Title: A Feast of Another Kind

Prompt: Martin eats souls; someone at MJN catches him. Do they accept him? Are they afraid? You decide.

Pairing: Martin / Douglas
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Horror / Angst
Warning: Mentions of unconventional suicide via supernatural means in part 4/?, and also illogical supernatural stuff happening all around and of course soul eating, and animals dying.

Disclaimer: Cabin Pressure and its characters are property of John Finnemore and BBC.

A.N: Written for a friend, GeneralButtons. I've been caught by the need to write something dark and mildly scary, and so here we are. Enjoy while I make Martin's life miserable.

A Feast of Another Kind
Part 1/?

Toast, pasta and potatoes.

People liked to think that they were the reason for his thinness, the reason that he looked frail enough to snap if the wind were to blow too hard. That his unstable meager income from being a man with a van did not allow him a proper meal at the table each morning, noon and night. It was something that the students he lived with were painfully aware of, when they dined on a slapdash meal of noodles in broth, or rice with various frozen vegetables and pieces of meat. On a particularly good day, there may be soup on the stove, stewed meat and roots, and an easy-make dessert to finish, and they would watch Martin walk into the kitchen to retrieve a slice or two of white bread, the cheapest sort at the supermarket, and nibble on them as he made his way back to the attic, leaving them to their meal in a strangely uncomfortable atmosphere.

Sometimes, the students invited him down for a meal together, or left food out for him. Fried rice, open-faced sandwiches, potato salads of perhaps someone's experimental meal of something pickled with sesame and bread. He would always accept, taking the food back up to the attic with him, returning later with a clean plate or bowl to the shy and pleased smiles of the students, that their pilot had accepted their offerings. Fruit salad, ham and curried egg sandwiches, rice with miso soup and a poached egg. He ate them all, and thanked the students afterwards. If asked if there was any food in particular that he craved, he would give them a sheepish smile, and duck his head. I don't want to trouble you, he would say. I'm not picky at all. There would be reassurances that it was all fine, and that it was no trouble at all. Martin was aware of the game that they played, to find out his favorite food and their combinations. Could it be a fruit, a root vegetable? Eggs, the most versatile and simplest of foods? Those ghastly potatoes that he lived off of? A sort of jam? The list went on, with all sorts of food scrawled on and crossed off, and he would smile, amused, each time a new entry was added to it. No harm in letting them guess, he figures.

It was nothing that they could give him.

In him, the hunger stirs with its sharp claws.