a-deed-without-a-name

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Being any kind of creative is awesome because when it's going really good you can feel the fingerprints of God blazing in the living clay of your soul and when it's going bad you fantasize about being hit by a car.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Just found your session notes on ao3, and just wanted to come here to thank you for still using bang!tags correctly! It’s one bit of fandom culture/language that I’ve been very sad to see falling out of use over the past several years, so it was really nice to see them on your fics ❤️

Thank you! That's very sweet.

Now that you mention it, I've noticed them falling out of use recently, too; I switch back and forth between them for my own fics (oops), but that format definitely comes more naturally to me, having been writing fic in earnest for...Christ, a decade and a half now.

It's an artifact of not only the early days of internet fandom, but also the early days of the internet period - something I just recently learned and found very cool. I know it's not exactly needed now on AO3 and other sites, but it's still kind of a bummer to see it becoming more and more archaic. Especially since it persisted strongly enough through the decades between the earliest email routing schema and the early '10s that I picked it up without even questioning it.

(On the other hand, might be kind of interesting from a sociological standpoint, being able to date someone's involvement in fandom based on their use of it. Almost like an accent!)

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Prompt: it might rob Martin of a lot of characterization depending on reading/execution, but— what if he *had* killed Elias in the Panopticon? Followed through on Peter’s original intent

Ohhhhh this is so interesting.

You've got some pretty drastic immediate consequences:

Fearpocalypse doesn't happen, at least not right away (It depends on when Elias wrote his ritual and where exactly he put it)

A good chunk of the Institute staff die - because it's funner for me personally if Elias was telling the truth about that. Vampire rules

Peter probably doesn't drag Martin into the Lonely the way he did as punishment, Martin continues on his path to avatarship

Jon and Martin don't end up together

So what spins off from that, a few months in the future? Maybe a year?

Let's find out.

(Spoiler alert: nothing good.)

It was the sort of thing that usually involved a board, a quarterly budget meeting.  Even for small, private academic institutions.  But the previous administration had seen no reason to involve that sort of oversight, and the new generation were following their lead in that area, at least.  So the director of the Magnus Institute met the representative from the Lukas Family Foundation in a cafe on the other side of Chelsea.

Jon was the only person in the cafe, sitting somewhat awkwardly in his suit.  Even the barista had ducked into the back and not returned.  That was the sort of thing that tended to happen when a place was expecting Martin.

Martin entered exactly when Jon expected him to.  He Knew that he’d checked in at the Institute, but he’d also Known that he preferred to spend as little time inside the building as possible, and where he was most likely to suggest going instead.  As Martin sat down across from him, Jon told him, “I got you a tea.”

“Thank you,” Martin said, and did not touch it.  He was smartly dressed himself, ginger curls neatly groomed and a heavy navy trench coat wrapped around him.  His glasses (a new pair, Jon noted, pricy) seemed to be semi-permanently fogged; there was a long moment where Jon could not see his eyes, before it cleared somewhat.

They were colorless.  What color had they been before?  Jon couldn’t remember.

He cleared his throat.  “How - how have you been?”

“We ought to focus on the Institute,” Martin said, and Jon said, “Fine.”

He brought out the heavy binder he’d put together, laying it on the table between them and beginning to walk Martin through everything.  Progress on the repairs, easing scrutiny from the authorities.  The new security system, badly needed, as Melanie became a growing threat.  Their rising employment costs.

“That’s going well, then?” Martin asked.  “The hiring, I mean.”

He said it so casually it put Jon’s teeth on edge.  “Yes, well.  It’s not exactly easy to more or less rebuild the staff from scratch…especially at the Magnus bloody Institute.”

A workplace shooting, and Legionnaire’s disease.  That had been their story.  The first half had covered those who had died in the Institute when Martin slew Jonah and the damage Trevor, Julia, and Daisy had done; the latter, those who hadn’t been at work at the time.  It was a flimsy story…but when had the Institute ever had anything but?

“The new folk aren’t up to your standards, then?”

“I didn’t say that.  I’m…quite pleased with the archival team, actually.  Lena runs a tight ship.”  Was making more progress with Gertrude’s very intentional mess than he’d ever managed to, that was for sure.  “And the assistants show a lot of promise, too.  Sam in particular.”

“Have you told them?” Martin asked placidly.  Jon hesitated.

“...no.”

“I thought you wanted to be honest.”

“I-I do, I’m going to, I just - I don’t.  I don’t know how to make them believe me.  Not yet.”

“If you say so,” Martin said, and sounded so much like Peter that Jon had a near-physical reaction.  He grit his teeth and changed the subject.

“Look, we both know the financials are solid,” Jon said.  “We don’t really need to go over them.”

“Should I go, then?”

“No.  Good lord, there’s - there’s so much else we need to talk about - ”

“Like what?”

“Daisy, for one.  Have you…heard anything?  Seen anything?”

“No.”

“Still in the wind, then.  I wish…”  Jon stopped himself from finishing the sentence.  I wish we still had Basira to track her down.  “How about rituals?”

“You’d Know more about that than I would,” Martin said, and Jon swallowed his frustration.

“And what about the Extinction?”

“That’s not really the point of this meeting, Jon.”  Martin flipped over a report.

“Surely we can at least discuss it.  It was this huge, looming disaster, and then all of a sudden - nobody wants to talk about it.”  Which was ironically, Jon couldn’t help thinking, what happened with a lot of the things associated with the Extinction.  Warming oceans, rising CO2 levels, garbage patches…

“Things are a bit better than they were, now some of the other powers are stronger,” Martin said with infuriating patience.  “Not quite as urgent.  We’ll let you know when we need your help; for the moment, we’re taking steps on our own.  We’d rather prefer to keep it that way right now.”

“‘We?’” Jon asked somewhat bitterly.  “Or ‘him?’  Or ‘them?’”

“‘I,’ actually,” Martin said firmly.  “It’s my project.  One of them, at least.”

“O-oh.”  Jon was somewhat taken aback, and felt guilty about being so.  He shouldn’t have been so surprised.  “Congratulations.”

“I don’t need it, but thank you.  I suppose.”

“You don’t stutter anymore, you know.”

“Don’t I?”  Martin looked faintly surprised.  It was the most emotion that Jon had seen him display all day.

“Guess you don’t need to,” Jon said.  And it was a low blow, petty and impulsive, and he regretted it as soon as he said it…especially because it was pointless.  Martin’s face didn’t even flicker, and Jon Knew what he was feeling: the same thing he always did.  Nothing at all.  Just a great, flat void inside of him, peaceful and static.

Perhaps that was what had kept him there.  In the Lonely, with the Lukases.  More than anything else.  That…peace.

Could Jon have ever given him that?  He could’ve Looked, he could’ve Known, even if subjective things like that were more difficult.  He shied away from it, and didn’t need to Know to be aware of what a coward he was.

“Why did you leave?” Jon asked, because 

“Why didn’t you?” Martin returned, but it was in that same bland, dreamy tone he’d used for the entire meeting, and for every other time Jon had met with him before.  He’d begun to think of it privately as the “Lukas lilt.”  “You know how.  With Elias gone - ”

“Jonah.”

“ - you might not have even needed to gouge out your eyes.”  Martin continued patiently after the interruption.  “Why didn’t you…burn the whole Institute to the ground?  Why’d you become director?”

Jon said nothing.  Martin nodded.  “I suppose you have your answer, then.”

“I don’t feel that I have much of anything at all,” Jon snapped, and Martin sighed.

“Do you have any more pressing questions, Jon?” he asked him, with the implication heavy in his voice that if he did, he ought to just Know the answers.

“No,” Jon said.  “I suppose not.”

“All right, then.”  Martin stood.  His chair slid back noiselessly.  “Your funding request’s approved.  I’ll talk to you again in three months.

But as it turned out, he actually did have one more question.  It leaped out of him as Martin went to leave.

“Martin…when you killed him.  Eli - Jonah, he’d told us what would happen.  To the others, everyone at the Institute.  Did you…think that he was lying?  Or did you forget?”

Martin paused at the door, looking only halfway back over his shoulder.  His expression was far away, and he took a long time to answer.  Jon waited impatiently, and was about to ask again, more sharply this time, when Martin finally spoke.

“I don’t really remember what I was thinking then, Jon,” he told him softly.  “But I don’t think I cared.”

"I know that's not true," Jon said as he shoved himself to his feet, and now he was angry. "I know you cared. I know how much you cared, and who about, and - and I know that you still do." He stared Martin down. "Somewhere."

"Really?" Martin tipped his head, and chuckled slightly. "Do you Know it?"

Once again, Jon said nothing. The silence that stretched out between them was frigid and desolate, empty as the ocean, as the moors. As the now-collapsed tunnels beneath the Institute.

Finally, eventually, Martin said, "Goodbye, Jon," and left.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Me writing a scene I've looked forward to for literal years

[a-deed-without-a-name]

That, my dude, is quitter talk.

Man I can’t even be freakish about Tenna anymore all I get is sad. The family’s fighting again. I just want him to be loved I don’t have the heart to draw him slutting it up

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Hey— this is a weird one, I would not blame you for not answering it, but: weight gain but make it horrible? Not that it’s not kinky or hot for the reader, but… the inherent horror of a changing body for your character of choice. Would be TMA, would be… probably Stranger or Flesh-coded, for the influencing Fear? Maybe even Eye, if there’s a pairing rather than it being singularly focused. Apologies for this being really vague and sketchy but I’m having a rough time wording what I’m trying to get at

I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying, don't worry!

I'll admit I struggled a bit with this one - a lot of my kink fic has underlying (or overlying) horror to it, but to approach it from that direction consciously from the get-go was new. It was an interesting challenge!

I went through a lot of potential ideas (surreptitious feeding with JMart, Tim gaining weight during his hostile, depressive period after finding out about Sasha's death, something with Elias)...but since you mentioned the Stranger, I kept coming back to one scenario in particular.

I originally wanted to make this a full fic, but I think it actually works better as a drabble/prompt fill. Might come back and flesh it out in the future, but it was fun to write just this much!

Jon knew that Nikola was back before she (if that was even the right pronoun to use; he got the feeling that the thing that called itself Nikola Orsinov didn’t really care) had even said a word.  She approached him from behind in the semidarkness full of its odd, twisted shapes and the smell of wax that was just a bit too much like the oils of human skin, one foot producing the unmistakable tap of plastic on the wooden floor, the other making a somewhat…softer sound.

Then, of course, there was the click and whir of the omnipresent tape recorder.  Something was about to happen.

He tensed.  He’d been touched entirely too much for his liking in the past few hours, the warm, malleable hands of things he tried not to look too closely at rubbing every inch of him with a dozen different brands of lotion.  He felt simultaneously swaddled in a slick layer of it and raw, stripped nearly naked.  Thankfully, when Nikola reached for him with a hum, it was only to yank his gag down around his neck.

As Jon gasped and spat, trying to work some saliva into his bone-dry mouth to rinse away the taste of the none-too-clean cloth they’d used, Nikola rather petulantly announced, “It seems we have a problem, Archivist!  Or you do; another one.  How rude.”

“Oh, do we?” Jon rasped out before he could stop himself.

“Yes!  We do.”  Had she seriously just stamped her foot, like an indignant child?  “You remember I said I wanted to wear you?”  How could he forget?  “Well, my friends measured you when they were taking care of your poor skin and, well…”  She moved around in front of him, and he glared up at her, reluctant to give her the satisfaction of his fear.  “Look at me, and look at you!  You’re so little!  Downright puny!  Forget a frock, there’s barely enough of you for a bodice!”

“Are you going to let me go, then?” Jon asked, and Nikola laughed, a tinkling noise.  As if there were bells ringing somewhere inside her, which for all he knew, there very well might be.

“Oh, you are funny sometimes!  No, no, of course not, silly.  We make do.  We’re going to make you…”  Nikola spread her hands, making a wide, rounded shape in the air with them.  “Bigger!”

That could not possibly mean anything good.  Jon had visions of stretching racks, of the monstrosity that Jared Hopworth had apparently become, according to Gregory Pryor.  Being filled with parts and pieces he had not been born with.  He was decently sure that Nikola and Jared served different powers, but not that different.  Perhaps the two of them were even acquainted.

Maybe Jon would have been better off not knowing.  But he’d find out sooner or later anyway, and he’d always been too curious for his own good.  So he asked (with a quaver to his voice, much to his shame), “Just how’re you - how’re you going to do that?”

“How do you think?”  Nikola jabbed him in the stomach, a concave hollow beneath the undershirt he was wearing.  Jon had always been thin; “puny” was a good descriptor, he could grudgingly admit, and proper nutrition had fallen somewhat by the wayside in recent months, along with other luxuries like sleep and trust.  “We’re going to feed you!  You could do with some fattening up, little Archivist, and we’re going to do a lot more than ‘some!’”  She straightened.  “And we’re going to start right now!”

Sure enough, a new scent had made its way into the waxworks: grease, fat, grilled beef.  Jon pitied whatever poor fast food worker had just had to wait on one of the Circus’s creatures.  As something in a glittery leotard brought in an armload of oil-spotted paper bags, Jon asked Nikola, “And what if I refuse to eat?”

“Oh, I hope you do!” Nikola replied, clapping her hands together with a loud clacking noise before reaching into one of the bags to pull out a hamburger, wrapped in parchment paper.  “Then the fun can really begin!”

That should’ve put Jon off any kind of resistance, along with the fact he was starving, not having had anything to eat since he was snatched.  But he tried anyway, mouth kept firmly closed when Nikola held the burger up to it (since of course there was no way they were going to untie him so he could feed himself).  It was a short-lived rebellion: after he chipped a tooth on one of Nikola’s fingertips and almost choked when she none-too-gently crammed the burger down his throat, Jon submitted…not that that reduced her roughness all that much.  He sullenly chewed and swallowed the chips she fed him by the handful, the soda, the milkshakes, and of course more burgers.  But he really didn’t have much of a capacity to speak of.  It wasn’t long before he was full, then overly full, shaking his head as Nikola reached for more.

“You are so awfully ungrateful!” she scolded him.  “Do you know how much I’d like to actually be able to eat?  Not even a bite for me, or it just gets stuck inside.  I’ve tried borrowing all the long tubes and such, but I suppose they’re just so much more fiddly than a larynx, and I certainly don’t have enough to do with Viscera to - ”

“Please,” Jon panted, letting out a quiet belch because he couldn’t stifle it.  “I-I can’t.  No more.  I’m full, I-I’ll get sick - ”

“Oh, you’d better not.”  Nikola wagged a finger at him.  “Otherwise we’ll have to start all over again, and I don’t think you’d like that very much at all, Mr. Bossy Archivist.”

Jon managed not to vomit, although by the time that Nikola was through with him that first time, he was thinking it might be worth the consequences after all.  His stomach was visibly bloated when he looked down at it, and he could barely breathe.  He hadn’t been in so much abdominal pain since he’d had his appendix removed as a teenager, and as he dozed upright in the uncomfortable chair, unable to stop his own whimpering, part of him was convinced something had gone wrong deep inside, and that he was going to die.  But he didn’t, and Nikola came back with more far too soon.

Part of Jon assumed that Elias or, far preferably, the police would arrive to retrieve him before Nikola’s plan began to work.  But of course that was nonsense.  The weight was all but poured onto him.

He just wasn’t moving anywhere near enough to burn the calories being pumped into him, tied to the chair.  Any attempt to try was swiftly punished.  Oh, they took care not to damage his skin, which in addition to keeping him clean, dry, and lotioned meant moving him frequently so sores wouldn’t develop.  But they only ever did it when he was too sodden with food to even think about running or fighting back, and it just meant being stood up out of the chair with his hands tied to a hook over his head for a while, as if he were a piece of meat.

Nikola quite liked that position.  Said it made his belly pop.  And what a belly it was becoming.

The fat gathered there first.  Jon watched with no small amount of dread and disgust as his stomach slowly swelled and softened.  It was a bit hard to tell at first, since he was quite literally always stuffed to the gills, but it was hard to deny the presence of a potbelly as it strained against his shirt and boxers, then spilled out of them, then spread into his lap in two distinct rolls.  It settled on his hips in the form of love handles even as they widened.  Jon’s thighs and calves thickened visibly, and so did his arms - they had to redo the bindings on him.  His chest grew heavy, tits hanging on either side of his belly.  He felt his ass spread, felt the edges of the chair dig into it as he began to overhang it.

Fat had begun to build up around his neck, around his face.  He could feel it when he looked down, which he did often, taking stock of himself as he became heavy enough for the chair to start to creak beneath him.  If he didn’t have a double chin, he would soon.

Jon’s body had always been something he had taken for granted, barely thought about.  Changes in it had gone largely unnoticed, or briefly acknowledged and then unconsciously absorbed into his image of himself; that had been the case even after the attack by Jane Prentiss, which had led to perhaps the largest physical changes since puberty, what with the damage to his leg and all of the superficial scarring.  There was always something else to focus on.  But right now, there was nothing at all, and so as Jon’s body changed, he had no choice but excruciating awareness of everything.  In fact, the damage to his body was the one thing he could track, since he had lost all sense of time, of day and night.  It wasn’t as if he could count the meals.

For all intents and purposes, there were none.  Just one long, hazy feeding session.  He slept, he woke, he ate, he grew, a hog quite literally fattened for the slaughter.  It was a diet dominated by junk food, cheap, greasy, overprocessed empty calories.  They cared too much about his skin to risk real malnutrition, but that was where any concern for his health ended.

When Nikola was displeased with his progress, which seemed to be often, there was a tube and a funnel she brought out.  She threaded the tube into his mouth, sometimes even down his throat, and poured in heavy cream, milkshakes, melted butter, whatever she could think of.  The knowledge of the calories and what they’d do to him bowed out his mind even as the fluid bowed out his groaning, gurgling belly, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight and tried vainly to think about anything else.

Perhaps he would not have been so obsessive if Nikola had not drawn his attention to the new flesh whenever she was around…which was quite often.  He seemed to be her pet project.

It had even gotten to the point where, to a cascade of his horror, shame, and disgust, his stomach growled the moment he saw her, no matter how stuffed he was.  His appetite had swollen to a monstrous size to match his body, obscene.  He’d been trained like a dog.  Or like another sort of animal.

“Look at how nicely our little piggy is coming along!” Nikola exclaimed, grabbing the soft underhang of his belly with a hand sheathed in warm new skin and giving it a rough shake.  “Oink, oink, oink!”  Jon couldn’t hold back a belch, which seemed to delight her…although not for long.  Somewhat reproachfully, she told him, “I know you don’t appreciate it, but you are doing I Don’t Know You a world of good even before we skin you, you know.  All these lovely changes…”  She sighed happily.  “And this is just the beginning.  I think perhaps I’d like a cloak to go with that frock!  Perhaps some matching shoes and gloves, too!  Why, by the time I’m done with you, you won’t even look human anymore!  Aren’t you excited?”

“No,” Jon spat, and Nikola scoffed, giving his overfilled gut a smack.

“Of course not.”

As time wore on, Jon’s surety that he would be rescued waned even as the rest of him swelled and fattened.  He had no doubt that Nikola could tell.

“Oh, you’re doing so well, Archivist!  I do wonder how much you weigh now?  More than twice as much as you did, I’m sure!  Maybe even three times!”  Jointed plastic fingers took hold of Jon’s original chin, tipped him up to look into Nikola’s painted-on face as he gasped and wheezed, fresh off of a particularly brutal feed.  “What fun!  I do wonder if we ought to bring in a mirror before we shuck you…”

Jon squeezed his eyes shut, but there was nothing he could do about his ears as Nikola laughed with sincere, childlike delight.

“You won’t hardly recognize yourself!  I wonder if your Elias would…”

[a-deed-without-a-name]

I lost my job! 🤗

(Survived the first round of layoffs, but not the second. Many such cases.)

I'm fairly confident about landing something else soon, and I am in a very privileged position in that I don't have any immediate financial concerns.

But now seems like a good opportunity to let everybody know that I do have a (filthy, horny, kinky) book you can buy for just a few bucks.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Hi! Prompt suggestion: Weight gain Jon? Feeder Martin? Maybe during Jon's s2 paranoia?

Ooohoohoo, excellent idea.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

(I might return to this idea and this format in the future, this one wanted to be waaaay longer than it wound up being...I had a ton of fun. And a ton more ideas.)

Supplemental.

I’ve been watching Martin.  He’s been very attentive to my needs and recovery since I returned to work, almost to the exclusion of his own tasks.  Hardly an hour passes without him popping into my office to see if I need anything.  Sometimes, he doesn’t even ask; just brings me tea, and a scone or a doughnut or whatever happens to be in the break room at the moment.  Yesterday, it was a piece of cake, so I assume someone must have had a birthday, though I don’t know who.  Not that it matters.

I don’t like that he’s keeping such a close eye on me, checking up so often.  Almost as if making certain I’m still here.  I can’t help but find his behavior suspicious.

I’d like to talk to him about it, but I don’t want to arouse suspicion on his part.  Seems I might just have to resign myself to having a babysitter for now, much as it may chafe.

End supplemental.

***

Supplemental.

Well, I had intended to venture into the tunnels again last night, but unfortunately, that plan was derailed when I ran into Martin just before I was about to embark.  I’m still not certain if it was strategic timing on his part, if he somehow knew what I was planning and came to stop me, or if it was just a coincidence.  Since it doesn’t seem wise to give him any indication I’m onto him if it was the former, I decided to err on the side of caution and behave as if I believed it were the latter.  So when he asked me about the knife, I had to make up some ridiculous story on the spot about having to work late and bringing in my own cutlery since the stuff in the break room is so dull Gertrude probably bought it herself.  At the very beginning of her tenure here.

He offered to take me to dinner.  There was an awful lot of blushing and stammering involved, which would point to him being nervous about deception, but surely if it scared him that much, I would’ve seen it before now?

Anyway.  It was… [pause] …fine, I suppose.  We went to a chip place.  He ordered for me, and I usually don’t like that sort of thing, but it was good.  A bit more than I’d normally eat, but I felt as if I had to finish, seeing as he paid and I, unfortunately, know what he makes.  Perhaps I ought to talk to Elias about bumping up the assistants’ salaries, especially after their lives were so recently in danger…

I’ll try again after work tonight.  Assuming he doesn’t surprise me again.

End supplemental.

***

Supplemental.

Unfortunately, in the past weeks, I’ve only been able to investigate the tunnels once, and then not for very long because I knew I’d be missed.  Martin has been… [deep sigh] Utterly relentless in his care.  I’m starting to suspect that he has no ulterior motive, and he just really does enjoy bringing people biscuits and tea with a bit too much cream and sugar in.  I’m not sure why.  Likely because he just doesn’t feel like working, but then that wouldn’t explain why we keep going to dinner…

He really won’t let me lift a finger.  I’m technically supposed to be walking much more than I am, but my leg is still bothering me so much I can’t bring myself to mind.

Between that and the snacks, though, I have gained a bit of weight.  Nothing worrisome; honestly, I probably needed it.  Mostly just regaining what I lost through the stress of the past few months.  If it does get to be too much, though, I’m no stranger to the solution; been through the diet-and-exercise routine twice before, when I stopped smoking and when Georgie and I broke up.

…Christ.  Like I don’t have bigger things to worry about than that.  I’ve got to get back to work.

End supplemental.

***

S…supplemental.

[muffled belch]

Sorry.  Sorry.  I should’ve known better than to record right now.  I’ll probably have to redo that statement.

Mmm.

Where was I?  Ah, right.

I went to lunch with Martin today.  I suggested a buffet; he seemed thrilled, though there was more blushing.  Of course.  Probably glad for the strain on his wallet being eased, since he insists on paying, and embarrassed about being relieved.  He gets embarrassed so easily, it’s…it’s rather endearing, actually.

But I seem to have [hiccup] overindulged a bit.  I’ve had to undo my belt, and the top button on my slacks.  Better than it was, though.  Felt about fit to burst when we left.  I joked to Martin he’d have to roll me back to the Institute, which brought on more blushing.  Not sure why.

Obviously, I’ll not be doing any investigating t - [unmuffled belch] G-good lord.  Excuse me.

End supplemental.  Before I embarrass myself any further.

***

Supplemental.

I’d intended to see if I couldn’t break into Gertrude’s flat this past week, but unfortunately, I was sidelined by certain…necessities.  Namely shopping.

You see, I’ve… [long pause] I’ve put on more weight.  Quite a bit of it, actually.  You might even call me properly chubby now, I’ve got a belly and everything.  And it was high past time to invest in a new wardrobe.  I’d been putting it off as long as I could, dealing with my clothes getting tighter and tighter, but recently, when I was crouching to get a low box, I-I…

[clears throat]

I split the seat of my trousers.  It was humiliating, but in some ways, I do believe it’s a blessing.  If Jane Prentiss had invaded the Institute while I was like this, I’m not sure I would have survived.  It’s time to get serious about losing weight.

[stomach gurgles]

Soon.

[crinkle of plastic]

E-end supplemental.

***

Supplemental.

I’m recording this from my flat, because I took the day off in order to help Martin move in.  It just seemed to make sense.  The lease was up on his old place, and with all the bad memories, and…well, I had the room.  Why not?

[soft belch]  When we’d finished, we celebrated.  Ordered in.  A lot - Martin made a joke about not making the mistake of underfeeding me anymore, which I appreciate.  I’m feeling quite well-fed now.  Perhaps a bit [embarrassed chuckle] overfed…I’ve been more or less trapped on the sofa while I digest.  Not because I’m too heavy to get up, certainly not, it’s just - uncomfortable.  I decided I might as well be productive, hadn’t I?

[series of hiccups]

Ugh.  I really have overeaten.  It was just…all so good, I couldn’t seem to help myself…even popped a button off my shirt.  I’ll admit, I felt like a pig, but Martin really was lovely.  Even gave me a [chuckle] a belly rub!  Not the sort of thing I would have expected to enjoy, but it actually helped quite a bit with the discomfort.

I could’ve very well done without him pointing out that my gut’s bigger than his now.  I informed him it was only because I’m so much shorter than he was, and that besides, I’m stuffed to the gills right now, but he only laughed.

He’s gone off to buy groceries now.  Said he’d get plenty to keep me satisfied.  I think this is going to work out very well.

Obviously, we’re still in danger.  What happened to Gertrude, and whatever’s down there in the tunnels…but Martin is eager to help.  And considering how busy we are just now, perhaps…

Perhaps it can wait.

End supple - [door opens, off-mic greeting] Oh, hello, Mar - is that a cake?!

[inaudible, off-mic]

Well, I…yes, traditionally, but…surely you don’t mean the whole thing.  Right now?

[inaudible, but unmistakably amused and affectionate]

Well.  I suppose I am feeling a bit [muffled belch] peckish.  Give it here, then.

[approaching footsteps, sounds of a box being opened and something being moved and cut.  New speaker talks directly into microphone for first time]

Here, I’ll feed it to you, shall - o-oh.  Were you - w-were you recording?  Hadn’t you better - you’d better wrap that up, hadn’t you?  Turn it off?  Wouldn’t want anybody hearing [nervous laughter] us…you know.

[Archivist answers through full mouth]

Oh.  Right.  [swallows loudly]  End supplemental.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Collating all my fics where fear/statements behave like physical food with the tag "phobivore jon," just to keep things tidy.

There's almost certainly some "phobivore elias" coming eventually, too.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Your exploration of Jon’s asexuality and how he could engage with sex and eroticism is really well done, and it feels very close to my own experience. On that note— sex or stimulation employed for the express purpose of (positive) derealization/reaching subspace? Being used and being a *thing* while also being cared for. The freedom of not having to think and, in this case, for him specifically, not having to Know. Open pairing, though JMart would probably make the most sense… but leaving it open still if you have any cool ideas: would love to see what you might come up with

Y'know, it is very funny that you say that, because I am actually asexual myself.

(Something that took me a really long time to realize, because I didn't understand that having non-sexual fetishes and kinks doesn't preclude asexuality by any means.)

Writing Jon - a canonically asexual character - really forced me to examine my own feelings and attitudes about sex in a way I never really had before so that I could be as accurate as possible, and it's been a really positive experience. I'm so thrilled to know that it was also a fruitful endeavor!

Anyway. I know you said JMart, but since you left the pairing open, it wound up being JonElias (what is their ship name? Eye4Eye? It should be). Because I do think that Elias has the capacity to be an excellent dom, if not an entirely ethical one.

Nothing in Elias’s flat had come to be there by accident.  Antique furniture, velvet and silk, dark brass, oil paintings and a spray of peacock feathers arranged lovingly in a vase.  Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with a muted rainbow of titles.  The space was curated and maintained with a degree of control that spoke nearly to pathology, and nowhere was this more true than the dungeon.

Elias owned the whole top floor of the building, and Jon Knew he’d knocked down a dividing wall and combined two rooms to make the space.  There was an enormous chest of toys, filled with trays that lifted and folded out like a tackle box, everything slotted into fitted velvet.  Shelves of devices, cages and gags and blindfolds and handcuffs.  Floggers and whips and crops hung from hooks and rings.  There was a bathroom area for purposes of both practicality and kink.  A medical table.  A suspension rig.  And many, many other things besides.

Including the leather pommel horse that Jon was currently bent over, gagged and blindfolded, cuffs on his wrists and a cage on his cock as Elias battered mercilessly into him.  He was like a machine.  Hands on Jon’s hips, touch somehow so impersonal, as if he were using one of the inhuman rubber doll things that he kept locked up these days at Jon’s insistence (he could not trust that some splinter of the Stranger did not inhabit them, not after…everything), rocking in and out of him.  Even with all the lubrication that Elias insisted upon, the friction burned Jon’s ring.  His prostate was all but jelly at this point.

Jon had in one hand a personal alarm, cylinder-shaped, the rubber loop intended to make it easier to hold slipped over his knuckles.  When he pressed the button at one end, it emitted a harsh beep, more than loud enough for Elias to hear even over the sawing of his breath and the wet slap of flesh.

Elias could just Know when Jon wanted to be done or needed a break.  But of course that wasn’t in the spirit of things.

Jon pressed it now.  Elias immediately stopped and pulled out, then came around in front of Jon.  Crouching, he unbuckled the gag, pulling the leather bit out of his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.  He didn’t even sound winded.  “Is the cage becoming painful?”

“No,” Jon grunted, tongue feeling stiff and odd in his mouth.

“The cuffs, then.  Any tingling or numbness?  Pain in your shoulders?”

“No.”  Jon couldn’t criticize Elias for that aspect of his domming; he knew his craft very well.  Jon had never walked away from one of their sessions with pinched nerves or pulled muscles, or any bruises or marks he hadn’t wanted.  Even if he’d been in bondage for hours.

Elias sighed heavily, like he already knew the answer, but he asked the question anyway.  “Then just what is the problem, Jon?”

Jon squirmed.  “Help me up.  I’m done.”

“No,” Elias said implacably, “you’re not.”

“I safeworded,” Jon replied fiercely, yanking his head up so that he could glare at Elias.  Because, of course, he could still See, even with the blindfold on..  The effort put terrific strain on his shoulders and neck, areas that were quite tense to begin with.  He was asking for a migraine and he didn’t care.  “I’m the sub, things stop when I say so.”

“In which case, I am the dom,” Elias said with infuriating patience, “and my job is to give you what you need.  Which I very obviously haven’t achieved yet, seeing as I can still feel you Looking at me.  And just about everything else.”  He rose smoothly back up to his full height.  “We continue.”

Jon braced his thighs against the horse and went to heave himself off of it.  “Elias - ”

“We continue.”  Elias placed a hand on the back of Jon’s head and shoved him back down, squeezing the nape of his neck until he went limp.  “It would be irresponsible of me to do anything else, considering the state you’re working yourself into.”  He fitted the gag back into Jon’s mouth, buckled firmly, and walked back around the horse.  “Someday, I do hope you finally realize that all these frequent interruptions make it that much harder to achieve the goal of these sessions.”

Jon knew very well what the goal was, and he also knew very well that his holding out was not only delaying it, but proving how much he needed it…and hopefully making the end product that much more euphoric, though somehow, he never quite managed to make that his main motivation.  The point of this, the perfunctory treatment, the overstimulation, all of it, was quite literally to break him.  To shove him past the limits of himself, to shut his mind down, to sink him into that great lovely dark place where his brain was finally quiet…something he needed so much more now than he ever had before, which was really saying something.  As his powers grew in leaps and bounds, a mind that had always been overactive and obsessive was exposed to more information than it knew what to do with, straining his already-insufficient coping mechanisms.  These respites were not only sexually necessary, but physically and psychologically - it was the only way, Elias had calmly explained, to maintain his sanity during this fraught time, and much as he hated it, Jon was inclined to believe him.

Elias liked to call it “closing the Eye.”  Jon called it “being a bloody power-tripping bastard.”  But as much as he wished he could, he couldn’t argue with the results.

The process, on the other hand…

Jon Saw it coming, and yet still jumped, a muffled yelp popping out of him around the gag, when Elias’s hand broke across his buttocks with a loud crack.  There was no warning, no explanation, but Jon understood, even without the benefit of Knowing.  In here, he was not a person.  He was not even a pet.  He was a thing, and he was not behaving as intended.  Elias could be said to be performing percussive maintenance, and he did so with a perfectly detached, almost bored expression on his face.

Elias gave him eleven strokes, and decided on a whim that that would be the number, so that Jon did not, could not, Know when it would end.  He jerked with each impact, feeling the swollen tightness of his skin, yelping into his gag.  Elias waited just long enough between each strike for the numbness of the impact to fade and feeling to return in a rush of sensitivity, and then his hand struck Jon again.  It was terrible, a bright burst in the darkness behind the blindfold each time, and it was more than the pain, it was the uncertainty, it was the Knowing exactly which nerves were being triggered, which tiny blood vessels were flushing with inflammation, which were bursting into bruising, how the messages of pain and shock were traveling up to his brain - a hideous awareness of his own body so grand and enormous that the space it took up inside of him nearly made him nauseous in the jaw-and-neck way a migraine might.

Then Elias paused, and Jon had a moment’s respite, nostrils flaring as he sucked in breaths, chest struggling to inflate where it was pressed into the horse, his own weight bending his ribs painfully.  But it did not last, because less than three seconds later, Elias’s hot cock plunged back into his raw, twitching, fucked-out hole, and he once again began to batter into him with that same jackhammer intensity.  You wouldn’t have thought someone so petite and frail-looking could fuck so hard.

Jon trembled and groaned.  His cock was hard, a purely physical response to the stimulation, and the cage crushed it, squeezed it even as precome dribbled out of it in a thin hot thread.  The base of it was shoved up against his pubic bone, pressing a mark into his skin that would no doubt be purple by the time they finished.  Abruptly, his cock went soft, and relief flashed cold through him - but then the prostate orgasm ripped him apart.

Jon screamed into his gag, bucking and kicking as Elias just kept going, kept plunging into him, Jon a basket of raw nerves and hole practically molten with the overstimulation.  Elias grabbed him and shoved him bodily back down, holding him there, holding him still, with his full weight as he rutted.  Jon trembled, and tried to thrash, knowing from experience and instinct that motion would make it better, would burn off some of the sensation, but Elias did not let him.  Just kept him down, kept him still, and his hips kept moving, and Jon’s prostate was like an open nerve ending inside of him, being struck with a hammer over and over and over again.

Jon whimpered, throat going raw, tears building in his eyes and soaking into the blindfold, itching hot and damp against his lids.  He was so aware of everything, as if he’d been skinned and was open to the world.  His hands flexed and grasped at one another.  He squeezed the button.  Elias ignored it.  He felt as if he were bucking and whipping like a caged animal inside of himself, clawing at his own chest, at his own throat, wild and aglow with it.

It was too much, it was too much, and he was squeezing the button and the loud beep was providing an undertone to Elias’s grunts and the sound of him going in and out, but he was not stopping, and the overwhelming horror of it kept on mounting.  If he could not scream properly, he was going to vomit, or perhaps seize.  But none of those things happened.  He just continued to lie there, and to take it.

Just when Jon felt as if he might die, that was when things finally switched over.  The Eye, or at least the part of it that lived in him, closed.  The upper floors of his mind went dark.  All the Knowing, all the knowing.  What he had to do at work tomorrow, the Fears, the shopping he had to do, how everyone in the Institute liked their tea because that had come to him recently for some reason, the statements, the archives…it was all beautifully lost to him for the moment, locked safely away.  Even core information such as his age, his job, his address, his name.  Anything at all about him except that he was a submissive, beholden to a dominant.

He relaxed, boneless and limp.  The pain and the discomfort were welcome boundaries against which to brace himself, as comforting as swaddling or weighted blankets.  A long, low moan of pure contentment rolled out of him, and behind the blindfold, his eyes fluttered closed.

And there, afloat in that soft, lovely darkness, the handcuffs were removed, and the gag, and the cage, and the dominant spoke, but the words meant nothing at all to the submissive at the moment.  It was only a lovely, smooth voice, a purr of praise that swept pleasure over his spine.  He was petted, and helped up off the expanse of the leather, and the blindfold stayed on as he was obediently led off to a warm bath and a cup of tea.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Anybody got any podcast recommendations?

I have a mind-numbing job, and that's pretty much the only way it's tolerable lmao. I've tried a couple new ones out and nothing's clicking, so it'd be nice to have a fresh suggestion.

A few things:

I'm a big fan of all of the Cool Zone Media podcasts. Behind the Bastards (my beloved, my first), Sixteenth Minute, Cool People Who Did Cool Things, Weird Little Guys, etc.

I like true crime, but my taste runs more Last Podcast on the Left than My Favorite Murder. Nothing against that genre, I'm just a little burned out on the standard true crime podcast formula

I'm looking for nonfiction right now (Malevolent is on my list, I swear, I'm just not up for it at the moment😭)

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Hey: the two fandoms you accept prompts for. Anyone ask you to smash em together yet? I mean— Will is almost painfully Eye-coded, there’s a lot to be said for other NBC Hannibal characters and their possible alignments, and, on the flip side, if one wanted, like. A TMA-focused POV. Would stretch beyond prompt-length prolly *butttt* what about the Fearscape? What if avatardom found Will or Hannibal before the world ended? What would their domains look like, if passed through?

No one has asked me to smash them together yet! A tragedy...one that has now been rectified, though.

So, this definitely should have stretched beyond prompt length, if we're being honest...it's a hell of a concept, and one I'd really like to explore further. Expect me to return to this in the future.

Have Hannigram's Fearscape domain (because of course they'd have a shared one), a clunky explanation for why JMart are passing by it, and only dialogue.

“Jon?”

“Mm?”

“Where are we going?”

“Around.”

“Not - through?  I-I mean, I get it, dark and spooky castle, ooh, that can’t be good.  But it kind of looks like that’s our straightest shot to London.”

“It is.  Which is…rather funny, actually.  It shouldn’t be.  That particular portion of the world used to be part of Baltimore.”

“What, America?”

“Mm-hm.”

“What the hell’s it doing here, then?”

“The avatars of this domain are particularly beloved by their respective Fears.  The more they…well, ‘like’ is the wrong word, but the more they like you, the closer you’re drawn to the epicenter, in this new world.  And the epicenter is…”

“Right.  Right.  Um…avatars?  As in, more than one?”

“Yes.  Two.  Orbiting one another, like…like binary stars.”

“Oh.  I didn’t…know that that could happen.”

“It’s rare.  You get packs sometimes, or manifestations of the same Fear working in tandem within the same domain, like with Jude and Arthur.  But this is a…unique case.”

“They serve different Fears, then?”

“Yes.  The Eye for one, the Flesh for the other.  And they share the Hunt.”

“Oh.  How’s that work, then?”

“Well, I could tell you of course, but…heh.  You’re not going to like it.”

“Oh.  Oh, right, because I’ve just loved every single other statement you’ve made and domain we’ve slogged through, the trenches were a right bloody picnic.  And then the building fire, ooh, that one was like a holiday, and the garden, with fucking - Jared Hopworth, practically a honeym - !”

“All right, all right.  You’ve made your point…you know, Martin, I never would have expected it from you, but you can be a bit bitchy when you want to.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing…Anyway.  Right.  Here goes.

“The memory palace is vast, and awful, in the original meaning of the word.  Filled with awe.  It is not a structure so much as it is a body, the magnificent fruit of a grand and terrible union.  The bones are stone and ice and salt.  River mud flows through its veins, and its nerves are fishing line and suture thread.  It peers out through its stained-glass eyes, squats on its concrete box haunches, and bares fangs of scalpels and gutting knives.  Its tears boil where they strike the ground.

“There are woods there, the wilds of Europe and of America.  Bogs and mountains.  Empty, twisted cities.  Cathedrals flow into bayous, there are art galleries in the bellies of dungeons and clean-scrubbed hospitals with lights that are too bright and orphanages that are asylums with leaf litter on the floor.  Glass boxes and government buildings.  You can climb through the backseat of a police cruiser to find yourself in a towering library where the books may bite fingers from your hands if you’re careless in your reading.  In your recall.

“This place was planted, tended, raised, and is now occupied and guarded by its gods.  Dark angels.  They once had names that mattered.  They were once men…or pretended to be.  Now, they have outgrown the tight skins of their humanity.  They are two halves of a whole, two mirrors reflecting infinitely.  They are terrible in their divinity, in their ascendance.  In their inescapable hunger.  They stalk and they build, they track and they transform, they Know each other as no one else can.  They hunt in a pack, mated pair, accompanied by things that are not quite dogs.

“They hunt the other denizens of this place, this palace.  Parasites.  The rude, the thoughtlessly cruel, the wicked and crass and arrogant.  Sinners in the cosmology of the gods at whose tender mercies they have found themselves, and are finding not to be so tender after all except in the way a cut of well-cooked meat may be.

“They are pigs, and they are treated fittingly.  Run down in the forests and the swamps, throats and guts torn out in steaming carmine arcs; caught on fishhooks and flies; flayed on operating tables and pinned like specimens.  The corridors and battlements of the palace glisten with still-living trophies, tableaux and displays that whimper and bleed and weep.  They are seen.  They are known.  And they are found so terribly lacking.

“But there’s danger here for more than just them.  Bodies have cancers, infections.  Cannibal organs that swallow the flesh around them as they move through channels of bone and blood.

“You may sometimes hear a child crying.  Her voice is acid thrown across broken flesh.  The halls are always hungry here; be watchful where you place a step.

“You may sometimes hear a young woman scream.  It gurgles, fluid in her throat and her lungs, hot black copper.  Her touch eats bone faster than mold.  The windows are watchful here.  You cannot escape being known for the terrible thing you are.

“Sometimes, these terrible things, these gods borne of mortal trauma, may turn on each other.  In boredom, in pleasure.  There is no greater prey than your equal.  Their combat, their games, are the dreams of this thing they have dragged screaming into the world together.  One might think this would grant the pigs some respite, but…the effect their tormentors have on this place is much the same effect a star has on gravity.  The amount of human shrapnel that breaks apart in the eddies and whorls of their uncaring wake cannot be overstated, even as they tear each other to grieving pieces again and again and again.

“But it is not all a nightmare, no.  How could it be, when this is Heaven?

“Because the heart of this body, oh, the beating, living heart.  A house, a small house, wrapped always in winter, treacherous to reach and more treacherous to remain within, but it is the only place where they may meet one another gently, snatch rare moments of tenderness despite the fact theirs is a savage romance of teeth and tests.  There is a soft bed.  There is a wood stove, and a much smaller and more practical kitchen, and a harpsichord in the corner and a practical library, and the things that are not dogs sleep in front of the fire, patiently waiting for their two masters to slake a different kind of thirst in one another.

“It is here, crowned in antlers, enrobed in feathers and blood, that they dance as the snow falls, light-footed on the rotten floor, touching as only twinned souls may when laid bare of flesh and folly, until the hunger again grows too great for one of them.

“But even that is love.  What is adoration, what is understanding in its purest form, but the devouring of your beloved?

“..ahhh.

“Hah.  Okay.

“I…all right.  There.  Done.”

“...hmm.”

“Well?  What do you think?”

“Uh - yeah.  Ha, ha.  You were right.  Umm…let’s go around, yeah.”

“Thought so.”

“...ehh…Jon?”

“What?”

“Do you think…if we were to…I-I mean, if it just happened, or if we had no other choice, and we wound up like…would it be like that?  For you and I?...Jon?”

“Hm?  Oh, I’m - I’m sorry, Martin, I didn’t quite catch that.  What was it?”

“N - oh.  Never mind.  Nothing.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Who's your probleematic fave?

In terms of media or characters?

If it's media, definitely the mid-aughts legal drama where James Spader and William Shatner were in a queer-platonic relationship and the show ended with them being married by - if memory serves - the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Prompt: bodies come with cravings and habits, and while Elias Bouchard was able to manage his and function…

Jonah Magnus has encountered far stronger and more interesting drugs than marijuana in his time. It’s the ultra-processed food that’s the problem, and this is the first body he’s inhabited that craves it.

You have seen the shape of my soul, and it is fat and greedy Elias-aka-Jonah.

I'm always down for that.

I did want to do a more shocked, uneasy Jonah who transitioned into a true glutton, but...tough to do that in a microfic, and besides. The way I write him, the guy's just such a hedonist.

Maybe some other time.

Elias (as Jonah was now called, just as he had been James, and Richard, and others) was no stranger whatsoever to the echoes that remained in flesh when he took it for himself.  The muscle memory, the tics and peccadillos, the subtle differences between palates and sensations.  Either they faded away in a few weeks or months as the body adjusted to the presence of a new mind with new sensibilities, or they were subsumed to the point that they could be ignored.  The eyes of Jonah Magnus, and his soul along with them, had changed bodies many times over the decades with very little turbulence, all things considered.

But Elias Bouchard was…different.

The dependence on marijuana wasn’t a problem.  Not an addiction as anyone might understand it, there was a habit there regardless, and Jonah kicked it easily.  He’d sampled the drug and found it lacking, but perhaps that was because he was not the sort of man - or creature, now - to whom dulling one’s senses and awareness had ever particularly appealed.  A few weeks of insomnia and irritability, physical symptoms he who had dealt with laudanum withdrawal in his first life found almost laughably easy to rise above, and THC was a necessity no longer.

But other cravings remained.

Elias Bouchard had been a young man of some nobility.  Jonah would have expected him to have been raised on fine dining and delicacies - and Looking now, he actually had been.  Perhaps that was why he’d been so obsessively fond of junk food…and still was.

Jonah (Elias now, mustn’t forget, he’d never been exactly subtle but he ought to at least maintain some plausible deniability) had always been a hedonist, in a quiet sort of way…as befitted a man who had taken more than his fair share of life.  His suits were understated, but hand-tailored out of high-quality fabric.  His desk was mahogany.  The pens he used to sign paychecks couldn’t have been bought with only one of said checks.

Perhaps that was why he allowed it as long as he did without giving it a second thought.  The indulgence.

It started in the Institute.  He went down to the break room for a cup of tea, and found himself walking away with not only that, but also a candy bar fresh from the vending machine that he’d really only half known that they even had.  He’d never been particularly fond of chocolate, especially the modern variety - overly sweet, too processed.  And yet when he tore the wrapper open with his teeth and ate it with a tongue that knew it as an old friend…he had to admit that yes, he could see the appeal.

He ate another two before he left for the day.

He did not do his own shopping.  He Looked at the shops, letting the knowledge of what they carried filter into the back of his mind, and then what he wanted and needed surfaced and he wrote it down to pass on to his housekeeper.  One of the more useful applications of the Eye’s many blessings.

It came as a very mild surprise to him when he found himself writing down crisps and sodas and ice cream (multiple flavors and multiple brands of each), and more of a surprise to Jeanette, who asked him if he were perhaps throwing a party.  But she bought them, and he ate them, and then he asked for more.

His dietary habits changed in other ways, too.  In the past, when he had gone out to eat, it had been a somewhat rare affair.  Once a week for dinner, and always at an upscale establishment.  A private room, a carefully-curated and high-quality menu with pairings for every course.  Staff who knew him by name, or would soon enough.  But now, he found himself ducking into fast food restaurants on the way home, standing in lines of tourists, university students, and harried shift workers in his suit, thumbing at the greasy screens of self-ordering kiosks.  He gorged himself on chips, on burgers, on fried-and-breaded chicken, on cheap soda and cheaper ice cream and pastries, and Knew the whole time just how many calories he was cramming into his mouth, and how empty they were.  By the time he finally found himself satisfied, his belly strained quite obviously against his waistcoat.  He panted as he made his way home.

He took to ordering in.  It was easier.

Elias Bouchard was quite a slim young man.  He hadn’t gotten any sort of physical exercise outside of the clerking work he’d done at the Institute, but his metabolism had been fast enough to compensate.  Of course, he’d also eaten a lot less than Jonah was now, in his body.  At the rate that he’d taken to almost unconsciously gorging himself, there was only so much a fast metabolism could do.

“It’s to be expected,” said his tailor sympathetically.  He’d previously been James Wright’s tailor, and if he noticed his and Elias’s identical speech patterns, he didn’t comment on it as he measured Elias’s expanding waistline.  “Transitioning into a sedentary job, late nights, long lunches…happens to most men your age.”

“Hm,” Elias agreed, and the tailor must have sensed his reluctance to discuss the matter, because when they reached the point where his suits could no longer be let out and he had to cut entirely new fabric, he didn’t say anything at all…but Elias did notice he left an awful lot of room for growth, generous darts and seams.  The man could spot a pattern.

So could an awful lot of other people.

Embarrassingly enough, the Institute employees had obviously begun to notice their director’s dietary habits, and began making changes accordingly around the time that Elias’s hips began to touch the arms of his chair.  When someone had a birthday, they called him down to celebrate…and then, when he reached a certain size, they just brought him up a slice.  During department meetings, the heads suggested restaurants with ample portions.  The employees who got him holiday gifts had moved away from fine alcohols and stationery and ties, and towards chocolate bars and snack-themed gift baskets and gift cards to chain restaurants.

That wasn’t all of it, though.  He also Knew about the concerned whispers.  The researcher who considered dropping a pamphlet for a weight loss clinic in his inbox.  The IT professional who mentioned to him just how wonderful of a result his cousin had had with gastric bypass…who then fled the conversation in a stuttering, blushing mess when Elias kept pleasantly asking him just why he thought he needed a procedure like that.  The betting pool admin maintained on his weight, payouts helped along by Rosie’s snooping.

(And that young man he’d just hired for the library - the redhead who’d lied so marvelously on his CV - oh, he enjoyed it, and he felt absolutely filthy about doing so.  The guilt was delicious, but it also did not stop him from pouring heavy cream into the tea he’d offered to start making for the director, since he had the time and it was the least he could do when he had questions for him that took him up to the office multiple times every single day.  It was actually quite good, so Jonah hadn’t stopped him, was waiting to pick his moment to mention it to him…and in the meantime, was showing a bit more belly and ass than he would ordinarily when the librarian was in his office, and exaggerating his fullness and the difficulty he had when it came to getting to his feet.  It was a bit autocannibalistic, feeding on the ogling of his own body, but…one did what one had to.)

The thing was that Jonah Magnus had not ever been a man particularly short on willpower.  That was what patience was, after all, distilled down to its core value, and Jonah had always been very patient.  If he had actually wanted to stop piggishly glutting himself at every opportunity on the most fattening slop the human race could churn out, he could have.  Certainly far before he reached the point where furniture creaked beneath his weight, and he could rest his gut on his own desk in front of him, and he could not go up without a single flight of stairs without taking a rest break in the middle and finding his knees aching fiercely at the top.

But it would have been awfully difficult.  It all tasted so good, here in this body, primed for it.  And cravings had become habit by now, over the years he had spent indulging every single one and nurturing new ones besides.

And, truth be told…he didn’t mind the weight.  Obnoxious as it could be, the strain of exertion, the waddling, the difficulty of clothing and furnishing himself.  He’d had to move his office to the ground floor, get a new chair, and that was to say nothing of all the antique furniture he could no longer enjoy at home.  But he liked the plushness.  The warmth, the bounce.  There was an undeniable thrill in taking hold of a roll that overfilled his hand, with its chubby fingers, and squeezing, feeling the buttery give of his own body.  If nothing else, it was a novelty, something hard to come by for something like him.

So why ruin a good thing?

After all: by the time it became a problem, either he could simply switch to a new body…or his plans for the young man he’d been eyeing (pun very much intended) for Gertrude’s replacement as Archivist would have progressed to the point that even immobility would no longer matter.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Coming up on two weeks and I just wanted to let everybody know that I'm feeling much better! Still surgeried-upon, but no longer regretting the whole thing. Thank you for all the well wishes.

(And all of the prompts, and the comments over on AO3. I promise they will be gotten to eventually. 😭)

Had major abdominal surgery on Tuesday (4/29). The side effects vary, but one of the prevailing commonalities is the fatigue.

"Well, surely, I - specialest boy in the universe - will avoid that," I thought going into it. "Despite the fact I already suffer from several chronic illnesses that cause fatigue, I'll be fine. I'll have all the energy I need to do whatever I want, up to and including writing, and crafting, and noodling around with my boyfriend. Maybe the first day or two will suck but I'll be fine."

Well, guess fucking what.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

omg i love your fics where Hannibal is a feedee!!

prompt: Hannibal indulging a rare binge during winter in season 2 during Will's honey trap era. He eats foods with trembling hands (foregoing silverware) because it's a reminder of eating that first meal after escaping the cabin as a young boy. Will stops by unannounced (was given a key) and finds Hannibal stuffing his face, even though it's obvious Hannibal's stomach is bloated and stuffed. Maybe it interests and shocks Will to see him like this: wearing casual clothes and flushed and a bit disheveled and cheeks wet from tears. Hannibal makes a move to stop eating out of shame, but then Will comes closer and coaxes him to eat the last few bites and praises him the entire time. Maybe it comes up again post-fall when winter is approaching and Will realizes he has a kink regarding watching Hannibal cry while eating. Maybe Hannibal cries while eating a meal Will cooked because it's his first meal after being in the BSHCI and re-establishing control over how much he can eat again is overwhelming and relieving, and Will praises him.

So glad to see a prompt from you in my inbox! ❤️

And I agree entirely. Feedee!Hannibal does something for me I can't quite describe.

This isn't...quite what you asked for, so let me apologize for that, but it's what happened when I sat down with this prompt.

They reach the cliff house late in the afternoon.  Dinner time approaches.  Hannibal retires to the master bedroom, almost certainly to shower and dress himself as he pleases for the first time in three years.  And Will goes to the kitchen, all windows and steel, to rummage through the cabinets and the pantry to see what he can cobble together into a meal.

Part of him is shocked at himself, in a distant, cerebral sort of way.  Already falling into domesticity.  But the rest knows that he’s hungry, and he hasn’t decided exactly what he’s going to do yet, so he might as well do this.  It’s practical.  “Practical” is one of the qualities Will would like to ascribe to himself, that Molly would probably use to describe him.

The house has obviously been prepared for a long absence.  The refrigerator is empty, although the freezer is not; the utilities must have been paid up months in advance, or perhaps there is a caretaker.  Hannibal does love his preparations and his plans.  The pantry is full of non-perishables, spices and dried rice and beans, but because this is Hannibal’s house, there are also cured meats and cheeses in wax rinds.  There are pickles and preserves.  A great deal of alcohol, mostly wine.  Much more to choose from than one would expect.

Will is quite experienced in using up bulk ingredients, from childhood poverty and a frugal maturity.  He could have worked miracles with just the rice and beans, but with everything else, the kitchen is essentially fully stocked.

He cooks with the brilliant sunset blazing over the ocean, the light flooding in through the wall of windows.  By the time Hannibal emerges in a turtleneck and blazer, fresh and clean and looking somehow softer out of his institutional whites despite all the destruction he’s wrought to get here, night has fully fallen.  The table is set, the lights are on low, and Will has taken rice and seasonings and canned peppers and tomatoes and stock and meat from the freezer and made something halfway passable.  Hannibal stands smiling in the dimly-lit room, eyes closed, inhaling the bouquet of it.

“Figured I’d leave the wine pairing to you.”

“I have just the bottle.”

Red wine.  Hannibal uncorks and decants it.  Will fills their plates.  They sit down, and when Hannibal picks up his glass, there is a tiny movement, as if he wishes to chime it against Will’s, but he stays his wrist.  He knows, perhaps, that it is not time to celebrate.  Not yet.

They begin to eat.  As Will chews his first bite, he watches Hannibal take his.  He has always enjoyed watching him eat, especially food that Will has provided; consumption is a sexual act for Hannibal, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that sex is consumption for him.  He holds them both holy, worshipful in his approach.  He chews slowly.  His eyes are closed.  

But when he swallows, it looks almost painful, and his lashes have grown wet.  He opens his eyes, and a tear spills slowly alone one razored cheekbone.

Will is reminded, suddenly and viscerally, of a winter day more than four years ago, during his long seduction of Hannibal, those fever-dream days when even he was not certain what the ultimate outcome would be.  Walking unannounced into Hannibal’s house, as he had earned the right to, he came soft-footed to the kitchen, where he found Hannibal undone.  Hair mussed, face blank, distant eyes focused on nothing as they welled with tears he seemed unaware of, standing at the counter and gorging mindlessly on simple food.  Meat and cheese, bread and honey, torn free with fingers and shoved into his mouth, untasting, unfeeling.  He had surfaced only partially from his stupor when he saw Will.

Will knew a trauma response when he saw one, and he still does.  It had been uncommonly cold that day, especially for Baltimore.

Will had stroked his hair, and hand-fed him the rest, Hannibal relaxing as he stroked his hair, the tears coming more freely as his belly swelled and bulged, and the snow had fallen thick and cold in the gathering evening as Will hardened in his jeans.

That was one of the guiding stars that led him east, to Lithuania and the ruins of the Lecter estate.  The desire to know, the desire to understand…which he now does.

“Forgive me, Will.”  Hannibal reaches for his napkin, wipes at his mouth with it.  “My manners are somewhat atrophied after my confinement, but I do know it’s rude to weep over a meal one has been served.”

“No forgiveness necessary if the act is beautiful enough.”

“Aesthetics as morality.”  And Hannibal smiles through his tears.  “Have I rubbed off on you, Will?”

Will chooses not to comment on that, instead tilting his head to one side and asking, “Is my cooking that bad?”

“Your cooking is excellent by any metric.”  Hannibal raises a forkful to his mouth, and as he did the previous one, he savors it, eyes closing.  He does not speak again until he has chewed and swallowed entirely.  “The fault lies with me.”

“And what fault is that?”  

Hannibal says nothing.  Will knows this game: he is the ultimate luxury to Hannibal, the one living person on the planet who knows his heart and his mind.  He is to read it back to him, so that Hannibal may know himself that much better.  Something that has always escaped him, locked doors between him and the libraries of his past, carved bloodred into the parchment of his soul.

“Everything,” Will says quietly, “was controlled for you at the Hospital.  You were allowed no choice, no freedom - not even those enjoyed by certain other prisoners.  Alana saw to that, would have even if you had not posed the immense risk that you did.”  A risk that she evaluated correctly, based on the fact Hannibal is sitting across the table from Will now.  “When you went to bed and when you rose.  When you bathed, and how you did it.  What you read…and most of all, what you ate, and how much.”  Will clears his throat.  “You were a…captive thing, and perhaps you could have borne that if Alana had taken more pleasure in it, but she’s never been as vindictive as she sometimes tries to be.”

“Not like you,” Hannibal says, and smiles before taking another bite.  He relishes the fact he is able to, Will sees.

“And the food was the greatest insult of all, because…that has always been most sacred to you.  Hasn’t it?”  Will sips his wine.  “That’s how you love yourself and others.  How you redeem those you hate.  Alana denied you love.”

“Cruel and unusual,” Hannibal says softly.  “Even for my crimes.  Do you agree?”

Will doesn’t answer one way or another.  “But now you’re free to pick and choose what you eat.”  What and who he loves.  “You can choose to gorge yourself, or…starve.”  And is he imagining it, or does he see the barest flinch in Hannibal at the use of that last word?  “The proof’s in the pudding.  Here you are, with me.  Eating what I’ve given you.”

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” Hannibal agrees placidly.  His cheeks are still wet, there is a hitch to his voice, and Will is hard.  “Quite literally, in this case.”

Will tilts his head, and asks, “What do you want to eat, Hannibal?”

Hannibal swallows another mouthful, and Will knows his answer before he gives it.  He can already see Hannibal’s stomach bloated and taut later in the evening, the golden pendulum of his mind sweeping forward for the first time in his life rather than backwards.  He can see the little weight he lost in the Hospital returning.  He can see him growing soft, and plump.  Ironically more domesticated now in his freedom than he ever was while caged.  All under Will’s care, at his hand.

“Everything,” Hannibal replies, and Will is already rising to return to the kitchen, and to begin cooking.

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Had major abdominal surgery on Tuesday (4/29). The side effects vary, but one of the prevailing commonalities is the fatigue.

"Well, surely, I - specialest boy in the universe - will avoid that," I thought going into it. "Despite the fact I already suffer from several chronic illnesses that cause fatigue, I'll be fine. I'll have all the energy I need to do whatever I want, up to and including writing, and crafting, and noodling around with my boyfriend. Maybe the first day or two will suck but I'll be fine."

Well, guess fucking what.