(CW: ableism, sanism, eating disorders)
The horror. The horror. It is upon us, dear readers. I must have hoped that, like death, somehow we could put this off as long as possible, but it comes for us all in the end. This is the chapter where the fucking starts.
Technically, it’s not penis-in-vagina, which is the only kind of fucking Wesley and Azrael would consider real sex, but it’s close enough for discomfort.
We start the chapter out in Wesley’s POV and he’s bleating on mentally about needing to know what she knows because “women’s lives are at stake” and he needs to protect her. Considering that they’ve been on one date that he essentially forced her to go on and they’ve made out two or three times (depending on how you classify what happened after she told him about sensing evil), he got very possessive very fast. In fact, he was possessive in the first book before they’d even kissed, while Azrael was still telling him to fuck off and keep his hands to himself.
I want to know what Wesley thinks he knows. Up until now, there’s been no indication that the Sunnydale Police Department think there’s a serial killer on the loose, which Oren isn’t because we’ve only been told about one victim that he did not kill; that was Dory and Myer. Then again, they didn’t think that when Azrael and Dr. Chiles were running around making and killing the cancer people either. So far, we’ve had one dead woman and one attempted kidnapping, and there’s no actual provable connection between the two. We know Oren’s behind it, but none of the characters have any clues about who was behind what happened to Dead Tortured Lucy. That’s player knowledge, not character knowledge.
If there was supposed to be a serial killer running around, that would have been better for the book. The writer could have invented a citywide Special Task Force to deal with this killer, and Wesley could have been invited to join the Task Force. It would have been a damn sight better in terms of believability than having Wesley handle every case that Azrael’s involved with, regardless of whether it’s his jurisdiction or not.
Azrael starts questioning him about cop intuition because she’s drawing a parallel between what he senses and what she feels when she gets the holy kill orders. Somehow Wesley finds this believable, but:
A small part of his subconscious insisted that the mentally insane often used sound logic as well.
The “mentally insane?” Are there physically insane people? Please provide an example of that. I don’t know why this adverb is there. Insanity is strictly mental and the qualifier is not needed. But now Wesley’s articulated to himself his concerns about her mental state. At least he isn’t trying to give us a layman’s diagnosis of what he thinks her specific condition is. Is it weird that he’s just used the word insane in connection with her in the chapter where they get to third base for the first time?
And if it’s your subconscious, by definition you wouldn’t be conscious of it, because it’s your subconscious. And he instantly denies what he suspects and reveals he has some pretty troubling attitudes toward people with mental illness.
No. He wouldn’t think that. Gaby was, despite her upbringing and lack of formal education, more intelligent and lucid than almost anyone he knew. It was her astute perception of her surroundings that colored everything.
Number one, you don’t have to be stupid to be mentally ill. Depression is a mental illness. Bipolar disorder is a mental illness. Neither of these have any effect on intelligence. John Nash of A Beautiful Mind was a mathematician at MIT and Princeton and discovered non-cooperative equilibria, or Nash Equilibrium, and did important work in the field of game theory. Doesn’t sound like a stupid person to me.
Number one-A, I don’t agree that Azrael’s intelligent. Wesley needs to believe it as a sop to his own ego, but she only shows evidence of intelligence when it’s plot-required. She may be intelligent in that respect, but she isn’t smart. If she were smart, she would have left town in chapter 4 of the first book.
Number two, mental illness doesn’t necessarily make you confused. Again, depression and bipolar disorder are both mental illnesses, but people with these illnesses can be lucid. Mental illness doesn’t make you a homeless person raving in the street. This stereotype comes from Ronald Reagan’s shuttering a lot of mental institutions, with the result that a lot of mentally ill people were forced onto the street.
Her “astute perception of her surroundings?” You mean like when she zoned out for eleven hours walking around town in search of a demon, or like how she never can tell when you’re behind her and keeps getting surprised? I don’t think you should pin your argument on this.
And how do her “upbringing” (about which he knows next to nothing) and her “lack of formal education” (of which his knowledge is limited to the fact that she only completed the eighth grade and was pulled out of school by “Father,” which he assumed was a priest in the face of no evidence, rather than Azrael’s biological father) impact her mental illness or lack thereof? There is an inherited component to schizophrenia, and he might have wanted to look into her mother’s background about that, and abuse in childhood can contribute to that, but the text has already told us there was no substantive abuse present. I guess the “lack of formal education” figures into his thinking that only stupid people have mental problems.
Hey, Wesley, you can’t determine whether she’s insane. You are not a psychiatrist or trained mental health professional. If you really cared about her, you would make sure she got help, but that will never happen because if she got help, you wouldn’t be able to sexually harass her in safety anymore.
Wesley has fully bought into these outdated, prejudiced attitudes about mental illness, which is another reason why he will never get her help. He believes in the stigma around mental illness and getting treatment for it, so he’ll continue believing in her sanity and making sure she never gets into a situation where she might be exposed to professionals who could diagnose her.
When she describes what happens to her, it’s specifically mentioned that he’s “scared.” Almost immediately after this he decides to stop questioning her. In the text it’s associated with her shoulders “drooping,” but I think it’s because of what he’s afraid she’ll tell him. This is one of the acts the story wants us to see as kindness but is actually self-serving.
Also, he calls her an orphan in his mind. She told him that she was an “orphan at birth” in the first book, but she also referred to “Father” homeschooling her. Wesley was never told about Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers but has that information anyway, because the writer knows it. What does he think happened to her biological father? Didn’t he investigate that when he was looking into her background in Awakening for the purpose of harassing her better?
There are some implications of the homeschooling I didn’t get into. Because of this, she certainly doesn’t have any kind of diploma, which will shut her out of any number of jobs, as would her lack of identification. I went into the impact on buying her car, but she also wouldn’t have had that job at Morty’s comic book store unless he was paying her under the table because she wouldn’t have a Social Security number. She also wouldn’t have been able to rent the apartment she was living in when she was eighteen and a demon-killing went bad, but for that one she may have been living with Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers. And, most importantly, she wouldn’t have been able to rent that post office box in another town where Morty sends her royalties because the US Post Office requires two forms of ID to rent a P.O. box—one photo ID and one non-photo ID. And just in case anyone makes the argument that she used fake ID, we’re told explicitly on page 71 of this book that she had “[n]o IDs at all.” That would include false ones.
Anyway, he puts his arm around her waist (without permission) and tells her they need to get sleep. Not asks if she wants to leave, not suggests it, but tells her. Because he’s the hero. And leads her out of the hospital without her agreement. The excuse for her non-resistance is tiredness. Not sure why, since she’s never demonstrated any real physical limitations in the series yet and hasn’t eaten in the three days that seem to have passed since the start of the book. I’ll figure out the timeline later.
Then we get the biggest howler yet, bigger than the one in Awakening when Azrael won a fight with Wesley after she told him three times to let go of her and he refused three times and tried to assert authority as a cop, then he lied about what happened to Morty, then the book had Azrael agree with his lying version of what happened. Here, for your enjoyment:
He was used to her mouthy ways, her caustic wit, and her never-ending harassment.
What the crap? Holy fucking shit! Her harassment? HER HARASSMENT?
Listen up! She has NEVER harassed you. She would be content if she never saw you again, and better off too. YOU are the one who stalked her. YOU are the one who forced her to go on a date with you. YOU are the one using threats and manipulation to maintain a relationship with her. YOU are the one who has grabbed her by the arms twenty times so far to prevent her from leaving your presence or to assert your dominance. YOU are the one who has initiated and forced sexual contact on her against her will. YOU are the one who has abused your authority as a police officer to assist you in stalking her. YOU are a power-abusing sex offender and don’t you ever forget it! In other words,
FUCK YOU, YOU GASLIGHTING NIGHTMARE OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE!
Ahem.
During that three-page-long slog in the previous chapter, they made an agreement to share information with each other, which in his mind means she tells him everything and he tells her only what it suits him to tell her because he’s the man around here. He thinks she’s violating this agreement by not talking to him. Here’s what he says after that.
“Listen up, Gaby.” When she turned tired eyes toward him, Luther almost softened. Only the need to know she’d be unharmed kept him from retrenching. “I’m going to drop you off at your apartment, and I damn well expect you to stay there.”
Just the constant commanding, the constant disrespect, not to mention the violence. He treats her like a child at every moment, excepting the moments when he wants to fuck her. I’m going to leave this link here, without comment.
To Train Up a Child – Wikipedia
She doesn’t come at him full force like she would have in the first book, but she tells him she might need to protect the sex workers. And how would she know that? She doesn’t have a cell phone for them to call if they need help (it’s pretty stupid of her not to have thought of this), and God isn’t sending orders for her to protect them, so her protection is basically limited to looking out her window if she abides by his orders and stays inside.
And what specific threat is Wesley worried about? He doesn’t know Oren’s focusing on Azrael. This is just him being possessive and controlling because she’s a helpless vagina-haver. Can’t imagine how much worse it’ll get after they fuck. I hope he never watches Boxing Helena, or Azrael has a very bleak future in store.
So he takes her hand because it bumped his and laces their fingers. This is the prelude to a whole bunch of that “erotic imagination” that muddied up his aura with violet.
She starts talking about how johns aren’t evil, just “wretched.” Wesley figures out her evil detection isn’t for standard evil and the preacher inside him disagrees with her, because “Men who pay for sex are not the best of men…” Trick Dude and Brooks Brothers Trick thank you for your unsolicited opinion, Pastor.
Wesley can’t bring himself to put her in the car and take her home because his boner makes him “helpless,” and she mentions that she can see his boner in his aura. Not in those words, of course, because that would be funny. She just mentions his “raw energy” is “dancing.” And he calls this seduction.
At this point I want to remind everyone that he’s 98% positive that she’s murdered seven people that he knows of, and a few of those weren’t even strong enough to get out of their beds. Apparently he closed a case suspecting the real killer was still on the loose but he didn’t care. She is still running around armed and intended to kill a child (Vlasic Dill Beaver Cleaver) in front of him. He has no reason to believe she won’t kill Oren in front of him. Wesley has had several chances to arrest her and hasn’t acted on any of them, to the point where she’s called him on making empty threats. And he’s entertained the thought on more than one occasion that she’s mentally ill and denies it because he wants to fuck her. That’s our hero in a nutshell.
Azrael opines that sex looks interesting but she thinks it’s disgusting. That would fit into the asexual label she claimed for herself in the first chapter of Awakening, but I don’t think the author did any research into asexuality because she apparently decided the right man would turn Azrael around and make her just peachy-keen with sex.
Wesley the preacher tells her that “What you’ve seen is the dregs of society copulating.” Bliss and Red Betty and Dead Tortured Lucy thank you for your high opinion of them. And wasn’t he supposed to be investigating Lucy’s murder, even though it was outside his jurisdiction? He hasn’t done a lick of work on it that I’m aware of, so at least he’s continuing his pattern of shirking work. Plus, as a homicide detective, Bliss’s attempted kidnapping isn’t his case, as no murder was committed. That would be under the jurisdiction of the criminal investigators of the Sunnydale PD. But let’s watch the story ignore that since he’s the hero and is the bestest cop ever in Sunnydale, no fooling.
He uses the phrase “making love,” and she scoffs at this by saying, “…it sure as hell has nothing to do with a man sticking his dick into a woman until he grunts and moans.” His response to this? Right in line with being an unworldly preacher as he mentions her “coarse ways” and “…her porn-star descriptions still had the power to shock him clean down to his toes.” A little more backstory on Wesley—he has never been within a country mile of porn.
All of this undercuts the depiction of him as being a worldly thirty-two-year-old cop. He sounds far too old, like Azrael sounded too old when she was making observations about Morty in the first book like she was his mother. Wesley also sounds like he’s fresh out of a monastery in 1913. It’s poor characterization.
By the way, what religion is Wesley? I assume he’s some variety of Christian as it’s the majority religion in the United States, and the things he says and the attitudes he holds makes it seem like he’s with one of the stricter sects, despite the fact that he doesn’t say anything overtly religious. We know he wears a cross but he frames that as being a memento of his dead grandmother. This will probably be brought up closer to the God’s paladin revelation. I wonder if that’s going to be reserved for the third book.
She doesn’t agree with him, and he gets an idea about how to manipulate her that makes his pee-pee hard. He tells her (as usual) that they “won’t have intercourse, since you say you aren’t ready.” The phrasing there makes him sound like he thinks she’s lying about not being ready for sex, the way he thought she was lying about Rapist Guy raping Bliss. Or maybe he doesn’t think she knows what she wants or what she’s seen. Either way, it’s an assertion of superiority. He also phrases it in terms of proving his point about sex being something best reserved for a committed love relationship, preferably one ending in marriage. He didn’t say the last part, but it’s assumed when a pastor expresses the idea.
Then he goes straight into some goal-oriented sexual fantasizing and takes a look around to make sure nobody’s in the parking lot and assures himself that it’s too late for anybody to be at the hospital. This is definitely the hospital where Dr. Chiles worked. Remember how Azrael and Morty, two non-relatives, could visit Wesley after midnight for a non-life-threatening condition without anyone expressing an objection? He also tells himself his car will block the view of anyone who does show up. The text specifically says this is a parking lot, so I can’t see this being possible. Maybe if it was a parking garage, but why would you even bother, Wesley? The crowds vanish unless you need them to be there.
Just FYI, most hospital parking lots have those orange vapor lights every fifteen feet or so. There may not be anyone in the lot itself to see you having sex with Azrael, but what about the people in the building? Due to the nonexistent description of the hospital, we don’t know how big it is, but I’d bet it’s multi-story since it’s in a medium-sized city. Anybody inside any room in the hospital that faces onto the parking lot is going to get an eyeful, which I don’t think Wesley would really object to.
I’ve noticed that every make-out session they’ve had in this series has taken place outside. The first three were in alleys and the fourth was in a hospital hallway, which wasn’t outdoors but was public, and now this one’s going to be in a parking lot because he can’t let her get into the car first. Wesley seems to have quite the liking for public sex, or “lewdness,” as the story called it earlier when the sex workers were doing approximately the same things outside the phase-shifting motel/whorehouse. Maybe he’s an exhibitionist in addition to being a psychopath? One thing you could say for Trick Dude and Brooks Brothers Trick—they were willing to have their sex in a semi-private car and a private motel room.
So he’s acting all sneaky and shit and that makes her irritated.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Gaby exploded. “Are you planning a murder or worse? What the hell are you up to, cop?”
For crying out loud. Yes, that’s someone with the biggest potty mouth on Earth. Better upbraid her for her coarse ways, Wesley. But what am I saying, that would interfere with the sexing he’s trying to put together here.
So he touches her on the inside of the knee. How does she respond, given her history of violence and hostility toward him trying to initiate sex?
Her eyes widened.
And that’s it, because we’re at the midpoint of the book and the sex has to get real because the reader’s not been punished enough. No, wait, it’s because the reader’s waited long enough. Yeah, that’s it.
Then Wesley goes into his sales pitch about how he can make the earth move and gets his fingers inside her underwear, with a second’s worth of commentary on her plain white cotton panties. So I guess a fingering, then, or maybe he’ll go down on her, since he’s vetoed P-in-V? Well, we’ll get the answer whether we want it or not.
He asks her if she’s feeling it and she’s noncommittal. Since it’s been about two minutes since he’s given her any commands, Wesley goes straight into drill-sergeant mode about what she needs to do, and she doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.
Shit, I really don’t want to do this. So the best way to do it is to get through it quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. It hurts less if you do it that way and it’s over faster.
To summarize, Wesley fingers Azrael and she has an orgasm (her first, needless to say). There are a few moments in it that I find significant in view of themes in the rest of the series, which are the only things I’m quoting. I don’t find anything sexy or even interesting about two unappealing, unsympathetic people doing the sex.
There’s a moment when Wesley commands her to put her arms around his neck. After she does, he has the nonsensical thought, “She stood only three inches shorter than him, and he knew her to be a very capable woman.” But not so capable she doesn’t need your protection 24 hours a day, amirite? And what does her height have to do with how capable she is?
Another moment where it’s stated, “Her compliance filled him with steam.” Not her passion or her desire or her ardor—her compliance. Hey, you know what another word for compliance is? Obedience, like one expects from a child, or a dog. Is she still wearing that dog collar that makes her WESLEY’S PROPERTY? I only ask because it hasn’t been mentioned in a while. Plus the word implies a distinct lack of enthusiasm that isn’t borne out by the rest of the scene, although she is pretty passive in it.
He tells her he’s going to be enjoying her for a bit—no word about her enjoyment—and she agrees. He then has the perfectly characteristic thought,
And so easy to sway when aroused.
That’s slimy, even for you, Wesley, but welcome back to the psychopathic manipulator we all know and love! And by love I mean hate.
I think it’s past time to retire the cliché about women being fools over sexual pleasure. Azrael probably wouldn’t have been so easy to manipulate with sex if she masturbated, but that’s nothing the priest who raised her would have thought of telling her.
Later on Azrael wants to know why sexual stimulation feels good and he doesn’t answer her. This is already creepy as fuck and getting creepier. There’s also a really bad turn of phrase when Wesley observes, “…her nipple [was] supple.” Nipple supple. Nipple supple. Where’s the Bushmill’s again? I need some liquid courage.
Future Me: this scene was so painful I missed something obvious–the word supple. I thought it might be misused under the circumstances and was right. Per Merriam-Webster, in its first meaning, supple is “compliant often to be point of obsequiousness; readily adaptable or responsive to new situations.” Loosely, I could maybe see her using it in the second part of the first meaning, but then that second meaning kicks in. Supple in its second meaning is “capable of being folded without creases, cracks, or breaks; able to perform bending or twisting movements with ease; easy or fluent without stiffness or awkwardness.” I now have the image of Wesley bending Azrael’s nipple to inspect it for cracks.
And we learn Azrael also gets vamp face when she’s horny and Wesley gets turned on by her pure untouched flower of a girl status, which is soon to be only a memory.
The first to do everything with her, wanting to be the only man to ever—no.
He stops himself there because he doesn’t know enough about her. Then you probably shouldn’t be getting to third base if this is such a concern. Didn’t seem to bother you in that alley after the basketball game, though, and she’d already just about confessed to killing Murdered Mutilated Grandpa. You have unanswered questions? No, you have questions for which you refuse to accept the answers.
So she lets out a “savage scream” when she comes and draws blood from his shoulders with her nails—through the shirt, I guess, since we aren’t told he took off his shirt. Wonder if the people in the windows filming this with their cell phones heard her.
Since she’s so limp, he thinks she’s about to go to sleep and has the following thoughts.
With her most immediate problem resolved, he needed to get back on track.
Now the real fireworks would begin.
Not sure whether it’s a typo or whether Wesley thought not having had an orgasm was the problem of Azrael’s that needed fixing so desperately he couldn’t even wait to get in the car with her to do this.
There’s a section break and we’re in Azrael’s POV. It bears out Wesley’s observations that she’s worn out and wants to go to bed. She wants to return the favor (the thought she has is giving him a handjob) but is too exhausted. He tells her that they’re going to have breakfast in the morning and talk to Bliss again. We know she should be able to eat breakfast because Wesley is providing it for her, rather than her getting her own food, which the narrative would not allow her to eat because only men can provide nourioshment.
According to the laws of Wesley’s tribe, now that he’s bestowed her first orgasm on her like a particularly costly gift, she is hereby required to do what he says and obey him forever after. I think that must have been in the fine print that Azrael didn’t read.
So now we get about three pages of “romantic,” “sexual” banter, during which Azrael feels him up, which I am not summarizing because it bores me and I don’t care about either of them. He asks her if 8 AM’s good for her, while we know he’ll show up when he wants because he’s the hero.
They actually do touch on Azrael’s seeming anorexia when she says she doesn’t eat breakfast much and he says they can change that, casting them as a team, which is something you want to watch out for in a manipulator because it forces a sense of intimacy. He also says she needs to gain weight, so I guess he did notice her anorexia but didn’t care.
Azrael looks up at the hospital and describes it as “tall” and “well-lit.” So we know they had an audience, even if they’re both too stupid to have that thought. And she has “a bad feeling” about leaving Bliss. Keep your poor Han Solo imitation away from me, Azrael!
Uncharacteristically, or maybe he’s in a good mood because he’s established sexual dominance over her, he gets out his cell phone and asks to have a uniformed cop assigned to the hospital to watch her. This is the second time we’ve seen him use a cell phone (the first was when he called in Murdered Mutilated Grandpa’s murder), instead of his out-of-place radio. I can cut a pass for using a radio somewhere that doesn’t have cell phone reception, but there still needs to be some rhyme or reason about when he uses the radio compared to when he uses the cell phone. Maybe he should only use the radio for reporting crimes or crime-related incidents?
Also, since when can he just order a cop to be sent somewhere? He isn’t in charge of Bliss’s case since he’s a homicide cop and this isn’t a murder. Did he call the detective who’s actually in charge of the case and ask for extra protection because of his would-be girlfriend’s wim-wams? Did the detective in charge do it because that way he can stop speaking to Wesley faster? That would be my choice.
Wesley offers Azrael a business card and gets “exasperated” when she doesn’t take it immediately. Wow, it didn’t take long after her orgasm for his anger-related emotions to make a comeback. At least he gave her his number? Even though she doesn’t have a phone? Then he says they’re friends and she takes it badly but keeps her mouth shut.
A doctor pulls up in a BMW, parks, and leaves. Wesley watches him like a hawk because situational awareness, which was completely missing during their bout of public lewdness. Then a police car shows up and the uniform he called for (presumably) goes into the hospital. They have a little conversation and none of it is interesting.
So finally he drives her back to the phase-shifting motel/whorehouse and doesn’t say much for a change. There is a bit of talk about how the sex workers won’t stop sexing just because a killer’s on the loose, and they both display pretty superior attitudes.
He waits until she’s inside before leaving and she thinks about the fact that being with Wesley has always desensitized her evil-sensing abilities, or maybe the holy kill orders, as all we’re given is “faculties.” This is a retcon, because we’ve never seen that she can’t get a kill order or sense evil while Wesley’s around. The only thing we’ve been shown that Wesley affects is the severity of movie-Buffy monster cramps Azrael suffers. This seems like an artificial attempt to set up a new conflict now that they’ve had some kind of sex.
She decides to go to bed and, now that she’s had an orgasm, she’s stopped sleeping naked to the point of keeping on her “plain, colorless panties.” White is a color, Azrael; if they were colorless, they’d be transparent. Azrael leaves the window open, even though she has people who want to kill her, but she’s all teenage-girl-crushing on Wesley until Dead Tortured Lucy makes a special guest appearance in her reverie and throws river water (heh) on everything.
Dead Tortured Lucy at least reminds Azrael she needs to keep Bliss safe and thus she decides she has to “cool it” with Wesley. I’m sure this resolution will last as long as it did last time, because she has no spine when it comes to psychopathic manipulators, as long as they’re good-looking. She decides that they won’t be having breakfast in the morning and she won’t be having any more orgasms until after she’s dealt with the not-serial-killer. I’m sure that resolution will also evaporate with his presence. There’s a little more twaddle about her duty which is repetitive of things she’s said before.
And—chapter! I was surprised about how open Wesley was in his own mind about the potential of sexual pleasure to manipulate Azrael, and we are not seeing a beginning to a redemption arc for him yet. Maybe the book doesn’t see a need for him to be redeemed, as he is the perfect romantic hero already—yuck.
Next time, Chapter 9, where Ann Kennedy returns and Azrael engages in some not-so-thrilling heroics.
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