle’s on the couch, complaining about everyone “bitching out” on him last night.
“Jesus, I didn’t think I’d live to see the day even Drama ditches me because he’s got an actual date,” Turtle says. Vince sits on the couch by Turtle to tie his shoes. “And E’s basically married to Harvey, and you were -”
“Tired,” Vince supplies, and Turtle rolls his eyes.
“Just promise me, Vin, you’re not gonna get a fucking girlfriend, all right?” he says.
Eric snaps his phone shut, and Vince knows without looking over that he’s being watched. He shakes his head. “I can honestly promise I’m not even in the market for a girlfriend right now.”
“Thank fucking God,” Turtle says.
Eric sends Turtle down to get the car, and then he turns and looks at Vince, tips his head. “We’re OK, right?” he asks.
“E,” Vince says, and he takes two steps forward, puts his hands on Eric’s shoulders, and kisses him. It takes Eric a second, but he responds, puts a hand on Vince’s waist. “Yeah, I think we’re OK.”
Eric’s grinning wide and bright, and he ducks his head. “Good,” he says. “Good.”
They don’t really talk about it again, but for the last month of filming, Eric does start crashing in Vince’s room on occasion, and they settle into a comfortable routine of low-impact sex and, OK, cuddling. Eric’s still tired all the time, so not much really happens, but Vince is pretty happy. It does something for him to see how much Eric wants him, yeah, but it also does something to him when he realizes how awesome it feels to combine sex and friendship. No wonder Eric’s been crazy about having relationships all this time. It’s pretty fucking great. He’s never felt like this with anyone before, and he realizes that it’s been that way most of his life, with Eric. Somehow, adding sex to the mix has made things feel - well, it’s like everything’s the same, but better.
The night before filming’s set to finish, Vince walks into Eric’s room at the hotel and finds him all dressed up. “I thought we were laying low tonight,” he says, and Eric shakes his head.
“Dinner with Harvey,” he says, snapping his cufflink.
Vince frowns. “You want me to come?”
Eric shakes his head. “Nah. I’ve survived this long, I can take one more night.” He looks himself over in the mirror, then turns for Vince’s approval.
“You look good,” Vince says, straightening his tie. He lets his hand rest on Eric’s chest, and Eric looks up at him. Still meeting his eyes, he covers Vince’s hand, and Vince smiles a little. Intimacy, he thinks.
“One more day,” Eric says, giving his wrist a little squeeze. “Then vacation.” Vince nods. He smoothes Eric’s shirt. “Don’t wait up.”
“Not likely,” Vince says, and watches Eric walk out.
He spends the evening with Turtle, because Johnny’s been seeing one of the girls on the design crew. They watch a movie on pay per view that Vince has been wanting to see, then spend about an hour playing a boxing game on the Playstation before Johnny wanders in. “Nah, she has an early call,” he says, when they quiz him on why he’s not staying the night with Larissa. “But get this, we’re totally hooking up back in L.A., too.”
“So you got a girlfriend, but you’re still here with us on a Friday night.”
“It’s Saturday, moron,” Johnny says, and Vince laughs a little.
“Who cares what day it is? You didn’t get laid, Vin’s waiting up for E, and I struck out with another extra today.” Turtle grabs the remote. “Fuck, let’s watch porn,” he says, and orders it before either guy can protest.
Vince hears Eric come in around midnight. “Yo, E, you gotta see this, man,” Turtle says, but Eric waves them off and walks back to his room. Vince gets up, and Turtle stares at him. “You want us to pause it?”
“Nah, we’ll just rewind when you get back,” Johnny says, and Vince rolls his eyes. “Hurry up.”
He grabs two beers from the minifridge, then follows Eric back to his room. “Yo, you survived.”
“Yeah,” Eric says. He’s hanging up his jacket. The tie is already gone, his top button is loose. Vince takes a seat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and holds out the beer. Eric sighs and takes a seat next to him. From the living room, the guys hoot in unison and Johnny says, “No fucking way that doesn’t leave a mark.”
“Porn,” Vince says, shrugging, and Eric rolls his eyes. He opens the beer in one sharp twist. “So what’d Harvey want?”
Eric takes a sip. “He, uh. Actually, he offered me a job.”
“What?”
Eric takes another drink, then outlines his dinner discussion slowly. Harvey loved Queens Boulevard. He loves Medellin. He loves Eric’s enthusiasm for Tapping the Source, and thinks the suggestions he’s had - trimming the end off a competition sequence, recasting the love interest, moving one of the major scenes to the waterfront, to save on production costs - have been spot-on. “He said Matterhorn was a good pass and asked what I thought about Capri Islands, what I thought about Tony Gilroy. It was like a fucking pop quiz.”
Vince turns so he’s facing him. “And you passed,” Vince says.
Eric nods. “He said he could use someone new at his place to help oversee a couple of productions this year.”
Vince takes a sip of his beer just to have a second to think. “So he wants - what, he wants you to be his assistant?”
“More like his apprentice,” Eric says. His tone is almost defensive.
“Wait, are you seriously thinking about this?” Vince asks.
Eric shrugs, then says, kind of quietly, “Yeah.” He looks over. “He’s talking about paying me a million dollars for the first year, plus one percent on anything I bring in that gets made.”
“This is about the money?”
“No,” he says, “it’s about the opportunity. I think - I could be doing more, you know? All this shit, the last few months - that’s what I’ve learned.” He toys with the label on his bottle. “He’s giving me a producer credit on the film.”
“What?”
Eric nods. “Whether I take the job or not. He said, I’m gonna make you a co-producer on this film, and I said, why not just producer, thinking he was joking, and then - bam. He did it, just like that. I’m a fucking producer.” He shakes his head. “Just think, me earning my fucking keep.”
“E,” Vince says, leaning forward. He puts his hand on Eric’s knee, right next to Eric’s hand, and he shifts closer. He needs Eric to listen to him. “You already do. You know that.”
“Yeah, but this - I don’t know, Vin. It feels like something I can’t pass up.”
Vince frowns. “You’ve been so crazy fucking busy these last few months, though. Dangerously busy.” He taps Eric’s wrist bone, leaves his finger resting there. “Are you sure - I mean, you really want to go through this on a daily basis? The guy’s a fucking lunatic, Eric.”
He nods. “I can handle Harvey.” Vince rolls his eyes, and Eric laughs. “Look, worst case, I last a week, then I go back to my day job.”
“Yeah, what about that? What about me?”
Eric laughs again. “You’re set for the next year with projects, anyway, and I managed that all the way from fucking Australia.” He shakes his head. “I think I can handle you, too. In fact, I’ll probably be reading better stuff, more stuff, working for Harvey than just depending on Ari and word of mouth.” His hand lifts from Vince’s, drops onto his thigh, instead. “I haven’t been that busy,” he says, “right?”
Vince nods. He feels strangely queasy about the whole thing, but Eric seems excited, so he doesn’t want to show it. Instead, he clinks his bottle to Eric’s and says, “Then, I guess, congrats, man.”
Eric smiles and draws back. “Thanks.”
“Hey, uh, when do you start?”
Eric smirks. “In a month,” he says, and Vince smiles. “What, you think I was gonna skip out on the promised vacation?”
“Well, new high-powered job -“
“Fuck that,” Eric says. He glances at the still-open adjoining door, then lowers his voice, though the tone is unmistakably erotic. “We have some serious, uh, vacationing to do.”
Vince raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sort of planning to vacation you until neither of us can walk.”
Vince looks back at the door, then at Eric. “It is the last night,” he says. “Any reason the vacation can’t start early?”
“Two of them,” Eric says, “and they’re both waiting up.”
Vince stands up, walks to the door, and ducks his head into the hall. “Guys, I’m beat, I’m just gonna crash. Don’t worry about the movie, I’ll catch it, uh, later.”
“You bet, bro,” Johnny says, his eyes never moving from the screen.
“Night, Vin.”
Vince closes and locks the door, then turns to Eric and shrugs. “Problems solved,” he says. He sits on Eric’s bed, and Eric turns to face him, rests his hands on Vince’s waist. Vince smiles up at him. “Let’s get this vacation started right.”
The guys find out eventually, of course; a week into vacation on Turks and Caicos, Johnny walks into Vince’s room to see what he wants for breakfast, and Eric’s still there, wrapped around him. A brief freak out and some very girly shrieking follows, but by the time they’re all together for lunch, Johnny and Turtle are both acting cool about the whole thing.
“Seriously, I think it’s way weirder that you wanna work for Harvey than that you wanna bang Vince,” Turtle says. “I mean, nobody I know has ever wanted to work for Harvey.”
Eric shakes his head. “It’s not forever, just to get some connections, figure out the business a little more,” he says. “Think of it like school.”
“Fuck, that’s even worse,” Turtle says. “I definitely know less people that liked school than who wanna bang Vince.”
“Well, banging Vince isn’t exactly a career option,” Johnny says, and Vince laughs. “I’m not saying there isn’t some career advancement potential in being your associate, bro, you know, but -“
“I get it, Johnny,” Vince says. “And look, guys, can we keep it a little quieter about the whole who’s-banging-who bit? I don’t really need Us Weekly picking this up quite yet.”
“No fucking kidding,” Eric says into his orange juice, but he winks at Vince when he catches his eye.
They spend the rest of their vacation doing everything a good vacation should include, which is to say, very, very little. They sleep in every day, eat enough that Eric gains back everything he lost during production, surf a little, swim a little, and fuck a lot. Vince works on his tan, and Eric works on quitting smoking, again. In between they have some nice, long talks about what it will mean to go forward as a couple, and Vince surprises himself by taking that all in stride. They both agree that coming out isn’t in their best interest, but they also agree that Ari and Shauna should be informed.
“What about Harvey?” Vince asks. They’re sitting in Vince’s bungalow on the couch, Vince’s feet in Eric’s lap.
“What about him?”
“You gonna tell him about us?”
Eric frowns. “Not if I don’t have to,” he says, and then it’s Vince’s turn to frown. “I don’t mean that how it sounds, I mean - Harvey’s a lunatic, like you said. One of my first priorities is gonna be making sure that if things go bad with him, I don’t want that rebounding on you. So, I figure, the less he knows about us, the better.”
“Sounds reasonable, I guess,” Vince says. “But mostly because I don’t like the idea of you talking with Harvey about sex at all.”
Eric makes a gagging noise. “Please promise me you aren’t jealous of Harvey.”
“I’m not jealous of anyone.” He grins. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got you right where I want you. Or, well, almost right where I want you,” he says, sliding one foot behind Eric and urging him to stretch out. When he’s on top of Vince, Vince kisses him and rubs his back. “See, here, this is perfect. No more about Harvey.”
“You brought him up,” Eric says, and kisses him back. “It is pretty perfect.”
Vince grips Eric’s shoulders as Eric moves down, kissing his neck, then his collarbones. “We should do this more often,” he says.
“What, have sex?” Eric says, looking up from near Vince’s navel.
“No. Well, yes. But I mean, vacation.”
Eric smirks, first, but then his gaze kind of softens. “We should,” he says. “Every year, at least.”
“I like that,” Vince says. “Like a reunion tour.”
“Like an anniversary tour,” Eric says, climbing back up to kiss Vince on the mouth. “I mean -”
“E, I mean it,” Vince says, holding on to him. “I’m serious, we’re gonna make this work.”
Eric smiles, and it’s just beautiful, a trusting, happy, surprised smile. “I hope so, he says. “I really hope so.”
When they get back to L.A., Eric goes to work for Harvey’s company, HWP. At first it’s a little weird to see Eric get up and go to work every morning, like he’s some kind of slick downtown banker, but soon they get into a nice rhythm. Eric does most of his work for Harvey early in the day, so there’s usually time for lunch or sometimes for an afternoon on the links. He has more business dinners than he used to, but when he gets back from those, he usually falls right into Vince’s bed, which suits Vince just fine.
They have two months at home for Eric to get settled in as Harvey’s go-to guy before it’s time to start filming Coaster. It’s mostly set in-studio, though there’s a week of on-location stuff planned in Boston. In some ways, it’s like a replay of Australia - Harvey isn’t on set, but he is on Eric’s phone most of the day. But Eric’s there, regardless, whenever Vince needs him, and he even makes the trip to Boston with him. “You’re sure Harvey’s OK with this?”
Eric rolls his eyes. “Jesus, you’re afraid of that guy, huh?”
“I’m not afraid of Harvey,” Vince says, though honestly, he is a little, and it gives him a strange thrill to realize how fucking tough Eric actually is to work for the guy. “I just don’t want you losing your job and then blaming me for it.”
“Harvey respects loyalty,” Eric says, and they leave it at that.
After they get back from filming, Vince has a nice break scheduled over the winter - almost five months between films. Since he made five million for Coaster, it feels like a deserved break. He only wishes Eric could take the time off with him. Things are going really well for them, as a couple; better than Vince could have hoped. Eight months in, he still gets a fluttery, happy feeling in his stomach sometimes when Eric smiles across the table at him, or even when Eric touches him in some casual but tender way.
They aren’t the only ones with a budding romance, either. Johnny and his girlfriend, Larissa, have been seeing a lot of each other since they’ve come back to L.A. Vince likes Larissa because she really, really likes his brother. She’s a costumer by trade, a little older than Vince and a little younger than Johnny, and she’s worked on something like twenty different films over the span of her career, doing costume design and completion. Johnny’s serious about her, and though it makes Turtle apoplectic to consider that everyone’s getting laid but him, Vince thinks it’s cool. He’s happy to see his brother happy, happier still because he gets to share in the happiness, as things are going well with Eric.
“Yeah, we should double sometime,” Johnny says at breakfast one morning, slicing clean through a tomato as he talks.
Eric looks up from his oatmeal. “Uh, really, Drama?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t Larissa think it’s weird, going out with your brother and his manager?”
Johnny snorts. “She had you guys figured out in Australia.”
Eric gives Vince a funny, sharp look. “Really?”
Johnny shrugs. “Because she knew me, I think.” He pauses, concentrating very hard on slicing a new tomato. “And I might’ve let some things slip I shouldn’t have.”
Eric groans. “Jesus fucking Christ, Drama, you’re like an ambassador to the Hollywood Reporter.”
“Hey,” Johnny says, pointing with his knife, “I let something slip to my girlfriend, who I love, not to someone from the newspaper. Besides, she’s cool. You know how many films she’s worked on?”
“Twenty,” they say in unison.
“You don’t get to where she’s at without knowing some pretty crazy secrets,” Johnny says. “Ask her sometime about the panels she had to sew into Scarlett’s last dress to keep her belly from flopping out.”
Vince snickers. He reaches across and grabs a piece of Eric’s bacon to munch on. “I appreciate that you trust her,” he says. “Just make sure she understands that this is a secret, OK, Johnny?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “And I’m serious about this, she wants to see you guys. It’d be fun.” Eric scoffs. “What, you’re too Hollywood to be seen with a lowly costumer now?” Johnny says. “Big film producer, can’t dirty your table with the television class?”
Eric sighs and rolls his eyes, and Vince hides a grin. Johnny’s been on a kick recently about the “two classes” in Hollywood, where Vince - and, by association with Vince and Harvey, Eric - are part of a blessed upperclass, whereas Johnny and many of his “hard-laboring, underpaid brethren” fall into the lower, working-class.
“Drama, we don’t date,” Eric says.
“Oh, now, that’s just not true,” Johnny says. “Unless I’m mistaken about your recent dinner at Il Sole.”
Vince smirks. “He has a point, E,” he says. “That was a pretty romantic outing.” Really, they’d talked mostly business that night, fresh off a meeting with Ari.
“Yeah, I did pay.”
“And you did get lucky.”
Eric laughs.
“Come on, it’s L.A.,” Johnny says. “Guys go to dinner all the time. Besides, it’s not like I’m saying you should make out at the table or anything.”
Eric raises one eyebrow, and Vince grins. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to shock the kids,” Eric says, and then shakes his head. “All right, Drama, yeah, let’s go sometime.”
“Maybe next weekend,” Johnny says. “I’ll check with Larissa. The new place on Wilshire. I hear they make a caponata to die for.”
“OK,” Eric says, “sounds great, uh, yeah.” He clears his throat awkwardly, and Vince smiles a little, too, because he knows Eric isn’t hearing a word Johnny’s saying. Vince’s foot in his lap is making sure of that.
After breakfast, Eric asks Vince if he can see him for a second, and Vince finds himself pressed against the wall in Eric’s den a few minutes later. “What the fuck just happened?” Eric asks, panting, still hard.
“You agreed to dinner with Johnny and his girl?” Vince says, grinning. “A double date?”
“You ever fucking pull any shit like that at a restaurant, I’ll -” but Eric doesn’t finish the threat, just kisses Vince, and that’s the response he wanted, anyway.
Part 2
Author: fourteencandles
Fandom/Pairing: Entourage, Vince/E
Rating, Warnings: NC-17.
Series? No.
Length: About 39,000 words. Six parts. Complete.
Spoilers: Season 1, Season 2.
Summary: This was written for entourage_fest, for my request from (dancinbutterfly: At Sundance, Vince and Eric decide they should do Tapping the Source with Harvey Weinstein instead of take a risk on Aquaman. How does their life(second half of Season 2 onwards) change because of this decision? There's so many ways their lives could have been different. Show me what you think. E/V is the only must. I hope it's what you want!
Notes: This tries to stay true to the events of Season 2 that were *not* directly Vince-related, so if you haven't seen S2, it may not make as much sense. Weirdly. What fun, though! Thanks to shoshannagold for the read-through today.
Made Men
Eric says, I can’t keep telling you to take these crazy risks, you need a job, man, and so Vince signs with Harvey to do Tapping the Source. It ends up being a great move; Cameron only spends ten minutes at the Queens Boulevard screening and ends up casting Austin fucking Nichols as Aquaman and Mandy Moore as Aquagirl. Vince can only imagine how awkward that would have been for him. He spends a little time moping and thinking about the road not taken, right up until Eric walks out of his bedroom in L.A., script in hand, and says, “You know what, Ari’s right, this thing is your fucking Oscar,” and then he decides that if Eric’s cool with it, so is he.
Australia is beautiful, just like Ari said: Melbourne, the Gold Coast, all of it. They spend three months there. Professionally, it’s a totally rewarding experience all around: The movie really is that good. The script is polished and effective and the shots are well-choreographed. He picks up surfing like it’s second nature, so much so that his instructor gives him a board at the end of their lessons and encourages him to keep going once he’s back in L.A. Beyond all of that, he gets to work with Taylor Hackford, hot off of Ray, and the rest of the cast is just phenomenal as well. He’s pretty sure Eric’s right: this might be the real thing, the real Oscar ticket.
Personally, however, the filming is trying, for a single reason: Harvey. He’s on set nearly every day in the final two months, having taken over a house in Perth for the duration, and his presence is hard to miss. Luckily, he lets Hackford work with a great amount of autonomy, so Vince’s performance is off-limits from Harvey’s constant comment. Everything else, however, is Harvey’s domain, from the food being served to the quality of the lightbulbs to the way that the PAs dress. Eric somehow gets caught in the middle, time and time again, because he’s one of the only people on set who can stay calm in the face of Harvey’s bluster. The usual rumors of unrest leak out, and Ari starts calling more often because of them, so nearly every time Vince sees Eric, he’s got a phone to his ear and a scowl on his face. Occasionally, Harvey explodes on set, which Eric has to fix, and a few times Harvey even blows up at Eric. He’s intimidating enough that even Turtle and Drama start spending most of their time at the hotel, away from the set. Vince considers getting in the middle of it, but before he can try, an assistant director suggests that maybe Harvey should lighten up about his parking space and gets fired from the movie.
“You’re all replaceable!” Harvey shouts, turning around, and Vince swears his eyes stop on him for a second. “Every single fucking one of you!”
Eric, of course, doesn’t work for Harvey, so he can’t be fired - which might be why Hackford and Harvey use him as their go-between. Vince tries not to worry about it, instead spending most of his time in his trailer with noise-canceling headphones, working on lines and doing push-ups. It doesn’t hurt to be better toned for this movie, and his next project, a sick Taxi Driver-esque seventies piece called Coaster about a guy working at Coney Island, calls for some bulk, too, though Vince could do without the constant soreness in his arms and shoulders.
“Yeah, boo-fucking-hoo, you’re gonna have to get another massage,” Eric says, smoking his second cigarette in thirty minutes. “You’ll be on People’s Top Ten again.”
“Uh-huh. You gonna eat that or ash in it?”
Eric rolls his eyes and pushes the plate - three-quarters of a pretty decent hamburger still sitting on it - away. He’s lost about ten pounds during filming, replacing food with coffee, cigarettes, and stress. Vince reaches over and grips him by the neck, rubs a little. “Ease up, man, OK?”
Eric nods. The other effect of the Australia experience, so far, has been a new level of - something, between the two of them. Vince wants to call it closenesss, but he and Eric have always been close. It’s something else, something more. Intimacy, maybe. He’s not exactly sure how or why it’s happened - he’s thinks it’s the combination of watching Eric be assertive all day, which he finds indescribably hot, and watching Eric sort of melt at night, become a little more vulnerable as the exhaustion and stress wears on him. It’s totally alluring. Vince has always kind of had a thing for Eric, but he’s never done anything about it (unless you count a couple random hook-ups with short, red-haired guys back in L.A.).
Now, maybe because they’re thousands of miles from home, maybe because Eric’s free and clear of Kristen, maybe because Vince has been thinking about the only other time in his life that he nearly settled down - with another sharp red-head - Vince feels like the time has come for them to give it a try. But he hasn’t been able to bring himself to say that, exactly, while Eric’s under so much stress from Harvey. Instead, he tries to make the cues subtle, just test the waters. Like now. He leans over and rests his cheek on Eric’s shoulder, and Eric nods, squeezes Vince’s knee and then lets his hand rest there.
“Seriously, E,” Vince says. “You want we should talk to Brenner?” Their other executive producer is about the only person Harvey seems to have any respect for, maybe because his studio is ponying up a lot of the production money.
“No. No. I just have to make it through the next month, get this thing finished. What doesn’t kill you, right?”
“What if it does kill you?”
Eric laughs, though it’s a little empty. “You know, it’s not gonna be me. Comes down to it, I’ll tear the head off that fat fuck.”
Vince smiles. That sounds more like it. “And then we’ll take a vacation,” Vince promises, and Eric nods tiredly.
His phone rings, and he pulls away slowly. “Harvey,” he says, and stands up to take the call outside. Vince can hear Harvey yelling even before Eric has a word out. It’s just not fucking fair. He picks up his own phone and calls Ari, who, when he complains, gives him the usual “yeah, Harvey’s a psycho, but he’s a goddamned brilliant psycho” speech.
“Ari, he’s fucking killing E, though,” Vince says. “It’s like he holds him personally responsible for everything going on.”
“I admit, the shine Harvey’s taken to your boy is a little excessive even by Harvey standards. But I swear to you, Vince, it’s probably a good thing. He’s a bastard, but he respects people who tolerate him. This could end up being a gold mine for your little man.”
“Or a bleeding ulcer,” Vince says, but he gets what Ari isn’t saying: If Eric doesn’t want to get Brenner involved, then there’s nothing else to be done.
So Vince works on his lines and keeps his head down, and he doesn’t say anything when Eric adds a new food group (Tums) to his repertoire. He also doesn’t say anything when Eric falls asleep with his head on Vince’s shoulder in the trailer during the day, or when, one night, he crashes in Vince’s bedroom while they’re watching a few clips Hackford has released for review. The next morning, Eric wakes up and looks briefly disoriented. “Uh, hey,” he says, rubbing his face.
“Yo,” Vince says, reaching across him to turn off the alarm clock. He settles back onto his side of the bed, on his back, with a sigh. The rest of the suite - it has four bedrooms, one for each of them - is still quiet. “What time do we start today?”
“Eleven,” Eric says. “What time is it now?”
“Nine.”
“Jesus, really?” Vince hears him shift around, checking the nightstand, then his pockets. “Harvey’s probably been calling all morning.”
“I plugged your phone in in your room,” Vince says. “It needed to charge.” He turns onto his side, looking down at Eric. “Did you sleep OK?”
Eric sighs. “Yeah, actually.”
“You look better.”
Eric raises an eyebrow. “Better than -?”
“Usual,” Vince says. “E, you gotta relax. I feel like this movie’s gonna kill you.”
“I feel like that, too, sometimes,” Eric says, closing his eyes.
“So put your phone away at night,” Vince says.
“They just call my room.”
“So stay in here,” he says. Eric’s eyes snap open again. “What, you said you slept fine.”
“Yeah, but - Vin, I can’t just sleep over all the time. We aren’t in grade school any more.”
Vince keeps looking right at Eric, and he eases his hand forward a little so the backs of his knuckles are brushing Eric’s biceps. “I’m aware,” he says.
Eric snorts. “Uh huh. I start sleeping with you, people are gonna talk.”
“The only people who’d know would be Turtle and Johnny,” Vince says. “And who are they gonna tell?”
Eric sits up a little. “Wait a second. Who are they gonna tell what?”
Vince lets a little smile spread on his face. The hand that was brushing Eric’s arm now creeps over to his thigh. “Well. That’s something we could work out, huh?”
“Vin?”
“C’mon,” Vince says. “You’re seriously telling me you haven’t thought about this?”
“This. This being, you, what, going insane and hitting on me?”
Vince rolls his eyes and keeps staring, watching Eric blush bright red even as his mouth makes a thin white line. His hand is midway up Eric’s thigh, now. He rolls to his stomach, so he’s looking up at Eric, and his whole right side is pressed against Eric’s thigh and leg. “I’m not insane.”
“Uh huh.”
He licks his lips, sees Eric watching him do it. “Tell me,” he says, “that the last couple of months, you haven’t been thinking about this every day.”
Eric doesn’t say anything, but he’s looking at Vince like he’s trying to decide whether to leap out of bed or -
“Vin,” he says, quietly, and puts his hand tentatively on Vince’s shoulder. Vince lowers his eyelids, saying yes, and Eric’s hand moves to his neck, then, with more confidence, to his hair. His fingers comb through, and Vince closes his eyes, just briefly, making sure to keep his mouth open. He knows exactly what he looks like, knows how well this face works on nearly everyone he’s been with and every movie goer who’s seen his last two films. It doesn’t surprise him - though it pleases him - when Eric’s hand moves to cup his jaw. “OK,” he says.
Vince looks up at him through his eyelashes. “OK?”
“I could stay over, some,” Eric says, and Vince laughs.
“Are we still talking about that?” he asks.
“What did you want to talk about?”
Vince gets his arms under him, does a perfect pushup that has the unintended consequence of making Eric’s hand fall away, and then, holding himself up with one arm, he puts one hand on Eric’s right side, then lowers himself again. Eric obligingly (or maybe out of instinct, because his eyes are so wide he doesn’t look capable of logical thought) draws his knees apart, so Vince settles between them. He rests his hands on Eric’s rib cage; his chin is on level with his navel. “What if we stop talking, for a while,” Vince says.
Eric nods rapidly. Now he licks his lips, and though he doesn’t lose the look like he can’t quite believe this is happening, his voice is firm, solid Eric. “Is the door locked?”
“Yeah,” Vince says. “Scoot down.”
He does exactly as Vince asks, and within seconds, their bodies are perfectly aligned. It’s surprisingly easy - it actually surprises Vince how little he has to think about what happens next, because in his mind, he’s planned exactly how he’d seduce Eric, step-by-step. It’s not that Vince is a planner - he just wanted to make sure everything would go OK, wanted to make things perfect, wanted to use everything he’d learned over the years. But it turns out, all of that stuff flies out of his head the minute Eric, his eyes still wide, tilts his head up for a kiss. Because holy fuck, he’s kissing Eric, his best friend, the guy who’s been with him his whole life, and if this doesn’t work out, if this doesn’t -
“Vince?” Eric’s hands are on his shoulders, and he’s looking up at Vince with a new expression, puzzled, worried, totally turned on.
It’s Eric. His best friend. “I want you,” Vince says. “E, these last two months, I just - I really want you.”
“Good,” Eric says, and he puts his hands on either side of Vince’s head, tangles his fingers in Vince’s hair again. He shifts his legs just so, and Vince’s cock rubs against Eric’s nearly perfectly. “I want you, too.”
They don’t really do much, just rut against each other and kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and for about the first time since high school, that’s all Vince needs to get off. He dozes for a while after that, his head on Eric’s shoulder, and wakes up to Eric rubbing his neck.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is so soft that Vince feels a little shaky. He looks up, and Eric’s watching him, still, with that wary, wondrous expression. “Time to get going.”
Vince nods. He pushes himself up, but he takes a moment to kiss Eric, and he doesn’t even have to think about it. When he gets out of the shower, Eric’s gone, but fifteen minutes later when he walks out to the common area, Eric’s there, cleaned up and dressed up, his cell phone against his ear. Turtle’s on the couch, complaining about everyone “bitching out” on him last night.
“Jesus, I didn’t think I’d live to see the day even Drama ditches me because he’s got an actual date,” Turtle says. Vince sits on the couch by Turtle to tie his shoes. “And E’s basically married to Harvey, and you were -”
“Tired,” Vince supplies, and Turtle rolls his eyes.
“Just promise me, Vin, you’re not gonna get a fucking girlfriend, all right?” he says.
Eric snaps his phone shut, and Vince knows without looking over that he’s being watched. He shakes his head. “I can honestly promise I’m not even in the market for a girlfriend right now.”
“Thank fucking God,” Turtle says.
Eric sends Turtle down to get the car, and then he turns and looks at Vince, tips his head. “We’re OK, right?” he asks.
“E,” Vince says, and he takes two steps forward, puts his hands on Eric’s shoulders, and kisses him. It takes Eric a second, but he responds, puts a hand on Vince’s waist. “Yeah, I think we’re OK.”
Eric’s grinning wide and bright, and he ducks his head. “Good,” he says. “Good.”
They don’t really talk about it again, but for the last month of filming, Eric does start crashing in Vince’s room on occasion, and they settle into a comfortable routine of low-impact sex and, OK, cuddling. Eric’s still tired all the time, so not much really happens, but Vince is pretty happy. It does something for him to see how much Eric wants him, yeah, but it also does something to him when he realizes how awesome it feels to combine sex and friendship. No wonder Eric’s been crazy about having relationships all this time. It’s pretty fucking great. He’s never felt like this with anyone before, and he realizes that it’s been that way most of his life, with Eric. Somehow, adding sex to the mix has made things feel - well, it’s like everything’s the same, but better.
The night before filming’s set to finish, Vince walks into Eric’s room at the hotel and finds him all dressed up. “I thought we were laying low tonight,” he says, and Eric shakes his head.
“Dinner with Harvey,” he says, snapping his cufflink.
Vince frowns. “You want me to come?”
Eric shakes his head. “Nah. I’ve survived this long, I can take one more night.” He looks himself over in the mirror, then turns for Vince’s approval.
“You look good,” Vince says, straightening his tie. He lets his hand rest on Eric’s chest, and Eric looks up at him. Still meeting his eyes, he covers Vince’s hand, and Vince smiles a little. Intimacy, he thinks.
“One more day,” Eric says, giving his wrist a little squeeze. “Then vacation.” Vince nods. He smoothes Eric’s shirt. “Don’t wait up.”
“Not likely,” Vince says, and watches Eric walk out.
He spends the evening with Turtle, because Johnny’s been seeing one of the girls on the design crew. They watch a movie on pay per view that Vince has been wanting to see, then spend about an hour playing a boxing game on the Playstation before Johnny wanders in. “Nah, she has an early call,” he says, when they quiz him on why he’s not staying the night with Larissa. “But get this, we’re totally hooking up back in L.A., too.”
“So you got a girlfriend, but you’re still here with us on a Friday night.”
“It’s Saturday, moron,” Johnny says, and Vince laughs a little.
“Who cares what day it is? You didn’t get laid, Vin’s waiting up for E, and I struck out with another extra today.” Turtle grabs the remote. “Fuck, let’s watch porn,” he says, and orders it before either guy can protest.
Vince hears Eric come in around midnight. “Yo, E, you gotta see this, man,” Turtle says, but Eric waves them off and walks back to his room. Vince gets up, and Turtle stares at him. “You want us to pause it?”
“Nah, we’ll just rewind when you get back,” Johnny says, and Vince rolls his eyes. “Hurry up.”
He grabs two beers from the minifridge, then follows Eric back to his room. “Yo, you survived.”
“Yeah,” Eric says. He’s hanging up his jacket. The tie is already gone, his top button is loose. Vince takes a seat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and holds out the beer. Eric sighs and takes a seat next to him. From the living room, the guys hoot in unison and Johnny says, “No fucking way that doesn’t leave a mark.”
“Porn,” Vince says, shrugging, and Eric rolls his eyes. He opens the beer in one sharp twist. “So what’d Harvey want?”
Eric takes a sip. “He, uh. Actually, he offered me a job.”
“What?”
Eric takes another drink, then outlines his dinner discussion slowly. Harvey loved Queens Boulevard. He loves Medellin. He loves Eric’s enthusiasm for Tapping the Source, and thinks the suggestions he’s had - trimming the end off a competition sequence, recasting the love interest, moving one of the major scenes to the waterfront, to save on production costs - have been spot-on. “He said Matterhorn was a good pass and asked what I thought about Capri Islands, what I thought about Tony Gilroy. It was like a fucking pop quiz.”
Vince turns so he’s facing him. “And you passed,” Vince says.
Eric nods. “He said he could use someone new at his place to help oversee a couple of productions this year.”
Vince takes a sip of his beer just to have a second to think. “So he wants - what, he wants you to be his assistant?”
“More like his apprentice,” Eric says. His tone is almost defensive.
“Wait, are you seriously thinking about this?” Vince asks.
Eric shrugs, then says, kind of quietly, “Yeah.” He looks over. “He’s talking about paying me a million dollars for the first year, plus one percent on anything I bring in that gets made.”
“This is about the money?”
“No,” he says, “it’s about the opportunity. I think - I could be doing more, you know? All this shit, the last few months - that’s what I’ve learned.” He toys with the label on his bottle. “He’s giving me a producer credit on the film.”
“What?”
Eric nods. “Whether I take the job or not. He said, I’m gonna make you a co-producer on this film, and I said, why not just producer, thinking he was joking, and then - bam. He did it, just like that. I’m a fucking producer.” He shakes his head. “Just think, me earning my fucking keep.”
“E,” Vince says, leaning forward. He puts his hand on Eric’s knee, right next to Eric’s hand, and he shifts closer. He needs Eric to listen to him. “You already do. You know that.”
“Yeah, but this - I don’t know, Vin. It feels like something I can’t pass up.”
Vince frowns. “You’ve been so crazy fucking busy these last few months, though. Dangerously busy.” He taps Eric’s wrist bone, leaves his finger resting there. “Are you sure - I mean, you really want to go through this on a daily basis? The guy’s a fucking lunatic, Eric.”
He nods. “I can handle Harvey.” Vince rolls his eyes, and Eric laughs. “Look, worst case, I last a week, then I go back to my day job.”
“Yeah, what about that? What about me?”
Eric laughs again. “You’re set for the next year with projects, anyway, and I managed that all the way from fucking Australia.” He shakes his head. “I think I can handle you, too. In fact, I’ll probably be reading better stuff, more stuff, working for Harvey than just depending on Ari and word of mouth.” His hand lifts from Vince’s, drops onto his thigh, instead. “I haven’t been that busy,” he says, “right?”
Vince nods. He feels strangely queasy about the whole thing, but Eric seems excited, so he doesn’t want to show it. Instead, he clinks his bottle to Eric’s and says, “Then, I guess, congrats, man.”
Eric smiles and draws back. “Thanks.”
“Hey, uh, when do you start?”
Eric smirks. “In a month,” he says, and Vince smiles. “What, you think I was gonna skip out on the promised vacation?”
“Well, new high-powered job -“
“Fuck that,” Eric says. He glances at the still-open adjoining door, then lowers his voice, though the tone is unmistakably erotic. “We have some serious, uh, vacationing to do.”
Vince raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sort of planning to vacation you until neither of us can walk.”
Vince looks back at the door, then at Eric. “It is the last night,” he says. “Any reason the vacation can’t start early?”
“Two of them,” Eric says, “and they’re both waiting up.”
Vince stands up, walks to the door, and ducks his head into the hall. “Guys, I’m beat, I’m just gonna crash. Don’t worry about the movie, I’ll catch it, uh, later.”
“You bet, bro,” Johnny says, his eyes never moving from the screen.
“Night, Vin.”
Vince closes and locks the door, then turns to Eric and shrugs. “Problems solved,” he says. He sits on Eric’s bed, and Eric turns to face him, rests his hands on Vince’s waist. Vince smiles up at him. “Let’s get this vacation started right.”
The guys find out eventually, of course; a week into vacation on Turks and Caicos, Johnny walks into Vince’s room to see what he wants for breakfast, and Eric’s still there, wrapped around him. A brief freak out and some very girly shrieking follows, but by the time they’re all together for lunch, Johnny and Turtle are both acting cool about the whole thing.
“Seriously, I think it’s way weirder that you wanna work for Harvey than that you wanna bang Vince,” Turtle says. “I mean, nobody I know has ever wanted to work for Harvey.”
Eric shakes his head. “It’s not forever, just to get some connections, figure out the business a little more,” he says. “Think of it like school.”
“Fuck, that’s even worse,” Turtle says. “I definitely know less people that liked school than who wanna bang Vince.”
“Well, banging Vince isn’t exactly a career option,” Johnny says, and Vince laughs. “I’m not saying there isn’t some career advancement potential in being your associate, bro, you know, but -“
“I get it, Johnny,” Vince says. “And look, guys, can we keep it a little quieter about the whole who’s-banging-who bit? I don’t really need Us Weekly picking this up quite yet.”
“No fucking kidding,” Eric says into his orange juice, but he winks at Vince when he catches his eye.
They spend the rest of their vacation doing everything a good vacation should include, which is to say, very, very little. They sleep in every day, eat enough that Eric gains back everything he lost during production, surf a little, swim a little, and fuck a lot. Vince works on his tan, and Eric works on quitting smoking, again. In between they have some nice, long talks about what it will mean to go forward as a couple, and Vince surprises himself by taking that all in stride. They both agree that coming out isn’t in their best interest, but they also agree that Ari and Shauna should be informed.
“What about Harvey?” Vince asks. They’re sitting in Vince’s bungalow on the couch, Vince’s feet in Eric’s lap.
“What about him?”
“You gonna tell him about us?”
Eric frowns. “Not if I don’t have to,” he says, and then it’s Vince’s turn to frown. “I don’t mean that how it sounds, I mean - Harvey’s a lunatic, like you said. One of my first priorities is gonna be making sure that if things go bad with him, I don’t want that rebounding on you. So, I figure, the less he knows about us, the better.”
“Sounds reasonable, I guess,” Vince says. “But mostly because I don’t like the idea of you talking with Harvey about sex at all.”
Eric makes a gagging noise. “Please promise me you aren’t jealous of Harvey.”
“I’m not jealous of anyone.” He grins. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got you right where I want you. Or, well, almost right where I want you,” he says, sliding one foot behind Eric and urging him to stretch out. When he’s on top of Vince, Vince kisses him and rubs his back. “See, here, this is perfect. No more about Harvey.”
“You brought him up,” Eric says, and kisses him back. “It is pretty perfect.”
Vince grips Eric’s shoulders as Eric moves down, kissing his neck, then his collarbones. “We should do this more often,” he says.
“What, have sex?” Eric says, looking up from near Vince’s navel.
“No. Well, yes. But I mean, vacation.”
Eric smirks, first, but then his gaze kind of softens. “We should,” he says. “Every year, at least.”
“I like that,” Vince says. “Like a reunion tour.”
“Like an anniversary tour,” Eric says, climbing back up to kiss Vince on the mouth. “I mean -”
“E, I mean it,” Vince says, holding on to him. “I’m serious, we’re gonna make this work.”
Eric smiles, and it’s just beautiful, a trusting, happy, surprised smile. “I hope so, he says. “I really hope so.”
When they get back to L.A., Eric goes to work for Harvey’s company, HWP. At first it’s a little weird to see Eric get up and go to work every morning, like he’s some kind of slick downtown banker, but soon they get into a nice rhythm. Eric does most of his work for Harvey early in the day, so there’s usually time for lunch or sometimes for an afternoon on the links. He has more business dinners than he used to, but when he gets back from those, he usually falls right into Vince’s bed, which suits Vince just fine.
They have two months at home for Eric to get settled in as Harvey’s go-to guy before it’s time to start filming Coaster. It’s mostly set in-studio, though there’s a week of on-location stuff planned in Boston. In some ways, it’s like a replay of Australia - Harvey isn’t on set, but he is on Eric’s phone most of the day. But Eric’s there, regardless, whenever Vince needs him, and he even makes the trip to Boston with him. “You’re sure Harvey’s OK with this?”
Eric rolls his eyes. “Jesus, you’re afraid of that guy, huh?”
“I’m not afraid of Harvey,” Vince says, though honestly, he is a little, and it gives him a strange thrill to realize how fucking tough Eric actually is to work for the guy. “I just don’t want you losing your job and then blaming me for it.”
“Harvey respects loyalty,” Eric says, and they leave it at that.
After they get back from filming, Vince has a nice break scheduled over the winter - almost five months between films. Since he made five million for Coaster, it feels like a deserved break. He only wishes Eric could take the time off with him. Things are going really well for them, as a couple; better than Vince could have hoped. Eight months in, he still gets a fluttery, happy feeling in his stomach sometimes when Eric smiles across the table at him, or even when Eric touches him in some casual but tender way.
They aren’t the only ones with a budding romance, either. Johnny and his girlfriend, Larissa, have been seeing a lot of each other since they’ve come back to L.A. Vince likes Larissa because she really, really likes his brother. She’s a costumer by trade, a little older than Vince and a little younger than Johnny, and she’s worked on something like twenty different films over the span of her career, doing costume design and completion. Johnny’s serious about her, and though it makes Turtle apoplectic to consider that everyone’s getting laid but him, Vince thinks it’s cool. He’s happy to see his brother happy, happier still because he gets to share in the happiness, as things are going well with Eric.
“Yeah, we should double sometime,” Johnny says at breakfast one morning, slicing clean through a tomato as he talks.
Eric looks up from his oatmeal. “Uh, really, Drama?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t Larissa think it’s weird, going out with your brother and his manager?”
Johnny snorts. “She had you guys figured out in Australia.”
Eric gives Vince a funny, sharp look. “Really?”
Johnny shrugs. “Because she knew me, I think.” He pauses, concentrating very hard on slicing a new tomato. “And I might’ve let some things slip I shouldn’t have.”
Eric groans. “Jesus fucking Christ, Drama, you’re like an ambassador to the Hollywood Reporter.”
“Hey,” Johnny says, pointing with his knife, “I let something slip to my girlfriend, who I love, not to someone from the newspaper. Besides, she’s cool. You know how many films she’s worked on?”
“Twenty,” they say in unison.
“You don’t get to where she’s at without knowing some pretty crazy secrets,” Johnny says. “Ask her sometime about the panels she had to sew into Scarlett’s last dress to keep her belly from flopping out.”
Vince snickers. He reaches across and grabs a piece of Eric’s bacon to munch on. “I appreciate that you trust her,” he says. “Just make sure she understands that this is a secret, OK, Johnny?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “And I’m serious about this, she wants to see you guys. It’d be fun.” Eric scoffs. “What, you’re too Hollywood to be seen with a lowly costumer now?” Johnny says. “Big film producer, can’t dirty your table with the television class?”
Eric sighs and rolls his eyes, and Vince hides a grin. Johnny’s been on a kick recently about the “two classes” in Hollywood, where Vince - and, by association with Vince and Harvey, Eric - are part of a blessed upperclass, whereas Johnny and many of his “hard-laboring, underpaid brethren” fall into the lower, working-class.
“Drama, we don’t date,” Eric says.
“Oh, now, that’s just not true,” Johnny says. “Unless I’m mistaken about your recent dinner at Il Sole.”
Vince smirks. “He has a point, E,” he says. “That was a pretty romantic outing.” Really, they’d talked mostly business that night, fresh off a meeting with Ari.
“Yeah, I did pay.”
“And you did get lucky.”
Eric laughs.
“Come on, it’s L.A.,” Johnny says. “Guys go to dinner all the time. Besides, it’s not like I’m saying you should make out at the table or anything.”
Eric raises one eyebrow, and Vince grins. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to shock the kids,” Eric says, and then shakes his head. “All right, Drama, yeah, let’s go sometime.”
“Maybe next weekend,” Johnny says. “I’ll check with Larissa. The new place on Wilshire. I hear they make a caponata to die for.”
“OK,” Eric says, “sounds great, uh, yeah.” He clears his throat awkwardly, and Vince smiles a little, too, because he knows Eric isn’t hearing a word Johnny’s saying. Vince’s foot in his lap is making sure of that.
After breakfast, Eric asks Vince if he can see him for a second, and Vince finds himself pressed against the wall in Eric’s den a few minutes later. “What the fuck just happened?” Eric asks, panting, still hard.
“You agreed to dinner with Johnny and his girl?” Vince says, grinning. “A double date?”
“You ever fucking pull any shit like that at a restaurant, I’ll -” but Eric doesn’t finish the threat, just kisses Vince, and that’s the response he wanted, anyway.
Part 2