ficpost: "Gone Hollywood" Joss/Alexis-as-Wesley [RPS]
Title: "Gone Hollywood"
Fandom: Joss
Pairing(s): Joss/Alexis, Joss/Wesley
Other Pairings Mentioned: Joss-->Nate UST, Aly/Alexis, Joss/Kai, Wesley/Fred, Wesley/Lilah, Wesley/Illyria
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: RPS. FPS. Fantasy. Reality. Sex. Power. Costumes. Boyslash. Het (non-graphic). Auto-eroticism. Pretension (Joss's). Pretension (Alexis's). Pretension (mine). Broken fourth wall. Shifting point of view. Alcoholic beverages. Character death (fictional). Cancellation of shows (sadly not fictional.)
Spoilers/Timeline: Season three of Angel through "Not Fade Away," with references to canonical metaverse events mentioned in commentaries on the S5 DVDs.
Notes: Buffyworld is my friend. Thanks to hermionesviolin for help in formulating one of the crucial connections.
Disclaimer: All the parts that aren't filthy lies about Joss's sex life, um, belong to Joss.
Summary: Joss Whedon is Pygmalion, King of LA, in love with his own creation.
Words: 3329
Gone Hollywood
Joss starts this fantasy with his hand holding his dick, but he won't start to stroke himself till he's buried in the fantasy, grinding away at it in the single-minded way of men throughout time, tunnel-visioned on the objective, which tonight is orgasm. But he starts from scratch, limp and lame, just the barest flashes of setting: an empty room dusted by the props people made to look gritty. He gradually erases the remnants of these artists from his mind, the lighting technician, Casey's crack team of set designers. He's designed the whole thing himself, from the shape of the room to the texture of the shadows to the populous. And now he imagines he's lying not on an almost-comfy hotel bed somewhere-in-LA but on a wine-soaked mattress somewhere-else-in-LA. He opens his eyes.
Wesley's facing the window (high on the wall so you can't see out, just note that it's a natural light source) and looking like Alexis is sick of "saying nothing and feeling glum" which has been his character arc for too long. He turns and wears a thin grey smile of desire. Joss costumes him quickly in leather and polishes the buckle of his belt. His heart thuds; he's halfway to erect and whispers, "Action."
"So," Wesley says. "You're here again." He absorbs all the moisture in the room and there's a moment of lip-licking, nervous anticipation, fear for own sanity, and so forth and then Wesley crouches next to the mattress and puts one hand on each of Joss's legs. "Are you ready?"
Joss is ready now, all the way hard. He leans back and lets Wesley suck his cock. He forces himself to keep going despite the director's desire to fade to black before the messiness of semen and regret. Eyes closed, real hand and imagined mouth and he orgasms and thinks of Wesley, though possibly in the other order.
And then he rolls over and sleeps.
The fantasy world is porous and admits of easy changes in geography and time frame that wouldn't be allowed in any self-respecting artist's creation, but porn and art are somewhat opposite, living at right angles in Joss's mind. Art lies in capturing the frame just so, the moments before and after fucking when there's tenderness or fear, exhilaration and regret. The moment itself is singularly uninspiring unless, of course, someone loses his soul, and then all bets are off.
The real world (to return to the comparison begun previously) is essentially essentialist and also opaque. Joss is an existentialist and carves his worlds from airy nothing, but he is also a lapsed Christian and finds belief creeping into his worlds when he most wants them simplistic. He believes, for instance, that Alexis doesn't love him.
In one of his own shows, this would be true, because nothing is more interesting (at least for a season or two) than unrequited love especially when the victim is universally adored and clearly deserves better and is as perfectly charming as Aly's Willow or, to choose an example perfectly at random, Alexis's Wesley. Joss has a long history of unrequited love both in fiction and in what passes for reality, but now he is happily married to a woman who loves him, and additionally, secretly, Alexis is in love with him.
This would surprise Joss if he knew. It probably surprises you. It certainly surprised me. It's unexpected, because Alexis is the prettiest and Joss is, in his own words and in his own thoughts, homely. Besides which, Alexis is dating Alyson Hannigan, and he's already told Joss -- when it was clearly going to become a Thing -- that he doesn't date his co-workers.
But Alexis has fallen prey to the actor's greatest temptation, and he has fallen in love with his own talent. And Joss Whedon is the man -- it sometimes seems to Alexis the only man -- who can appreciate that talent. Alexis loves that Joss makes him sit in the same darkened apartment set every week and pretend to be sad, that Joss thinks his sitting sadly is the most brilliant drama that America has ever seen.
At the season three wrap party at Aly and Alexis's house, Mere Smith gets drunk in the guest bedroom, and Alexis propositions Joss out in the garden. (This, by the way, is really happening, though Joss remains convinced that he's gotten trapped in his own fantasy world for a good twenty-four hours afterwards.) He suggests, sloppy with drink, that if Joss really loved him, he'd be on his knees right now giving him a blowjob, which is slightly more pornographic an image than Joss imagined for their first time, and an image of himself that's more submissive than he really likes to acknowledge. So Joss says (causing a twenty-four hour period of kicking himself following the day of denial) no.
Alexis shrugs and is immediately tackled by David Boreanaz, who's also more than a little drunk, and sent flying into the pool.
If Angel ever did that kind of stupid prank to Wesley again, America would weep with joy, Joss thinks, a little weepy himself, and promptly passes out.
When he starts thinking about it as a serious thing and not just a drunken lark or a delirious fantasy, and realizes that he said no, Joss promptly starts drinking and doodling at the same time and it is during this period that the basic outlines of seasons four and seven are conceived, which makes Jasmine the lovechild of Joss and Alexis. But none of this has happened yet, and Joss is hungry and horny and hasn't even been out slaying lately. He writes bring back Faith! in the margin and lies down to wank.
But the usual constructed fantasies of men who look something like Alexis but with Britisher accents and something like Wesley but with less moral compunctions about fucking him senseless are weird and hollow wind-caverns, and all he can hear is the sound of his own voice.
So during the long summer doldrums, when Joss has the whole gang over for reading Shakespeare and drinking beer, he manages to pull Alexis away from Aly for long enough to suggest to him that if he really wanted sex, he'd have to do better than garden (variety) blowjob fantasies. Alexis looks at him like he's totally mad then, realizing what he means, begins to giggle in a way which Joss attributes to the quality of the beer.
He switches accents and says, voice heavy with liquor in a way that it wasn't a minute ago, "You want me to be him, don't you?" He leans so close that Joss can see the tiny nicks on his skin where he shaved this morning, the tiny hairs that will, in a few days' time, be stubble.
"Yes?"
And Wesley laughs, not cruelly, equally amused with himself for coming to a rich Hollywood television party with Cordelia as with the sleazy director who's trying to turn him -- him! Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, former rogue demon hunter, current head of a supernatural detective agency -- into an actor.
Joss hopes Alexis understands all this, and it's possible that if he had a pen he would, literally, start writing Alexis's lines on his hand so he wouldn't ruin the moment. But he's got no pen, so they improvise a scene that works for Joss and works for Alexis too, in ways that are making Joss increasingly uncomfortable with the close proximity of Tony reading Lear and the unfortunately un-funny irony of Charisma butchering the role of Lear's youngest daughter.
Alexis thinks method is a wanky and pretentious way of saying let's pretend, and isn't totally comfortable with having Joss encouraging him to be someone he's not, but the someone he's not is bored and angry and can think of no way to make Angel angrier than sleeping with Lilah Morgan, but Lilah's currently otherwise engaged and one of her friends in the movie industry takes Wesley aside and offers him amusement in the form of sex that will make Lilah jealous, and he's not sure why he'd want to make Lilah jealous, since he certainly isn't in love with her, but here he is, and here Joss is, looking very much like he wants to be kissed. Wesley doesn't consider it, just plunges (though it takes Alexis a long minute to figure out whether Wesley's kissed a guy before; he finally decides he probably has, though he's not sure how accurate his assumptions about Wesley's sexuality can be, based as they are on Joss's... thing, whatever it is. He decides it's safest to close his eyes and kiss Joss.)
Whoever he is.
Whoever he is, he's got Joss in a death-grip that might be Alexis's nerves and might be Wes's issues, but either way Joss doesn't think he can breathe around the tongue that's in his mouth. He closes his eyes and lets this be him, the guy who goes to parties and goes home with the prettiest person there. He forgets that this is his house, forgets that Alexis is his actor, forgets even, for a moment, that Wesley is his creation. How could he have created a man out of clay, a man so perfect, so fleshy and real, a man with breath and speech and words enough? He can't've.
He can't be the man whom Wesley's chosen, and in his mind he knows he's not. He's the glitter of demon-haunted Hollywood, the appeal of another life, the personification of up-by-bootstraps America that is the antithesis of Wesley's highbred fall from grace. Joss feels the unanticipated voyeuristic thrill of knowing Wesley's heart and knowing he can break it, knowing he has broken it time and time again. He curls into Wesley's arms and lets their arms tangle, lets the connection bind them. Lear ends with death, and Kai plays a dirge. "Come to my bedroom," says Joss, in a voice he hopes is enticing and captivating but that doesn't really matter, because what he says in this moment is far less important than who he is, and by whom Wesley is pretended to be.
What matters is that Alexis says, "Of course," and accents it just so, sneers his yes. He's not too innocent for chance encounters with bleached blonds, but he's got a lonely look in his eyes that can't be feigned. Joss Whedon, master of stage and screen, is taken in by the oldest lie in the book, and thinks Wesley means it when he comes to bed with him, thinks that Wesley's fingers penetrate him, that that's Wesley's hand on the small of his back. Joss isn't really deceived, but he lets himself be lied to, just for now. It feels right; it feels like release.
+++++
Wesley's been keeping a woman chained in his closet all summer and searching the ocean for Angel, and (tappa tappa typewriter keys) in the end his dignity is restored, which is a happier ending than Joss had in mind before he had Wes's dick in his mouth, but now that he's felt it, now that he knows the heaviness, now that he knows how Wesley sounds when he comes, he feels uneasy about deliberately setting out to ruin his life and tear his soul from his body. It wouldn't be, to borrow Wesley's vernacular, sporting.
But before letting the woman out of the closet for good and giving Wesley his final shot at redemption to squander away, Joss dresses Stephanie up like Lilah dressed as Fred, and Wesley loves it.
Alexis loves it more. Alexis does the scene so many times Joss's eyes start to glaze over, and every take, the desire is just as fresh. Alexis refuses to claim that he's a method actor, but whence then that lust? It isn't Stephanie, who keeps giggling and saying, "Faster, Wes, faster!" between takes in a too-perfect imitation of Amy's drawl; that might turn some men on, but Alexis isn't one of them. Alexis is immune to Amy mostly, Joss thinks, because he already has one; Amy is softer-spoken and more hero-worshippy than Alyson, which is why he loves her best and gave her the all-time best gig ever and made her the object of Wesley's considerable libido, but Alexis doesn't go for that sort of thing. But Wesley does. And Wesley says, over and over, every take, "leave them on." The camera loves Stephanie's gracenote, that startled vulnerability, but Joss trusts the cameraman to do his job and focuses on Wesley himself and the moment when he gives himself over to whatever it is that's going through his head. You can't tell, really; he's wearing the mask for Lilah's sake. She knows his vulnerability, of course, but they both maintain this pretense that Wes has a secret that Lilah's trying to steal. If they confessed their love... Joss gets a happy shiver from the twistedness, and then Vern calls cut, and Alexis kisses him (Joss, that is. Vern Gillum either doesn't notice or notices and ignore it, figuring that in the TV industry, it's only weird they waited till he was done with the shot). Joss blinks and wonders if he missed something, and he must've dozed off at least a little there, because Alexis managed to swipe the glasses. He wrinkles his nose at Joss almost playfully, and Joss knows how the scene plays out.
He can't be Lilah or Fred, because he's too male and portly for either of them to pretend, but when he wears the glasses, he might just look like the kind of human being Wesley could admire. He swipes at the glasses, and Alexis lowers his voice to Wesley's growl and says, "Leave them on."
And he does.
He wears them at odd hours, though he doesn't need glasses to see, he pretends that he's blind without them. And seeing the world through Lilah-Fred's glasses is almost fascinating enough to enable him to keep his eyes off Alexis -- though both Fred and Lilah keep sneaking glances at Wesley when they should be keeping their mind on more important things, like saving the world and destroying it. Joss, on the other hand, has nothing better to do, because it's not like he's got three shows in the air and a baby on the way and a wife at home, a fucktoy on the set of Angel, and Nate. But really, let's not get into Nate. Alexis is complicated enough.
Joss rides this wave like a champion surfer heading for certain wipeout. You win some, you lose some; this year is pretty much a lost cause when it comes to the shows. Not because he doesn't love them, because he does -- he dives into each one as deeply as he can and emerges breathless, choked by the saltwater love affair he's having with Nate Firefly and the pain of losing it even while he's pulling all-nighters trying to hold on.
The thing bears mentioning. It's only during after twenty-four hours of being awake writing "Objects in Space" that he actually calls Alexis at home. Alexis, God knows, shouldn't be at home; he should be on his set, and Aly should be on hers, but they've both stayed home instead, and Joss awakens a groggy Alexis who wants to know what time it is and if Joss is really crazy enough to think that he's getting out of bed and going into the study to fuck Joss, even if he is wearing the fucking Fred glasses, Joss, really, what?
Joss forgot that Alexis leaves Wesley behind at work. He remembers now, though, and crawls -- maybe walks -- okay, minces -- into Alexis's dressing room to look for him.
It bears repeating: he's tired. He's not had enough coffee. Alexis just told him to fuck off if he's going to fuck around, so Joss does the sane thing and finds his way into Wesley's apartment, which is deserted at this hour because Wesley's out saving the world like a good hero does (*shiver*), and curls up on his bed like an overweight male Lilah and waits.
"Why am I not surprised that you're here?"
"Oh, the super let me in," Joss explains to Wesley, who's rolling his eyes belligerently. "I figured you wouldn't mind, seeing as it's me." Wesley rolls his eyes again and unbuttons his shirt so Joss can see the first tendrils of chest hair.
"I'll have to get my lock changed again," Wesley says. "Lilah keeps getting copies of the key."
Joss is temporarily confused; he thought this scene was happening much earlier, but no, you can't get that curl of hair in season one. It would be out of character. Disappointing. He shakes his head free of the confusion and unfolds himself to be fucked.
But Wesley shakes his head and rearranges Joss's shirt and tells him no. "Tonight, I'll let you fuck me in disguise," he says, and puts the glasses on the table. He undresses and is Joss's, for this morning. Joss is too dazed and expressionless to enjoy that Wesley wants to be screwed (over) (again) (and again).
He's a glutton for nobility. In the end, Joss will give him what he wants, and let him die.
+++++
They kill him softly. First Firefly, and Nate. Next Buffy, and Sarah. And now Angel. Alexis and Aly's wedding hurt nothing like this; he thinks he could survive another blow so long as it wasn't below the belt, but the love he has for Angel is definitely located somewhere in the lower half of his body. The baser half. The I-want-to-be-a-millionaire half who could make or break the careers of young stars and sexually harass his minions. Firefly was a family that was incestuously joyous. Angel is nothing like a family. They're all chomping at the bit and ready to catch the first stagecoach out of this town. Andy pops open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the cancellation. They say goodbye to Charisma.
And Alexis stopped fucking him when he got married.
This makes sense but is still surprising. He's lived so long in the glitter-glitz world of film noir that he's forgotten in the real world people don't do things like what they've been doing. He's been living so long in the sordid world of backwater planets and back-alley Los Angeles and High School, USA that he's forgotten the basic truths: men are loyal to their wives, love their children, writers walk away from their worlds a little older, wiser, and balder, and everyone betrays you in the end.
California is known for its earthquakes. This particular one leaves Joss desolate, stranded high up in an apartment crunching out the final words of the final scene of the final episode of the last television show he will ever make. He can't do it. He can't end this thing.
He turns the pages, examining each dirty, half-finished scene, the unwashed plates, the imperfect ending to five-six-seven imperfect lives. He leaves the last scene for another day, and decides, in the grand tradition of authors since Moses, that inserting his own life into the script won't hurt anyone but him. This is what he writes:
The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do. The truth is that Fred is gone. To pretend anything else would be a lie. And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie.
This is why Wesley won't sleep with Illyria. It's why Alexis won't sleep with him.
It makes him feel a little better.
Fandom: Joss
Pairing(s): Joss/Alexis, Joss/Wesley
Other Pairings Mentioned: Joss-->Nate UST, Aly/Alexis, Joss/Kai, Wesley/Fred, Wesley/Lilah, Wesley/Illyria
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: RPS. FPS. Fantasy. Reality. Sex. Power. Costumes. Boyslash. Het (non-graphic). Auto-eroticism. Pretension (Joss's). Pretension (Alexis's). Pretension (mine). Broken fourth wall. Shifting point of view. Alcoholic beverages. Character death (fictional). Cancellation of shows (sadly not fictional.)
Spoilers/Timeline: Season three of Angel through "Not Fade Away," with references to canonical metaverse events mentioned in commentaries on the S5 DVDs.
Notes: Buffyworld is my friend. Thanks to hermionesviolin for help in formulating one of the crucial connections.
Disclaimer: All the parts that aren't filthy lies about Joss's sex life, um, belong to Joss.
Summary: Joss Whedon is Pygmalion, King of LA, in love with his own creation.
Words: 3329
Gone Hollywood
Joss starts this fantasy with his hand holding his dick, but he won't start to stroke himself till he's buried in the fantasy, grinding away at it in the single-minded way of men throughout time, tunnel-visioned on the objective, which tonight is orgasm. But he starts from scratch, limp and lame, just the barest flashes of setting: an empty room dusted by the props people made to look gritty. He gradually erases the remnants of these artists from his mind, the lighting technician, Casey's crack team of set designers. He's designed the whole thing himself, from the shape of the room to the texture of the shadows to the populous. And now he imagines he's lying not on an almost-comfy hotel bed somewhere-in-LA but on a wine-soaked mattress somewhere-else-in-LA. He opens his eyes.
Wesley's facing the window (high on the wall so you can't see out, just note that it's a natural light source) and looking like Alexis is sick of "saying nothing and feeling glum" which has been his character arc for too long. He turns and wears a thin grey smile of desire. Joss costumes him quickly in leather and polishes the buckle of his belt. His heart thuds; he's halfway to erect and whispers, "Action."
"So," Wesley says. "You're here again." He absorbs all the moisture in the room and there's a moment of lip-licking, nervous anticipation, fear for own sanity, and so forth and then Wesley crouches next to the mattress and puts one hand on each of Joss's legs. "Are you ready?"
Joss is ready now, all the way hard. He leans back and lets Wesley suck his cock. He forces himself to keep going despite the director's desire to fade to black before the messiness of semen and regret. Eyes closed, real hand and imagined mouth and he orgasms and thinks of Wesley, though possibly in the other order.
And then he rolls over and sleeps.
The fantasy world is porous and admits of easy changes in geography and time frame that wouldn't be allowed in any self-respecting artist's creation, but porn and art are somewhat opposite, living at right angles in Joss's mind. Art lies in capturing the frame just so, the moments before and after fucking when there's tenderness or fear, exhilaration and regret. The moment itself is singularly uninspiring unless, of course, someone loses his soul, and then all bets are off.
The real world (to return to the comparison begun previously) is essentially essentialist and also opaque. Joss is an existentialist and carves his worlds from airy nothing, but he is also a lapsed Christian and finds belief creeping into his worlds when he most wants them simplistic. He believes, for instance, that Alexis doesn't love him.
In one of his own shows, this would be true, because nothing is more interesting (at least for a season or two) than unrequited love especially when the victim is universally adored and clearly deserves better and is as perfectly charming as Aly's Willow or, to choose an example perfectly at random, Alexis's Wesley. Joss has a long history of unrequited love both in fiction and in what passes for reality, but now he is happily married to a woman who loves him, and additionally, secretly, Alexis is in love with him.
This would surprise Joss if he knew. It probably surprises you. It certainly surprised me. It's unexpected, because Alexis is the prettiest and Joss is, in his own words and in his own thoughts, homely. Besides which, Alexis is dating Alyson Hannigan, and he's already told Joss -- when it was clearly going to become a Thing -- that he doesn't date his co-workers.
But Alexis has fallen prey to the actor's greatest temptation, and he has fallen in love with his own talent. And Joss Whedon is the man -- it sometimes seems to Alexis the only man -- who can appreciate that talent. Alexis loves that Joss makes him sit in the same darkened apartment set every week and pretend to be sad, that Joss thinks his sitting sadly is the most brilliant drama that America has ever seen.
At the season three wrap party at Aly and Alexis's house, Mere Smith gets drunk in the guest bedroom, and Alexis propositions Joss out in the garden. (This, by the way, is really happening, though Joss remains convinced that he's gotten trapped in his own fantasy world for a good twenty-four hours afterwards.) He suggests, sloppy with drink, that if Joss really loved him, he'd be on his knees right now giving him a blowjob, which is slightly more pornographic an image than Joss imagined for their first time, and an image of himself that's more submissive than he really likes to acknowledge. So Joss says (causing a twenty-four hour period of kicking himself following the day of denial) no.
Alexis shrugs and is immediately tackled by David Boreanaz, who's also more than a little drunk, and sent flying into the pool.
If Angel ever did that kind of stupid prank to Wesley again, America would weep with joy, Joss thinks, a little weepy himself, and promptly passes out.
When he starts thinking about it as a serious thing and not just a drunken lark or a delirious fantasy, and realizes that he said no, Joss promptly starts drinking and doodling at the same time and it is during this period that the basic outlines of seasons four and seven are conceived, which makes Jasmine the lovechild of Joss and Alexis. But none of this has happened yet, and Joss is hungry and horny and hasn't even been out slaying lately. He writes bring back Faith! in the margin and lies down to wank.
But the usual constructed fantasies of men who look something like Alexis but with Britisher accents and something like Wesley but with less moral compunctions about fucking him senseless are weird and hollow wind-caverns, and all he can hear is the sound of his own voice.
So during the long summer doldrums, when Joss has the whole gang over for reading Shakespeare and drinking beer, he manages to pull Alexis away from Aly for long enough to suggest to him that if he really wanted sex, he'd have to do better than garden (variety) blowjob fantasies. Alexis looks at him like he's totally mad then, realizing what he means, begins to giggle in a way which Joss attributes to the quality of the beer.
He switches accents and says, voice heavy with liquor in a way that it wasn't a minute ago, "You want me to be him, don't you?" He leans so close that Joss can see the tiny nicks on his skin where he shaved this morning, the tiny hairs that will, in a few days' time, be stubble.
"Yes?"
And Wesley laughs, not cruelly, equally amused with himself for coming to a rich Hollywood television party with Cordelia as with the sleazy director who's trying to turn him -- him! Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, former rogue demon hunter, current head of a supernatural detective agency -- into an actor.
Joss hopes Alexis understands all this, and it's possible that if he had a pen he would, literally, start writing Alexis's lines on his hand so he wouldn't ruin the moment. But he's got no pen, so they improvise a scene that works for Joss and works for Alexis too, in ways that are making Joss increasingly uncomfortable with the close proximity of Tony reading Lear and the unfortunately un-funny irony of Charisma butchering the role of Lear's youngest daughter.
Alexis thinks method is a wanky and pretentious way of saying let's pretend, and isn't totally comfortable with having Joss encouraging him to be someone he's not, but the someone he's not is bored and angry and can think of no way to make Angel angrier than sleeping with Lilah Morgan, but Lilah's currently otherwise engaged and one of her friends in the movie industry takes Wesley aside and offers him amusement in the form of sex that will make Lilah jealous, and he's not sure why he'd want to make Lilah jealous, since he certainly isn't in love with her, but here he is, and here Joss is, looking very much like he wants to be kissed. Wesley doesn't consider it, just plunges (though it takes Alexis a long minute to figure out whether Wesley's kissed a guy before; he finally decides he probably has, though he's not sure how accurate his assumptions about Wesley's sexuality can be, based as they are on Joss's... thing, whatever it is. He decides it's safest to close his eyes and kiss Joss.)
Whoever he is.
Whoever he is, he's got Joss in a death-grip that might be Alexis's nerves and might be Wes's issues, but either way Joss doesn't think he can breathe around the tongue that's in his mouth. He closes his eyes and lets this be him, the guy who goes to parties and goes home with the prettiest person there. He forgets that this is his house, forgets that Alexis is his actor, forgets even, for a moment, that Wesley is his creation. How could he have created a man out of clay, a man so perfect, so fleshy and real, a man with breath and speech and words enough? He can't've.
He can't be the man whom Wesley's chosen, and in his mind he knows he's not. He's the glitter of demon-haunted Hollywood, the appeal of another life, the personification of up-by-bootstraps America that is the antithesis of Wesley's highbred fall from grace. Joss feels the unanticipated voyeuristic thrill of knowing Wesley's heart and knowing he can break it, knowing he has broken it time and time again. He curls into Wesley's arms and lets their arms tangle, lets the connection bind them. Lear ends with death, and Kai plays a dirge. "Come to my bedroom," says Joss, in a voice he hopes is enticing and captivating but that doesn't really matter, because what he says in this moment is far less important than who he is, and by whom Wesley is pretended to be.
What matters is that Alexis says, "Of course," and accents it just so, sneers his yes. He's not too innocent for chance encounters with bleached blonds, but he's got a lonely look in his eyes that can't be feigned. Joss Whedon, master of stage and screen, is taken in by the oldest lie in the book, and thinks Wesley means it when he comes to bed with him, thinks that Wesley's fingers penetrate him, that that's Wesley's hand on the small of his back. Joss isn't really deceived, but he lets himself be lied to, just for now. It feels right; it feels like release.
+++++
Wesley's been keeping a woman chained in his closet all summer and searching the ocean for Angel, and (tappa tappa typewriter keys) in the end his dignity is restored, which is a happier ending than Joss had in mind before he had Wes's dick in his mouth, but now that he's felt it, now that he knows the heaviness, now that he knows how Wesley sounds when he comes, he feels uneasy about deliberately setting out to ruin his life and tear his soul from his body. It wouldn't be, to borrow Wesley's vernacular, sporting.
But before letting the woman out of the closet for good and giving Wesley his final shot at redemption to squander away, Joss dresses Stephanie up like Lilah dressed as Fred, and Wesley loves it.
Alexis loves it more. Alexis does the scene so many times Joss's eyes start to glaze over, and every take, the desire is just as fresh. Alexis refuses to claim that he's a method actor, but whence then that lust? It isn't Stephanie, who keeps giggling and saying, "Faster, Wes, faster!" between takes in a too-perfect imitation of Amy's drawl; that might turn some men on, but Alexis isn't one of them. Alexis is immune to Amy mostly, Joss thinks, because he already has one; Amy is softer-spoken and more hero-worshippy than Alyson, which is why he loves her best and gave her the all-time best gig ever and made her the object of Wesley's considerable libido, but Alexis doesn't go for that sort of thing. But Wesley does. And Wesley says, over and over, every take, "leave them on." The camera loves Stephanie's gracenote, that startled vulnerability, but Joss trusts the cameraman to do his job and focuses on Wesley himself and the moment when he gives himself over to whatever it is that's going through his head. You can't tell, really; he's wearing the mask for Lilah's sake. She knows his vulnerability, of course, but they both maintain this pretense that Wes has a secret that Lilah's trying to steal. If they confessed their love... Joss gets a happy shiver from the twistedness, and then Vern calls cut, and Alexis kisses him (Joss, that is. Vern Gillum either doesn't notice or notices and ignore it, figuring that in the TV industry, it's only weird they waited till he was done with the shot). Joss blinks and wonders if he missed something, and he must've dozed off at least a little there, because Alexis managed to swipe the glasses. He wrinkles his nose at Joss almost playfully, and Joss knows how the scene plays out.
He can't be Lilah or Fred, because he's too male and portly for either of them to pretend, but when he wears the glasses, he might just look like the kind of human being Wesley could admire. He swipes at the glasses, and Alexis lowers his voice to Wesley's growl and says, "Leave them on."
And he does.
He wears them at odd hours, though he doesn't need glasses to see, he pretends that he's blind without them. And seeing the world through Lilah-Fred's glasses is almost fascinating enough to enable him to keep his eyes off Alexis -- though both Fred and Lilah keep sneaking glances at Wesley when they should be keeping their mind on more important things, like saving the world and destroying it. Joss, on the other hand, has nothing better to do, because it's not like he's got three shows in the air and a baby on the way and a wife at home, a fucktoy on the set of Angel, and Nate. But really, let's not get into Nate. Alexis is complicated enough.
Joss rides this wave like a champion surfer heading for certain wipeout. You win some, you lose some; this year is pretty much a lost cause when it comes to the shows. Not because he doesn't love them, because he does -- he dives into each one as deeply as he can and emerges breathless, choked by the saltwater love affair he's having with Nate Firefly and the pain of losing it even while he's pulling all-nighters trying to hold on.
The thing bears mentioning. It's only during after twenty-four hours of being awake writing "Objects in Space" that he actually calls Alexis at home. Alexis, God knows, shouldn't be at home; he should be on his set, and Aly should be on hers, but they've both stayed home instead, and Joss awakens a groggy Alexis who wants to know what time it is and if Joss is really crazy enough to think that he's getting out of bed and going into the study to fuck Joss, even if he is wearing the fucking Fred glasses, Joss, really, what?
Joss forgot that Alexis leaves Wesley behind at work. He remembers now, though, and crawls -- maybe walks -- okay, minces -- into Alexis's dressing room to look for him.
It bears repeating: he's tired. He's not had enough coffee. Alexis just told him to fuck off if he's going to fuck around, so Joss does the sane thing and finds his way into Wesley's apartment, which is deserted at this hour because Wesley's out saving the world like a good hero does (*shiver*), and curls up on his bed like an overweight male Lilah and waits.
"Why am I not surprised that you're here?"
"Oh, the super let me in," Joss explains to Wesley, who's rolling his eyes belligerently. "I figured you wouldn't mind, seeing as it's me." Wesley rolls his eyes again and unbuttons his shirt so Joss can see the first tendrils of chest hair.
"I'll have to get my lock changed again," Wesley says. "Lilah keeps getting copies of the key."
Joss is temporarily confused; he thought this scene was happening much earlier, but no, you can't get that curl of hair in season one. It would be out of character. Disappointing. He shakes his head free of the confusion and unfolds himself to be fucked.
But Wesley shakes his head and rearranges Joss's shirt and tells him no. "Tonight, I'll let you fuck me in disguise," he says, and puts the glasses on the table. He undresses and is Joss's, for this morning. Joss is too dazed and expressionless to enjoy that Wesley wants to be screwed (over) (again) (and again).
He's a glutton for nobility. In the end, Joss will give him what he wants, and let him die.
+++++
They kill him softly. First Firefly, and Nate. Next Buffy, and Sarah. And now Angel. Alexis and Aly's wedding hurt nothing like this; he thinks he could survive another blow so long as it wasn't below the belt, but the love he has for Angel is definitely located somewhere in the lower half of his body. The baser half. The I-want-to-be-a-millionaire half who could make or break the careers of young stars and sexually harass his minions. Firefly was a family that was incestuously joyous. Angel is nothing like a family. They're all chomping at the bit and ready to catch the first stagecoach out of this town. Andy pops open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the cancellation. They say goodbye to Charisma.
And Alexis stopped fucking him when he got married.
This makes sense but is still surprising. He's lived so long in the glitter-glitz world of film noir that he's forgotten in the real world people don't do things like what they've been doing. He's been living so long in the sordid world of backwater planets and back-alley Los Angeles and High School, USA that he's forgotten the basic truths: men are loyal to their wives, love their children, writers walk away from their worlds a little older, wiser, and balder, and everyone betrays you in the end.
California is known for its earthquakes. This particular one leaves Joss desolate, stranded high up in an apartment crunching out the final words of the final scene of the final episode of the last television show he will ever make. He can't do it. He can't end this thing.
He turns the pages, examining each dirty, half-finished scene, the unwashed plates, the imperfect ending to five-six-seven imperfect lives. He leaves the last scene for another day, and decides, in the grand tradition of authors since Moses, that inserting his own life into the script won't hurt anyone but him. This is what he writes:
The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do. The truth is that Fred is gone. To pretend anything else would be a lie. And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie.
This is why Wesley won't sleep with Illyria. It's why Alexis won't sleep with him.
It makes him feel a little better.