Chapter Text
In New York, in August, in September, there were days so hot you felt like dying, felt like hell couldn’t possibly be worse. The rickety window-units in the neighborhood didn’t stand a chance; you’d have no choice but to endure. Give yourself over to the wet swamp-heat rolling up from under the sidewalks, the sweet stink of trash, let yourself be held between the slick arms of strangers on the subway.
LA’s hot too. But it’s a dry heat, E and Vince say back and forth, in voices like their mothers’. Dangerous hot, so you don’t notice the dust in your veins until you’re stumbling through a party three drinks too early, ears ringing like you’re drowning.
But the AC always works in LA; the pool’s just steps away. E’s forgotten real heat.
The heat in Columbia is real. Sits on you like New York heat, makes E feel slow and stupid. That’s why it happens—the heat.
“No it’s the fucking…the fucking humidity,” Billy snipes. His wifebeater is sticking to him.
E’s hair is stuck to his scalp under his Isles cap, itching. He misses LA. Misses Sloan. Misses having just Vince to manage, and Ari to help. Cold rooms and champagne and swimming pools and, fuck, sushi. He’s started flinching each time Billy calls him Suit .
“I’ve lost my talent,” Billy’s saying now. He’s splayed out behind that awful typewriter. He tips his head back and moans. “I’ve lost my talent. I’m a fucking failure; this movie’s going to be a fucking failure. This is the end of all of our fucking careers.”
E knows his lines here. He gets the words out. “You’re not a failure, Billy. We can make this work. Tell me what you need.”
Billy’s not wrong about the humidity; E thinks it might choke him. He scratches at his hair under his hat. Billy stares at the ceiling.
“Billy. Work with me. Please.” Scratching only made the itching worse.
Billy stands. It takes a few moments, too-long arms and legs jerking, spasming into action like the limbs of a marionette. He stares down at E. Nostrils flaring, chest heaving.
E braces himself to deflect a punch. He doesn’t want to. He’s scrappy, sure, not bad in a fight, but Billy’s so big and so crazy. And the afternoon is so hot.
But Billy reaches for the paper sticking limp out of the typewriter, shoves the pages in E’s face instead of a fist. “I can’t. Fucking. Work.” The pages, unsurprisingly, are blank. He crushes them against E’s forehead.
E slaps them out of his hand. They don’t even flutter to the ground, just slump into a soggy pile at their feet. A few of them smudged with the damp of Billy’s hand, E’s face.
All at once, E could cry. He doesn’t know how he wound up here, responsible for this tightrope walk. Even the life he misses is so precarious, so not-quite-his. In this heat, he could be back in New York, could be back there commuting to the shitty job in the shitty Sbarros, except that if he fucks this one up he lets so many people down. Loses money so big he’s only pretending to wrap his mind around it.
Billy’s still staring, still breathing hard. E raises his chin. He’s not gonna fucking cry for real, obviously. He grits his teeth. And Billy blinks first.
There’s a moment before E can accept it as a victory, half-suspecting that Billy’s seen how close he is to breaking down and gone easy on him. But Billy would never, and what he says next rattles suspicion right out of him.
“There’s something you could do.” Billy’s voice drops lower than E’s heard him speak, maybe ever. “Might help.”
“Anything,” E promises. No hesitation.
“You could fuck me.”
E slumps. He takes off the hat, rubs at his head. “Look, I’m serious here, Billy. You don’t want to take me serious, it’s not just gonna hurt me, it’s gonna hurt you, it’s gonna hurt the movie, it’s gonna hurt Vince…” He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I’m being serious.”
Eric drops his hand, squints at him. “You’re not.” But he does sound serious.
Billy crosses pasty arms. Sits back on the edge of the desk.
He sets the hat down on the desk. “Since when are you gay?”
“I’m flexible.” Billy shrugs.
“Well, what happened to ‘sex kills creativity?’”
“Didn’t work. Now we gotta try the alternative.”
“I’m not gay.” Should have started there.
“Whatever, Suit, if you insist. But find me someone who can be. I need…” He chews his lip; E braces to hear something truly nasty. But Billy finally settles on “...a reset.”
“A reset.”
Billy gets off the desk. He puts his hands on E’s shoulders, leans down close so E can smell his sour coffee breath. “Look at me, Suit. You want me to write this goddamn script, you go out and you find someone who will fuck me up the ass, or so help me I will walk into the jungle and leave you all for dead.”
Billy’s beard is scraggly. He’s greasy, stinks of dry sweat under the fresh sweat. There are deep smudges below his eyes, which are wide and wild and tired. The guy’s a mess. Still, E could find someone; it wouldn’t take long. But then there’ll be rumors, and more to clean up later, and, well.
He closes the gap between their mouths. Rocks up onto his toes to do it.
Billy grunts, eyes sliding closed. Clutches hard at E’s shoulders, fingers catching at his shirt. His mouth is stale but enthusiastic, close to desperate. He hums happily when E pushes him back against the desk.
The desk skids a couple inches. E flinches back at the rasp of wood on wood, but Billy doesn’t react, just reaches for the buttons of E’s shirt.
“Alright, alright.” E shrugs the shirt off. Lets Billy deal with his own yellowing wifebeater. Billy tosses it aside like it’s wronged him. E looks.
Billy’s no Vince, or even Drama. He’s pale, skinny. Hairy. Underfed in an affected starving artist caricature that played better before the success of Queens Boulevard. E could trace each of his ribs. Holds out a hand, can’t quite bring himself to do it.
“Suit.” Billy’s hand closes around E’s wrist, tugs him in close, and E goes. Puts Billy’s sharp hips in his hands. Keep the talent happy—this is his job. He takes Billy’s chin in his hand, plants a resolute kiss on his mouth, and goes for the drawstring on those cult-chic linen pants.
His nails are too short; he has to pick at the knot for a too-long moment before he can get his hand inside. Steel himself and wrap his hand around Billy Walsh’s warm, stiffening, fucking proportional dick. And then his experience fails him.
“I uh—you gotta give me a little direction here, alright?”
“What, really?” Billy frowns down his nose at him.
“Yeah, really. I told you, I’m not gay.”
Billy shrugs. “Way you have Vinny on a leash, I assumed you were giving it to him pretty regular.”
E can’t begin to express how stupid that is. He stares. “I have a girlfriend.”
Billy raises his eyebrows.
“We…we’re on a break. I mean—fuck you; it’s none of your business.”
“I don’t care about your girlfriend, Suit. Can we move this along?” At E’s silent nod, he turns and leans over the desk, opens the top drawer and fishes through it with the tips of his fingers, bony ass in the air, half covered by greige linen.
E rests a hand on him. Gives him a little rub when Billy wiggles in response. And—why is E holding back at this point? He crowds up behind Billy, presses close. He’s had a startled half-chub going since Billy asked for someone who will fuck me up the ass, and Billy sighs at the pressure of it, even through E’s khakis. It’s sort of…Billy is…he doesn’t exactly like Billy’s lankiness, or sharp angles, or hairy ass, but Billy wants this so bad. E’s not sure when the last time was that someone wanted him like this. Not that Sloan—whatever.
Billy finds what he’s looking for in the drawer, slaps down the little bottle of lotion on the table by his hip.
E picks it up. “This?”
“Yeah,” Billy says, in a tone that says moron and starts to say more, but falls silent when voices pass close to the window. They aren’t really out of sight here in the front room of Billy’s little house; anyone glancing casually through those windows would see Billy spread over the desk, E between his legs.
E’s body temperature plummets, even as his dick swells. He doesn’t let out his breath for a long moment. “Let’s move this to the bedroom,” he says, barely above a whisper.
Billy’s silent for long enough that E starts to worry he’ll refuse. But he isn’t stupid; he didn’t go out and pick up a random. He came to E for a reason, so he picks himself up off the desk, steps out of his pants, and leads the way into the cramped bedroom at the back of the house.
E follows, lotion in hand.
Billy arranges himself on elbows and knees, and E gets what he’s meant to do. He takes off his shoes first, then his socks and his shorts and his boxers, kneels on the bed. Billy looks over his shoulder at him. E doesn’t know how to read that expression. He squirts lotion on his fingers instead of asking.
Billy sighs when E touches him—lightly, on the small of his back—and shivers when E’s fingertips brush over his ass, press over his hole. But he holds himself still when the tip of his index finger slips greasily inside. It’s E who exhales shakily then, tries to switch on autopilot, let his body take over, somehow.
It doesn’t work. Not really, anyway. He finds a slow sort of rhythm, fucking his finger deeper into Billy, teasing the tip of a second, pricking up his ears each time Billy’s breath changes. But he can’t quite get lost in it, too aware of the inexperience he might never stop having to explain, dismiss. Not that fingering a guy has anything to do with being a manager or producer, except—doesn’t it? One day he’s scrubbing red sauce out of a work polo in the sink, next he’s responsible for small fortunes and he’s here in the jungle, knuckle deep in the next Aronofsky with no fucking clue what he’s doing.
He panics, shoves a second finger in too hard, too fast, starts to apologize before he sees the way Billy shudders, buries his face in his elbow to stifle a sound. Alright.
E will take any hint he can get. He tries getting rougher, fucking shallowly with both fingers, watching sweat bead on Billy’s back, roll and pool along his spine. He doesn’t catch what Billy whines into his forearm.
“Huh?”
“Another, give me another.”
He’d wanted direction, but Billy still pisses him off. He slows down instead, shoves in deeper, experiments with curling his fingers.
“Fuck-ing Christ.” Billy convulses, rattling the metal bed frame against the wall. The words come out on a sob. E repeats the motion, and Billy shakes. Sweats, whimpers. It’s really—God. Something to see.
He rubs his ring finger along Billy’s rim. Too dry, probably, he’ll have to take his hand back to open the lotion bottle. He looks around for it.
“Just do it now, just do it. Fuck me, alright? Just do it.” Billy’s fucking bossy, but it doesn’t seem like a bad idea just now. E goes for it.
It’s only as he’s lining himself up that reason briefly resurfaces and he pauses.
“What?” Billy gasps, voice raw, wet.
“Uh, protection. Condom. You got one?” He could go check his own pockets just for form’s sake, but he knows there isn’t one there.
“You’re not gonna knock me up. Fucking boy scout. Get on with it.” Billy speaks through gritted teeth.
“But what about…”
“Do it.” He shifts his weight back so the tip of E’s dick catches on him.
“Fuck. Alright. Alright.” He does it. And, well. Even if Billy gives him chlamydia, it won’t have been for nothing.
Billy seems to agree, panting like a dog into the wrinkled sheets. E holds onto both his hips as he shoves in the last half inch, and Billy muffles a high pitched moan. And it’s weird, but it’s kind of doing something for him, how absurdly into this Billy is.
Maybe it’s not even that weird. With the long, dark hair, the pretty arch of his spine, he doesn’t look so different, from this angle, from Sloan.
He wishes he could spit that thought out. Jesus Christ.
He keeps fucking into Billy in long strokes that make Billy’s shoulders tremble. “Hey, uh, say something.”
Billy laughs. “Oh,” he says, in a high voice, mocking. “Oh, just like that! Oh! Fuck me. Harder! Give it to me… oh, yeah.”
“Oh, shut up. Forget I asked.” He swats Billy’s flank.
“Just giving you what you wanted, Suit.”
“What? Don’t call me that now. Jesus.”
“I…” Billy’s voice is muffled in the sheets. “I’m supposed to call you E though? That’s better for you?” He pants. “Really?”
“My name’s Eric, dipshit. You fucking know that.”
“All right then, Eric.” But he makes it sound worse than “Suit.”
“Whatever, Billy.” He’s not sure where the impulse comes from to gather Billy’s hair in his fist and yank, but the action surprises him nearly as much as Billy’s reaction, which is to moan like a whore, deep in his throat, and clench down on E’s dick.
“Oh, god,” Billy breathes, and E’s doing this, he guesses, pulling Billy back on his dick with a handful of his surprisingly soft hair. It’s a moment before he notices that Billy’s shifted his weight to just one elbow, reaching with his other arm to jerk himself off.
“Hey, no,” E says. That’s his job. He smacks Billy’s hand away, still grinding into him in short, hard thrusts. Takes hold of him himself, just a moment before Billy comes, grunting, fluttering around E’s cock, nearly writhing.
“Oh,” E says. “Fuck.” He starts to pull out as Billy settles, but Billy’s hand closes around his wrist.
“No,” he rasps. “In me, in me.”
“Oh,” E repeats, and it’s enough, the thought of it, and E follows, fills him up.
Billy groans, forehead dropping to the mattress. “Fu-uck,” he says, stretching the word out long.
E frees himself, drops himself down on the mattress. Inhales, exhales. His skin prickles, sweat drying on his skin. He looks at the low ceiling, the square of dull gold light from the window drifting across the wall. He doesn’t sleep, but it seems that not much time passes before the gold darkens to orange and fizzles out entirely. He wonders whether he might have dozed.
Billy’s breath is slow and even, but E doesn’t think he’s slept either. It’s not until the room has gone fully dark that Billy pulls himself upright, leans back against the bars of the bedframe, and pulls a pack of smokes from under the mattress.
People are probably looking for E, probably have been for a while. They’re probably looking for Billy. But it’s been so long since he felt like this—so empty, so cleaned-out. He sighs, watches a tarnished Zippo appear in Billy’s hand.
It’s the most quiet he’s ever been in E’s presence. He gazes towards the empty window as he lights up, takes a long drag.
E scrambles upright. The bedframe is cold, uncomfortable to lean on, but he joins Billy there. E quit cold turkey a month after moving to LA. Took up running, and Drama’s egg-white omelets. But he reaches for the cig, and takes a drag. They both watch smoke drift from his lips.
Billy doesn’t try to take it back, so E smokes it down to the filter, stubs it out in the coffee mug on the floor that seems to have been designated an ashtray. Billy keeps his eyes on him, but still says nothing. So E slides out of the bed and goes back to his own.