ii-thiscat-ii said: I want more Richard the Twin Souls actor!

Richard had known there was going to be problems with his latest role.

Demons were still a touchy subject, even now, thirty years after the Transcendence, as people were torn between learning more about them and trying to pretend they didn't exist. And Richard hadn't been chosen to play just any demon, but one of the most controversial of all, in one of the most controversial pieces of demon based literature to come out since the Transcendence.

Alcor the Dreambender, and the long awaited Twin Souls movie.

Richard had expected things to be controversial, but he hadn't quite expected the focus the movie put on him.

Especially not from the fans.

Richard hadn't had a lot of roles so far, so he hadn't had much experience of fans and fandom yet.

And this movie was giving him a crash course in the darkest aspects of mixing reality and fantasy.

Richard was fairly sure he didn't look much like the demon's human-ish form, whether it be the one described in the novels or in first hand accounts, but the hated prosthetics and makeup were supposed to take care of that.

(He especially hated the wing prosthetics and the sclera contacts. The wings refused to look anything but fake, but using CG to add them in later was going to up the budget enough the production crew was still arguing over them. The practical effect wings kept getting caught on things and didn't move naturally, and had a tendency to droop, sometimes falling off completely in the middle of a scene. As for the sclera contacts...it didn't seem to matter how many times Richard put them in, at least one of them always felt like it was inside out within the hour. He wasn't even going to get into the problems with the fake claws and fangs.)

They were going to be shooting the non-demon scenes, where Alcor pretended to be the human boy 'Al' (and why, oh why, would a demon choose to go to high school? The best Richard could come up was the chaos potential in an environment so high in hormones and emotions, but he remembered his own high school years all too well, and it was a particular hell he never wanted to revisit) to buy some time to fix the problems with the props, and Richard had done a few interviews already to promote the film, so people knew he was going to be Alcor despite all the issues. (Mostly due to an iron clad contract, but he mostly left that out of the interviews.)

More importantly, people knew what he looked like now.

Thankfully, most people could tell the difference between movies and reality, so apart from a few fanatics wailing about how dare he play a demon, one in a positive role at that, Richard was mostly left alone.

At first.

Then the promos for the movie really started, letting people know it was filming and releasing behind the scenes shots as well as promotional stills.

And the fanatics really began coming out of the woodwork.

For all that the books were controversial, and (in Richard's opinion) not very well written, they were popular. And their very controversial nature meant that most of those who were willing to admit in public that they were fans of the book were fans in the worst, most obsessive way.

The letters began pouring in, mostly from teenagers, though not limited to that age group.

Letters to Alcor, begging him to help them find their 'Alcor' or 'Mizar', begging to be ravished, for a deal, for all sorts of things they really shouldn't ask of a demon.

Some of the letters left Richard feeling dirty, while others were so depressing he could barely stand to read them, and though he'd sworn once he wouldn't do it, he had to leave most of them to his agent, letting them be filtered before he saw them.

Then came the day he was at a signing for the event, a rare thing during filming, but even directors had to let their stars eat once in awhile (though they made them pay for that at times, with events like these) and the two teenage girls came up to Richard.

The look in their eyes should have warned him, but Richard was still new to this game, still new to the insanity that was a good deal of the Twin Souls fandom, so perhaps it was not quite fair to be hard on him later to not realize what was coming.

The two girls looked up at Richard starry-eyed, and he braced himself for more requests for autographs or spoilers, backstage passes or...and he really didn't like this one...propositions.

Richard really hoped those were because he was an actor and the people propositioning him were star struck and not because of who he was playing.

He...didn't want to think about what it meant if the people propositioning him were doing it because they thought he somehow was Alcor, the demon.

But he had to face it now, as the girls batted their lashes and tried to pose seductively, pouting and asking for 'Alcor', as in the demon Alcor, not the actor playing Alcor, to come ravish them, oh please Great Alcor.

"Oh dear sweet god no," five cameras caught Richard saying. "Why would you even, I mean, holy crap no."

He just wished having that reaction on camera, being interviewed about it over and over, would stop people from acting as if he were Alcor and trying to get him to ravish them, like in the books (or their fanfiction).

Or at least stop offering him things. Especially the raw meat, blood, and sex. Just...just no.

After the fan who cut themself open in front of him to offer 'Alcor' their blood, Richard demanded security for every time he had to go out into public, no matter why he was out.

Honestly, Richard expected protesters at some point. This was a romance movie starring a demon, and it had some questionable ethics involved, thanks to the whole 'demon' part (or at least, that was the excuse Richard was using), so protesting was almost a given.

Heck, the publicists and producers were almost counting on it, for publicity purposes. Cheaper than regular publicity and, for their purposes, just as effective, as people who'd never known they were making a Twin Souls movie found out about it from hearing about boycotts.

So, random churches and morality groups, both morality and 'morality', protesting, was expected and accepted.

What none of them had expected was Alcor and his reaction (and protests) to the movies.

Admittedly, at first, no one knew it was Alcor behind the sabotage. It looked like a string of accidents and plain bad luck, not something demonic. Most demons weren't very good at 'subtle', after all.

If anything, most of them figured Alcor would be, at worst, mildly annoyed by the film – he hadn't done anything to punish people for writing fanfiction that was technically about him, even if they could claim it was the fictional Alcor and not the real Alcor, after all.

(Richard had seen some of those fanfics, despite himself. Personally, he thought Alcor was taking the fanfiction with more grace than could be expected from a demon, unless there was some plan he had involving it. Unlikely, but again, demon.

Richard figured he'd handle it with much less grace and had already resolved to avoid everything Twin Souls related after the movies began to come out.)

At best, the production crew hoped he'd like it, for a portrayal of him that was meant to be positive. At worst...well, the word on the street was Mizar had promised Alcor wouldn't retaliate for Twin Souls related things, so hopefully he kept to that promise.

But things just kept going wrong. Makeup wouldn't work right, props were delivered to the wrong studio, costumes were made with the wrong fabrics or colors or size, special effects looked faker than a fifties B horror movie, a list of problems that grew by the day.

They were little things, all told, mostly things that could be fixed with time and effort (and money) but they were piling up. And each one set the schedule back and made shooting that much more difficult, piling on the extra costs, inching closer and closer to eating up the budget.

So someone had the brilliant idea to try and summon Alcor for help 'un-cursing' the movie.

Richard already was hating every minute of shooting this movie, the source material, and everything associated with both movie and books, so he had no interest in summoning up the demon they were insulting with this train wreck and asking him to fix it. The pay wasn't good enough to die for.

Hell, the pay was barely good enough to keep him working at this, and if he hadn't signed a contract...well. With that contract, if he walked, he was getting blacklisted, and he might never get another job, so he had to endure.

It helped that he was currently playing Alcor as someone who hated himself and his life. It let Richard let off a lot of steam over this movie during filming.

And yet, he was curious enough about the inevitable train wreck this summoning was going to be to watch from the wings, as it were, far enough away to not be involved but enough to see – hopefully.

Sometimes demons could be a little indiscriminate about who was within splatter-range, or so Richard had heard.

Plus...he was curious just how close the makeup department was getting him to the look of the real Alcor. Richard was pretty sure they were going off the books' descriptions of the demon, and he really, really doubted that was how the real thing looked.

And as the smoke from Alcor's entrance cleared, Richard realized just how off the makeup department and novel both were, and he was pretty sure he could see at least one person from makeup taking notes already.

Pictures were more than likely a greater risk than they were worth.

One thing Richard did notice – Alcor may have been floating (and ugh, that was going to be a pain to try and recreate) but he still seemed rather...short, for a demon.

But then again, demons could be just about any form they wanted, right?

So...maybe it wasn't such a disaster. Makeup wise, at least. Hair was doable, if fluffier than expected, at least the costume was going to be super classy if they went with reality as opposed to the novel...

And the contacts, as much of a pain as they were, matched a set of eyes that, while definitely gold on black the way they had been said to be, were glaring at the movie's cast and crew in a look that was decidedly unfriendly.

"What do you want?" the demon demanded, crossing his arms and sneering, obviously unwilling to be here.

"We believe someone's cursed our movie," the producer said, stepping forward, director at his side. "We want to make a deal with you to ensure the rest of the production goes smoothly. And for aid with the special effects."

Alcor blinked at them blankly before he began to chuckle. Chuckles turned to full blown cackling, a demon curled around himself in the center of the circle as he howled with laughter, clutching at his waist as he laughed until he cried.

According to the research Richard had heard producer and director discussing, the circle should have held Alcor to listen to them for fifteen minutes.

Twenty minutes after being summoned Alcor finally calmed down, straightening and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief he pulled from a pocket and disappeared with a little puff of blue fire.

"Well, I'm not sure you have anything you could possibly trade me to help you," Alcor said smugly, examining his claws, a hint of laughter still in his voice. "Seeing as how I'm the one doing all the...cursing, as you called it."

The silence that greeted that announcement was deafening and stunned. It erupted a few seconds later in shocked and confused whispers as the producer and director stared at the demon in disbelief.

"But...why?" the director asked, voice close to a wail, and Richard remembered suddenly that this movie was their baby, their brainchild, the thing they'd worked hard to get greenlit.

Didn't mean Richard hated it any less, though.

Alcor gave the director a glare, as if irritated by their irreverence, before launching into a rant about Twin Souls and why, exactly, he despised its very existence.

Richard found himself nodding along, surprisingly in sync with the demon. Forgetting himself, he stepped forward and added to the rant when Alcor faltered, looking for the words to express his disgust.

Alcor paused, looking at Richard in surprise as the actor joined his venting, and after a few seconds began to grin.

He frowned again when Richard wrapped his rant up with, "but as much as I hate this thing, I have to finish filming it, yanno? Or it's going to be a black mark against me and I won't be able to work again, hell none of us will, and all these delays are just making our hell last longer! I want this tire fire of a movie over with!"

Richard stopped, panting and only slightly embarrassed about his rant, hoping no one caught that on video.

"Boooo," the demon commented, bring Richard's attention to him. "Ugh. Fine. I'll knock it off. But I want drinking and bitching nights with you," he said, pointing at Richard, "until the whole Twin Souls thing dies down. Got it?"

"Can I invite others?" Richard asked.

"Only if they're coming to drink and bitch too," Alcor said.

Richard wondered just what he'd gotten himself into, but...at least he'd finally found someone who hated Twin Souls as much as he did.