Actor

Written by Anakin McFly

Of course Griffin sees them. It’s what he does; an obsession, almost, craving an acceptance he cannot name and is not sure he deserves, a need for love that mutates sometimes into cold hatred, for how dared he – how dared he create him and abandon him like this. Griffin has nothing left, no one left in his world. He has Jack and he has the actor, the two last people who give his damned life any meaning.

Through his binoculars, he sees them hug. It’s about Neo, he knows, and feels a pang of jealousy. Not-Tim would never cry over Griffin’s death that way.

Or so he thinks.

I don’t hate you, not-Tim told him once, chained to his side in a small room in Kenselton Hotel, but Griffin still can’t bring himself to believe it, especially not with Dem’s words still resounding poisonously in his mind.

Sometimes, not-Tim does think of Griffin, and with more tenderness than Griffin would have ever expected. It was different, seeing him as a person, knowing he was real and not just the half-hearted effort of a movie he’d never meant to be a part of and would prefer to forget. And yet he’d killed. And yet so had Donaka, whose existence secretly gives him so much joy.

But Griffin scares him in a way that Donaka didn’t. He was rogue, never embraced and understood and loved and scribbled about in black notebooks like the others, and that made him unpredictable; it made him dangerous. He doesn’t know what goes on in Griffin’s head. Griffin is a stranger to him. He’s the most independent, the most different... in a twisted way, it made him the most real.

“I don’t hate you,” the actor says to empty air.

It worries him that he hasn’t seen Griffin in a very long time.

Secretly, he hopes he’s all right.

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Griffin lingers on each detail. every word, every nuance, each tilt of the head and curious gaze and casual body-shrug, all those elements of shared identity present in different degrees in all of them: the one thing that binds them all together, the one thing that makes him belong.

but the others aren't here, with him, hunched over a table in the dark studying interviews on a computer screen, pausing the playthrough every now and then to stare more closely at an expression, perhaps replay a gesture, perhaps reach out for his pen to scribble down a note or two. on the desk are sheafs of dodgy fanfiction and interviews printed out in stacks, phrases highlighted, obsessive notes in the margins - things to focus on. things to practice, to seek out in himself and more fully embody; for if he does that... if he perfects that... perhaps he'll become him.

and then... he doesn't know what happens next.

but he wonders, sometimes, lying awake at night, what it would be like for the others to look at him in awed respect, not in contempt and fear.

Griffin hasn't shaved in a while. his beard is coming in in characteristic patches. his face is gaunt, older, from stress. Sometimes his reflection unsettles him. Sometimes he hates it in a different way, for with each day he's looking more and more like the man whose torture he savours in his dreams.

and he imagines - with bitter, glorious anticipation - the look on the actor's face on the day when Griffin finally goes to meet him, and Keanu sees only himself.

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(content warning: dubious consent)

Griffin does not expect to be recognised so soon. A part of him did not expect to be recognised at all, thoroughly unused to fame, too used to the mundane luxury of walking down a street, anonymous.

But the stares had started almost the instant he stepped out onto the street from the alley he'd arrived in, and in a moment of unease he wondered if there was something – his fly down, a stain somewhere, his shirt on backwards – but no, and he was suddenly, extremely, self-conscious of his face.

He ducks his head down, uncomfortable. He's not used to being looked at. He's used to being the one who does the looking. Perhaps he should have brought shades, or a cap, or...

But then he hears the actor's name whispered in the crowds, and something ignites inside him in a flash of anger and pain.

About an hour later, he's falling into bed with a girl. He's driven not so much by lust as by something darker, a violent, angry need, a burning desire to claim and own and be, the thrill of inhabiting a perfect disguise as searching fingers trail their way down his scars – proving to herself that it's him, it has to be him, who else could it be, and she doesn't know why she feels afraid in what should be one of the best and most lucky moments of her life or why she can't shake the nagging sense that something is wrong; something is wrong with him.

But those eyes are the same eyes she's so seen so often on screen, and his voice is unmistakeable. Yet she hesitates as she wraps a hand around his neck to draw him close; a sudden panic, almost, something very wrong, something urgently telling her to run, and her chest tightens.

She's just star-struck, she tells herself, or it's just the nerves, because she's never done this before, and wouldn't have with anyone else, but it was him, the one person for whom she'd have made an exception. And when he'd first caught her staring, and walked over with that smile and that gait...

Griffin smiles again, now, stroking her cheek, and some of the fears melt away. There's no way this can be an imposter. Not this close, this bare, not when she can see every unique quirk of a face and body she's gazed at far too long in close ups on a screen, not when that voice is murmuring her name.

And she tells herself she wants this; of course she wants this, has wanted it ever since that first time his image entered her consciousness and many dreams thereafter, and perhaps it's just that reality could never match up to the fantasies, for he was, after all, still human, only human, and she doesn't understand her blinding urge to struggle free when he takes her face in his hands and kisses her.

He's gentle. She tells herself she wants this.

When they're finished, her head lying on his chest, her body still trembling, it takes all her willpower not to run.

Eventually, Griffin gets up. He kisses her on the forehead. He puts on his clothes.

After he leaves, she sobs uncontrollably for hours.

She never tells a soul.

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