TITLE: Dim, Sequel to ‘Glitter’
AUTHOR: Kita
RATING: DB/JM
PAIRING: NC-17
AUTHOR NOTES: Takes place the evening of Fri. the 13th, 2004, immediately after the cancellation of ‘Angel’. Flashbacks from ‘Glitter’ take place a month before, around the shooting of ‘Smile Time’. Recommend reading the first story so this one makes better sense.

Dim

The VIP room is supposed to hold fifty people. James figures there’s at least one-hundred-and-fifty in it. LA loves a good wake. James doesn’t even recognize a third of the crowd. Hasn’t been around that long, by comparison.

Dave’s drunk. Every time James glances over at him through the smog of cigarette and pot smoke, he’s smiling. And James has been around long enough to know that it’s not the real smile. But after the obscene parody of the Come To Jesus meeting with Joss and Levin earlier, that it’s as good as it’s gonna get.

Dave’s shirt is untucked and he’s spread across the vinyl bar seat like someone poured him there. Mostly, he’s nodding a lot and letting people pat him on the back. Then patting everyone regardless of who the hell they are right back, and even laughing every once in a while. Reminds James of someone holding court, makes him think of that song about the baffled king. Turned out the guy’s a decent actor, after all.

It’s about 2Am when Amy says goodbye, the last of the regulars to go, with a kiss on Dave’s nose and a wave in James’ direction. She’s been drinking girlie drinks all night; underneath the funk of expensive perfume and cheap beer in the room, she still smells a little bit like coconut.

Joss is probably about, somewhere, and James can hear the stunt guys horsing around just outside the room. Other than that, it’s just him and Dave.

(James woke when his chin hit his chest. A jerk and a groan and Dave’s crotch at eye level.

James looked up from the arm chair.

“The hell are you doing out of bed?”

Dave blinked a few times, rubbed the top of his head into a nest of dead squirrels.

“Why are you sleeping over here?”

Dave’s voice, raspy and off-key; sleep, medicine.

Sex.

“You were expecting a cuddle?” James said, and Dave blinked again. Shook his head.

“There’s uhm…guest room,” he said, pointing down the hall. “Bed. Uhm. TV.”

And he was already walking away so James was following him. Breadcrumbs and puppies. To the room with a queen sized bed and yellow and blue covers that matched the curtains. A 25 inch TV. Lots of pillows.

“Thanks,” James said, tugging off his shoes, while Dave hovered in the doorway like an unwelcome guest. Small, sleepy smile finally, and a half-wave.

“Night,” Dave said, wandering back to his bed.

“Night,” James answered, watching him walk away.

Damp, shiny skin, and James wondered if Dave was even aware he was naked.)

“You gonna go home?” James asks, sitting down next to David and lighting another joint.

“Eventually,” he says. “Seen Joss lately?”

“Think he’s slitting his wrists in the bathroom,” James answers, offering Dave a hit.

Dave scrunches his eyes and stares at it like it’s gonna try to sell him insurance.

“What are they gonna do, fire you?” James says, and that gets one of those small laughs. Dave takes the joint. His hands are cold.
“You really had no idea, hunh?”

Dave shakes his head; when he finally answers, smoke curls around his nose. He looks like a confused, sleepy dragon. “Fuck no. You didn’t know- did you?”

“Man, I woulda told you.”

Dave just nods.

It’s been over a month since David’s knee surgery. He’s doing most of his own stunt work again, and he and James have never discussed that weekend. James isn’t even sure how much of it Dave actually remembers. Once or twice he’s caught Dave staring at him, lips curled up in an expression James hasn’t wanted to identify. The guy’s still on some heavy duty pain meds.

Dave passes the joint back to him, half smoked. His sleeves are rolled up, and James can see remnants of a farmer’s tan. Angel always wears long sleeves. He turns to James and his breath is warm. Whiskey and sugar cookies. Sweet and familiar in a way it has no right to be.
James is watching his mouth move and it’s a good minute before he actually hears the words.

“So we can keep bullshitting or we can just get down to what we really want here,” Dave is saying.

And it takes those ever-sleepy eyes and goofy grin, the half-assed sprawl of legs too long to fit under the bar’s table, to make a cheesy fucking line like that sound sincere. James couldn’t have pulled it off himself.

He squints at Dave around the haze of blue smoke; fog, fire, bad taste in his mouth. Essence of LA.

“Why is it that what you want always coincides with you being stoned?” James asks, and there’s a grin around the cigarette that he really doesn’t feel.

Dave smiles back. Dave has very wide teeth.

“Dunno, Jimmy. Funny how you’re the one who offered to *get* me stoned, though.”

James flicks some ash toward the table with one hand, flips off Dave with the other.

“Already did that Tango,” Dave says, leaning closer. “Bored of it.”

Only a guy as large as Dave could actually *loom* while sitting.

“You haven’t thought about it at all this past month?” he asks, and James would swear he actually sounds hurt. Would swear it right up until Dave’s fingertips brush the back of his neck. Soft like water over the bump where skull connects to spine, the secret only-human place where lizard and mammal brains meet. There’s a shiver down James’ back that ends between his legs.

Harder grip, like a puppetmaster, press and watch James’ mouth open.

Then, wet, sloppy kisses that taste like hot sauce and buttered popcorn and feel like first and last dates. Big hands in his hair, on his back, make him moan and clutch at Dave’s shoulders. Make him helpless and stupid. Make him suddenly homesick for places he’s never been.
Clearly, James should not have had all that damn wine earlier.

“All right, man, just..not here,” James says, hands shoving at an annoyingly immovable chest.

Dave backs off.

“Why? What’re they gonna do? Fire us?” More Dave smiles, this one almost real. His top lip is shining: scotch and breathmints and James’ own mouth.

“Well, I hope to have a long career ahead of me in bad sci-fi productions. And you have all those straight to video movies to consider,” James says, climbing out of the booth and extending a hand to help Dave up.

Flash of gunmetal behind Dave’s eyes before his face melts into a slow, slippery grin. He laughs, and the sound is liquid and shining too.
“Right,” he says, grabbing James’ hand and pulling himself up. “So..where to, then?”

(“Your shower is big enough to host a wedding inside,” James said, draping the towels over the back of the toilet.

“Small wedding. Just close friends and immediate family,” Dave answered. His eyes were still wet and dark, pupils blown past the circle of color. Doing everything but spinning in opposite directions like the cartoon dog James’ son watched every Saturday morning.

“You sure this is a good idea? Understand the dying for a shower, but I’m not gonna catch your fat ass if you trip and fall. I don’t get paid enough for that, dude.”

Dave just smiled. “Sure you will. Nothin’ but faith in you, Jimmy.”

Turned out he didn’t have to worry, because Dave’s shower had a sauna in it too. Stone bench and everything, and Dave sat down, leaned back against the warm tiles. Looked up at James with that same happy doggie expression.

“There’s a joke in here about dropping the soap,” James said, picking up one of the ten thousand bath products lining the walls.

Dave grabbed his wrist before he could open the shiny green bottle. “That anything like stepping on the glass? I never got that.”

James looked down to where Dave’s hand was leaving marks on his skin. Huge fucking hand. Outdoorsmen fingers, long and thick and calloused. Wrapped around James’ dick.

“Shit.”

More smiles, glitter and rain, while Dave held James’ wrist hard in one hand and his cock hard in the other. Deliberate grasp on slippery skin making James’ hip buck and his back arch. Dark curls stuck to Dave’s forehead and silverblue water fell down his chest, and he stared up at James without blinking.

When James closed his eyes, everything was green. Jungles and forests, tight, humid spaces where getting lost is easy. Snakes under palm fronds and the scent of sweat and damp earth.

Rough hand and harsh jerks, tearing animal noises from his throat. Fingernails just under the head and every time Dave stroked up the length of James’ cock, the fingers around James’ wrist got tighter and tighter.

Bruises in a perfect circle, like spiderwebs and bright bright sun.

He didn’t loosen his hold until minutes after James came, gasping and slamming his other hand against the tiled wall to hold himself up.)

“This is really cool,” Dave says, surveying the view from the bar’s roof. Black and blue sky, lights from the hills down below that could be stars, if anyone in LA could remember what stars look like. “You come up here a lot?”

“Yea, but usually the company has to be better,” James says, smiling wider than the view.

“Or at least twenty years younger?” Dave shoots back, but it’s just banter now, frat boy teasing. Not that James was ever in a fraternity, but it’s effortless to picture Dave at a kegger, with Greek letters on his chest and some blonde cheerleader on his arm.

Dave opens his jacket, pulls out the half empty bottle of scotch and a glass.

“Ah, you *are* da man,” James says.

“Yea, that’s why I’m the stah, baby.”

James snorts, grabs the bottle from Dave’s fist.

“So what are you gonna do with yourself now, Mr. Stahbaby?” Long swig of scotch slides warm and honeyed down his throat.
Dave shrugs. “Maybe be a dad for a while. That could be really nice.”

Dave uses words like nice without actually meaning them as euphamisms.

(Jayden came to the party to celebrate the 100th episode of Angel. Stuck his hands in the over-sized cake and then stuck his frosting covered fingers up Dave’s nose. Flashbulbs were going off everywhere. Dave just laughed.)

James sees his son on weekends. Drives the 300 miles to San Diego every Fri. night and back every Sunday, when he’s not touring or working a con. They go to the condo James bought on Pacific Beach, and James plays fun time Daddy.

It used to put a ton of miles on his shiny red sports car.

“You?” Dave asks, and James looks up.

“What? Oh. Don’t know. (Get a tan. Gain twenty pounds. Buy a sports car.) Being a daddy sounds nice.”

The lines in the corner of Dave’s eyes smooth out when he smiles. Weird.

“Always forget you have a kid,” he says.

James nods. “Try to keep it that way. Keep him out of the spotlight. Don’t know how you do it, man. Would make me insane if I thought every lunatic reading People Magazine could identify my son on sight.”

“Never thought about it, I guess. Grew up around show business, Jaime’s in the business. Jayden’s gonna have to grow up around it too,” Dave says. “Besides, for any lunatic to get anywhere near Jayden, Jaime would have to take her hands off of him for more than ten seconds running. And she doesn’t. Plus…man, she doesn’t look it, but she could kick my ass in a barfight.”

There are never any lines around Dave’s eyes when he talks about his family.

(By the middle of the sixth season of Buffy, James had spent two months running on set wearing nothing but a cotton sock. By January, he’d pretty much stopped eating altogether. He lost fifteen pounds the hard way, in the misguided attempt to have the godamn sex object storyline written the fuck out. He hadn’t slept through the night in over a month, and finally even Noxon noticed. Told him to take off early one Friday, and come back Monday morning with his shit together. He would have killed her for a cigarette.

But the sun was setting over the hills, Tom Waits was on the CD player, purple and gold ribbons of sound, and James did 105 all the way to San Diego. Made it to the ex-wife’s house in time for dinner.

She invited him in, and he bitched about work, smoking, and the sports car, while their son tossed mashed potatos around. Said he wanted Daddy to stay, tuck him in.

By eight o clock, the kid was asleep, in his bunkbed with the dinosaur sheets, and the glowy stars on the ceiling. And she was standing in the doorway watching them both. Smiling.

Then, somehow, he was twenty-five again. And she was taking him to their old room, and she was going down on him, and James was offering her the sports car.

She let him stay.

James fell asleep in the bed they’d picked out together before they owned anything else, back when his hair was dark and there were ten extra pounds around his middle. When all he had was the old Honda and a vague desire to be famous.

That night, he didn’t dream.

“Jimmy,” in his ear, when pink light stalked the bedsheets, and the room was warmer than he’d remembered.
Her hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake; she was soft like morning. He rolled over, the skin of her belly was even softer under his outstretched arm.

“Mmm,” he mumbled.

“Jimmy, you have to get up,” she said, nodding in the direction of their son’s room. “He’s gonna be up soon and I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

James was on his way back to LA before the sun turned the hills red.

He still has her Honda.

This year, he will be 43.)

James takes a couple of hits, passes the joint to Dave. He takes it this time without any comment. Shoulder against shoulder and James can feel Dave’s thigh, hard next to his own. He smells like soap and clean laundry.

“So that whole walking the dog, getting discovered story…bullshit?” James asks.

Dave laughs. “Nope. Total fact. Was out walking Blue on Monday, and on Thursday I was auditioning for Buffy.”

“No shit,” James says. “You didn’t even wanna be an actor?”

“Well..yea, I thought about it. But, I mean, it wasn’t like a life goal or anything,” Dave answers. James is staring at him. “You never wanted to be anything else, did you?”

“God, no,” James says. He’s gonna die old on some cruddy stage in Seattle doing a lame production of 'Death of A Salesman', but he’s not gonna do anything else to make a living.

“Not ever?”

“Nah…I mean, maybe when I was like, five, I wanted to be an astronaut or some shit, but this is …this is all I know. The hell else am I gonna do? ”

Dave nods.

“What about you?” James asks.

“I dunno,” Dave says around another shrug. “I used to think this was just another way to make money. Used to paint houses and park cars, thought this was pretty much the same. That acting was just a job.”

“And now?”

Dave takes another swig of scotch. Doesn’t answer.

Then he’s pulling James to him as quick and easy as he did the bottle. Hard kisses, teeth and bruise, sharp and dark. And James can’t tell if they’re burning or building bridges here. Just knows that Dave is making small, desperate noises in the back of his throat, and that his own hands are running up and down Dave’s back in a rhythm that’s a lot like comfort.

And that it’s all a bit like power, to kiss and to pet until Dave is calm, until the fists holding James’ tshirt loosen and Dave makes quieter, whimpering sounds. James feels them every single one of them in his dick.

(On his knees on the kitchen floor, and everything was hard.

The tile under him. Dave’s cock in his fist. His own cock, slammed and twitching up against the denim and zipper of his Levi’s.
What he really wanted was to fuck Dave right through that sparkly white kitchen counter. Find out how far those jock legs bent back. Leave bruises on thighs and hips so broad, James’ palms could barely span them.

But Dave was already bruised and not particularly bendable, and James was used to settling for next. Sat Dave down in the kitchen chair, slid his hips forward and knelt between his legs.

“Gonna think about this, next time you’re having breakfast,” James said, scratching clean red lines down the inside of Dave’s thighs. They were gone by the time Dave scowled.

But he swallowed Dave’s cock in one quick flash slip slide of open, still smirking mouth, and he pressed his nose right to Dave’s stomach and he yanked those wide hips forward harderfastergiveme. And then Dave wasn’t scowling anymore.

Slipped his fingers into his own mouth on the next updown stroke, and Dave shifted on the seat, arched up, made a noise that sounded hungry. Needful. Wounded. Just like sex. Slid those same two fingers up inside, and got something like a howl.

Left bits of themselves all over the sunlit room: sweaty handprints on glass tables, spit and cum on plaid napkins, and baseruttingmale noises under the silent whisper of the brass ceiling fan.

And when Dave came, he knocked his arm against the table, knocked over the cookie jar in its center, spilled shards of glass and animal crackers all over the red and white tile floor.)

“Think I’m gonna buy everyone lunch tomorrow,” Dave says. His hand is still on the back of James’ neck.

“Everyone?”

“Yea,” he answers, dropping his hand and gesturing in a big circle, as if indicating all of LA. “Cast. Crew. Everyone.”

“Dude, there’s like a hundred people on that set in any given day.”

“Yea,” Dave says, frowning, “So?”

“So….you’re gonna buy lunch. For a hundred people.”


“They all just got fired. From my show. Sort of the least I can do, isn’t it?”

And James thinks of saying something smart, about Jesus complexes and Dave taking his role a little too seriously. Except that Dave actually means it. Ten years from now Dave will still be playing football with Chris on the weekends, and having Julie and her husband over for barbeques. The guy in video editing will still get the Boreanaz family Christmas card.

James has kept one person’s phone number from the Buffy set. Michelle handed him her cell phone number at the Wrap Party, scrawled on the back of a pink business card in big loopy print. Looked up at him from under way too much mascara and said she still wanted him to “teach me how to play guitar.”

He’s seen the movie stills of her in that blue bikini. He has not called that number.

But he will one day. He knows that much, same as he knows they’re not going to play guitar.

James wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

(James had his fingers on the doorknob when the better halves of Boreanaz pushed open the door.

7Am, and the wife already had that urban casual chic thing going, the kind of look which requires really good breeding or an even better plastic surgeon. The kid- Jason? Hayden?- was bigger than when James saw him just a month ago, fat little starfish hands slimmed down, grabbing onto his mother’s shoulder with a fierce purpose while she carried him into the house.

A very large dog followed, stuck its nose in James’ crotch.

“Jesus!”

“Sorry,” she said. Jaime. Her name’s Jaime. “Blue really likes boys.”

Deep, sleepy laugh from the couch and the kid started to squirm, trying to get down.

“Daddydaddydaddy”, repetitive chant and funny little ‘I surrender’ walk until Dave said “Hey, slugger,” and scooped the kid up next to him.
Jaime grabbed the dog’s collar, ushered the thing in a direction away from James’ personal parts. When she bent down, it occurred to him that depsite his age and a ridiculous amount of experience, Dave’s wife actually had the largest breasts James had ever seen.

She kissed Dave on the mouth, fluffed up the pillows around him and James felt the sudden urge to hide the banana he’d swiped on his way out the door behind his back. Could still taste Dave, fruit and sweets and trembling things, in the back of his throat.

“I’m gonna go,” he said, to no one in particular.

“Was gonna leave without waking you up,” he added, when Dave looked up at him.

“Oh. Ok. Uhm. Thanks for- everything.”

Jaime smiled at him then, white teeth in a small face, and James was suddenly acutely aware that he hadn’t changed his clothes in nearly three days.

“Welcome,” he said. “Nice seeing you again,” tossed over his shoulder at Jaime.

Dave’s driveway was much longer than James remembered.

And he’d never been grateful for having only one lousy scene in an ep before, but he was just then. Wanted to go to work, hit his mark, then spend the entire afternoon getting stoned out of his mind and forgetting this weekend ever happened.

It was the latter, of course, that proved to be fucking impossible. He was on the beach and his third joint, and *still* thinking about Jayden, his Superhero t-shirt, and his little Philly Flyer’s baseball cap. Wondering if there were things every boy does just to make his father proud, without ever understanding where the need or knowledge comes from. Or if every boy was just part of some collective unconcious, with universal desires to play ball and kick ass, to fly and grow up to become some pretty blonde girl’s hero. But he was too stoned to figure it out just then, and by the next day, he’d already forgotten to care.)

James looks over at Dave, staring into the blue black without blinking, holding the joint between his index and middle fingers like it’s a cigarette. There’s a small patch of skin right by Dave’s left ear that’s scarred. Like it healed wrong after a burn, or bad acne. James never noticed it before.

“Hey,” he says, knocking his shoulder against Dave’s.

Raises the bottle. “Here’s to Batman.”

He’s still not sure that Dave is even gonna remember that reference, hell, the entire conversation around it, as wasted as he was when it happened. But Dave smiles, huge and sparkly and real, the way he did when his wife and kid came back after that weekend away. And James doesn’t care that he’s not the reason for that smile, he’s just obscenely happy to have put it back there.

“To Batman,” Dave agrees, lifting his glass.

They drink. It’s hot and welcome in James’ chest, but cold behind his eyes, and when it settles in his belly, it makes him shiver. Fast and uncontrolled, and over just as quickly.

“You all right?” Dave asks, looking at him, frowning.

“Yea,” James says. “”It’s just colder out here than I thought it would be.”

Brush of Dave’s leather coat against James’ bare arm as he tosses the joint off the roof. Twenty stories and it’s out before it hits concrete.

“Yea,” Dave says. “Yea.”

-End


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