Oliver Stone's famous actors' bootcamp in Morocco continues. It quickly grows tiring, smelly, filthy, hot. The food is bad, and the lads are puking more often than not. It feels real, like an authentic ancient Macedonian soldier's life. I miss air-conditioning, swimming pools, and showers. Every morning, I wake up to the sound of vicious, violent diarrhoea. I get out of my tent, splash water on my face and scream, "Wake up, turds!"

I'm still leading one thousand extras into battle; we won't stop method-acting until the film is wrapped. Our only reprieve is the days that are intensely packed with shoots.

Today, we're get ready to film the battle planning session with Alexander and his companions.

I follow Jared around like a lost puppy. He looks so gorgeous from behind with his girly hairstyles and pretty clothes.

He has me so confused it hurts.

Jared turns around and huffs a sharp sigh upon sensing my presence.

"Do you fucking mind?" There may be a small smirk on his lips.

I open my mouth to say something but then chicken out. Scratching the back of my neck, I shift my weight for a bit before deciding to just flee.

Hair and makeup is never fun. These wigs are hell. I'll be going from Joanna Lumley in The New Avengers to David St Hubbins in This Is Spinal Tap.

Once the girls are done with me, we film Alexander's consultation with the companions.

Jared is completely fucking with me, flashing me those smouldering, half-lidded fuck-me eyes every five seconds and making it completely impossible to focus.

Stone is happy with the second take, but wants to get more closeups of me delivering my lines. He gives me some coaching on how to school my expression, the emotions I'm trying to illicit in the audience, and so on. It's not easy focusing on delivering my part well with Jared standing right beside him scrutinizing my every move in a fucking pencil skirt. But I've trained for worse.

***

When we're not filming, we continue to ride and train. We've all been learning impressive bareback horse-riding skills. In skirts.

Jared is in great pain.

"I think there's a small ulcer under my testicle," he confides to me.

He lets me ride his horse, which is the closest I'm going to get to riding him, and - yeah, I need help.

Now that filming has picked up, maybe something will happen between us. Something has to happen. I've got months on set with the handsome American, after barely ever running into him for a year. I've never felt so needy and desperate before - and never for a man. It's exhausting. I keep replaying our embrace outside the camp on the eve of battle in my mind. If we do many more of those, I'm going to come inside my costume, that is a fucking promise.

Angelina has brought her son, Maddox, to the set and he loves the camels. I try to mosey on up to her whenever Jared's looking, remembering our bet. But Angelina is professional and cutthroat, and wants to be nothing more than mother and son - at least while we're on the set. Besides, she's obsessively doting of her son and doesn't interact much with the rest of us.

I continue to help Jared with his accent, which I'm sure he thinks I do out of the generosity and kindness of my heart as opposed to my desperation for any excuse to be around him.

It turns out that he's a little bit obsessed with Ireland, which I have chosen to be flattered about.

He wants to travel to Dublin with his band, which he says is a very close place to his heart. The first time he was in Dublin was in 1995. He loves the accent. "I talk with Irish people and I feel like I need to just shut up," he quips.

The Last of the High Kings was his very first film, and it was an Irish movie; he played a young man from Howth.

I had to - still have to - work hard to recover my original Irish intonation, it's so buried under my American accent. I'm worried it will slip during emotional scenes, particularly with Jared, who makes me feel like I could lose my head completely.

Stone has decided to go with an English accent for all of us. Welsh for Anthony and Elliott, Scottish for Rory, and Irish for the rest of the main cast. Aristotle, the most educated, speaks the 'king's English.' Jared is the only one who has to learn the accent from scratch. I had to work to convince Stone that he could do it, but now here he is. Fucking props to me, confining myself to a perpetual state of agonizing sexual torment.

Lunch is more of an opportunity to hang out with the lads than it is about the pitifully rationed and highly questionable food.

Today, I show them pictures of newborn baby James, my first son. They're shocked to learn that he was born only a few days ago, on September twelfth.

"What," Elliott stresses, "the actual fuck...are you doing here?"

I scratch the back of my neck. I'm not given a chance to respond.

"You never mentioned you had a girlfriend." Jared frowns.

"You are the worst boyfriend ever," Gary accuses.

"Uh, yeah," I mutter remorsefully. James' mom, a hot model, sure thinks so. I don't have the heart to tell Jared that my son was born from a one-night-stand, and Kim isn't really my girlfriend. My most recent conquest is Amelia, and there are plenty more where she came from.

"I've been stuck here in Morocco," I sigh. "I couldn't make it back to the States-"

"She was pregnant for nine months," Elliott deadpans. "You could've put off work."

"This is Oliver Stone's passion project," I insist. "It's insane how much work has gone into this already. I had to do this."

"I get it," Jared shrugs. "I've been a fan of Oliver's since I was a kid. He's done some of the best movies in the history of cinema, you know, Platoon, JFK, Natural Born Killers, Salvador, fucking Scarface... I'm so lucky to be working with him. We all are."

"But, priorities, man," Gary stresses.

"I mean, it's not like I planned this..." I manage stiltedly, heaving a burdensome sigh and raking a hand through my hair.

Elliott levels me with a flat stare.

"I'm a fucking piece of shit, okay? I have problems with drugs, parties, booze and women. This time, I was too drunk to remember a condom. But I love my son. He - I will cherish him. But his mother, I..." I draw my hands despairingly over my face. I have a horrible track record when it comes to relationships. I got married, spur of the moment, non-legally-binding, two years ago. Broke it off a few weeks later. I have been with, like, a thousand women. I need help, fuck.

"Guys, stop judging." Jared smirks softly. "I get it. I'm kinda the same. A bit more low-key, never forget the condom, but otherwise the same." He rolls his eyes. "Besides, I expected nothing more from Hollywood's bad boy."

***

Rodrigo Prieto, our cinematographer, is concerned about the lighting on the day of the Macedonian amphitheater shoot.

"The light that time of day will be different to what we do now," I overhear him tell Stone as they look at the sketches, "but let me go look."

I know that it's always dangerous; everything we do is dangerous. Stone drives off the moment, the spontaneity, and it's not improvised. We're always on the verge of losing the light, of being out of focus, of everything being terribly wrong technically, but that makes every shot exciting and nerve-racking.

Today I manage to snag the seat right next to his. His makeup artist even lets me try painting battle wounds on Jared's face.

I have a question about the upcoming take, so when I spot Stone sitting down propped up against a wall with some of the crew, I approach him.

"So, you're doing my-"

I realize he's sleeping. "Wake up, you!"

I sit down beside him while the others chuckle, trying to extract some guidance for my next scene. Stone wakes up and smiles blearily.

Sean comes up behind me with his camera, still filming for his documentary.

"How come you two get along so well?" he asks.

"We don't," I grin. "We hate each other...hate each other. I'm the only person he puts on a social mask for. He pretends to like me."

A few hours later, Stone is changed, rested and refreshed. The lighting is perfect. I easily spot Jared's face in the crowd of extras and actors. It's hot out, so he's once again tied his hair up all cute. Even though it's just temporary, I like to think he's done it for me.

We film the first take, and then the second, and the third - and Stone still isn't happy. I could be frustrated with the guy - I'm tired and sweaty and bored of this scene - but I share in his determination that everything has to be perfect. It's a massive project, more expensive than the latest The Lord of the Rings movie. We can't afford any mistakes. So we break, and Stone coaches us some more, and then we reconvene after lunch to resume shooting.

I'm at the front of the amphitheatre with Toby, Val, Stone and some other execs now. It's loud, Stone is communicating with Jared over portable radio.

"Can I have that for a sec?" I reach for the radio. "I wanna tell Hephaestion something."

Stone narrows his eyes at me.

"Or you could get back to your mark," he offers instead. I nod dejectedly, contending myself with drinking up Jared's beauty from afar instead. Fuck, he's easy on the eyes. Fuck.

He's a piece of work. The way he's man-spreading, I don't know if I'll remember one of my lines.

All day long, I've been staring at Jared's gorgeous thighs.

Beautiful hair, hot-as-hell face, thigh bones stronger than concrete... I'm having a major gay crisis and it couldn't be going worse.

The thing is, normally when I find someone attractive, I can get them in my bed the same day. I'm not used to paying cat-and-mouse, and it's agonizingly humbling.

Phillip's death goes amazingly - finally, a scene we nail on the first take. Jared proclaims me king and shouts my name in front of the masses of wedding guests. We're such a fucking iconic power couple.

"That was great, that was great," Stone applauds us individually. Then his gaze lands on me. "That was terrible! You sucked! What kind of face is that?"

Well, so much for nailing it on the first take.

Never has there been a more honest director than Oliver Stone. This man doesn't coddle anyone.

He goes on to explain that I'm not supposed to be depressed; I'm supposed to terrified. I'm the new king, and I haven't prepared myself mentally for this.

"I want to see you shaking," Stone stresses. "This is a huge role being thrust upon you and you're literally quaking in your boots."

After we wrap on the second take, I follow Jared behind the set. Sean follows too, with his ever-present camera and questions.

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"How do you two pick your projects," he asks.

"Go for cash," I quip, looking at Jared and exchanging grins.

"I go for location," he offers.

"I open up the first page; if I'm on that, I go to the last page; if I'm on that, I do it," I smirk cockily.

Sean continues to ask me questions.

"What's your favourite part of filming a movie?"

"It's not the watching, it's not in the looking at, it's... You find nothing there, I find nothing there. It's just in the doing. It's purely in the doing." I notice that Jared's distracted. "Isn't that right, Hephaestion?"

His eyes widen a fraction as his brain plays catch-up.

"No," he finally asserts, "it's not."

He'd disagree with anything I said, the fucker.

***

Jared wants to go shopping for jackets, and I insist on coming along like the annoying loser puppy I am.

"There." I point at the massive marshmallow floof jackets. "That's what you need."

Jared chuckles, biting his lip as he approaches the stand. He runs his hand over the material. "Yeah. True. I'll take the navy blue one."

I pick out a matching silver one.

"We're gonna look so ridiculous on set." But we'll be twinning. And that, I feel, is one hell of a statement. Hands off, everyone; he's with me.

On our way back to camp, Jared tells me more about his movie roles. I'm surprised to learn that this isn't his first gay role. Apparently, he seduced Robert Downey Jr. in his 1999 film Black & White. Then he slept with a guy in Sol Goode, in 2001.

"Why are you auditioning for all the gay roles?" I ask him. I know what I'm hoping to hear him say. That he's maybe a bit interested in guys. That he's interested in me.

"I'd play a gay role any day of the week," he says, clearly comfortable with his overt heterosexuality in a way that leaves me somewhat deflated. "But I never understood this part that way. Alexander married at least twice, had children; he consumed people...he didn't have that kind of preconceived morality, he just expressed himself openly."