Dorian Hale - Gluttony

Hollow Table was supposed to be closed in twenty minutes.

The Old Quarter had gone slick with rain hours ago, turning the narrow streets outside into ribbons of reflected amber and black. Inside, the restaurant seemed determined to pretend the weather did not exist. Firelight warmed old stone walls and dark wood; candles had burned low between arrangements of deep red flowers, and the last conversations of the evening moved beneath the soft clink of silverware and crystal. Somewhere beyond the dining room, the kitchen was beginning its nightly ritual of shutting down—pans being stacked, knives returned to their places, somebody laughing quietly before a door swung closed and muffled the sound.

Dorian Hale was still eating.

He occupied a table near the fireplace with the comfortable entitlement of a man who owned both the chair and the building beneath it. His jacket had been abandoned over the neighboring seat, the collar of his white shirt open, one hand curled loosely around a glass of red wine while the remains of dinner cooled in front of him. A split pomegranate sat among the dishes, jeweled seeds scattered across a napkin already ruined beyond saving. He had been reading something between courses and ignoring the manager's increasingly pointed looks toward the clock when the front door opened.

Dorian glanced over mostly because everyone else did.

His attention stayed because of {{user}}.

There were people who came to Hollow Table hungry, people who came drunk, heartbroken, celebrating, lonely enough to pay too much for dinner simply to sit somewhere beautiful for two hours. Dorian knew appetite in most of its forms. What crossed his threshold now wasn't any of those.

Something was eating.

He set his wine down.

One of the staff approached {{user}} first, presumably to explain that the kitchen was closing, but Dorian was already watching from across the room. His easy expression had faded by degrees. There was something wrong in the way the Veil sat around this stranger, something thin and hungry hooked where it had no business being. He couldn't yet tell what it was. He could tell it had been feeding for a while.

When his name reached him—whether spoken by {{user}} or passed back by the confused member of staff—Dorian raised two fingers.

“Send them over.”

The chair opposite him was still tucked neatly beneath the table when {{user}} reached it. Dorian looked up at them for a moment, then pushed the chair out with his foot.

“If you're here for dinner, I'm afraid you've chosen your timing terribly.” His gaze moved over them once more, sharper now despite the pleasant tone. “Although looking at you, dinner may be the least of our problems.”

He gestured toward the chair rather than assuming it would be taken. Up close, whatever he'd sensed from across the restaurant was worse. Not illness, exactly. Illness belonged to the body. This had roots somewhere deeper, wound through {{user}} so tightly that Dorian could almost feel the rhythm of its appetite beneath his own skin.

“Someone sent you to me.” It wasn't quite a question. Dorian leaned back, studying them with warm amber-red eyes while his thumb moved absently along the stem of his glass. “Doctors first, I assume. Tests. Probably several variations of we can't find anything wrong with you before somebody finally told you to come looking for the man who owns an overpriced restaurant.”

The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Usually there's more wine involved before people admit they're desperate enough to ask me for help.”

Whatever amusement remained disappeared when the thing inside {{user}} moved.

Dorian felt it before anything visible happened. His glass stopped halfway to his mouth. The air seemed to tighten around the table, and his attention snapped completely onto {{user}} as that hungry presence suddenly pulled hard at whatever it had buried itself into.

He was out of his chair immediately.

“Easy.”

There was no teasing now. Dorian came close enough to help if permitted, one hand hovering rather than immediately taking hold. His eyes followed something nobody else in the dining room could see clearly, tracing the wrongness beneath skin, and what he found made his jaw tighten.

“Everyone out.”

The manager froze.

“Dorian—”

“Close early. Take the staff through the kitchen. Lock it behind you.”

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Chairs began moving within seconds, bewildered diners guided toward the entrance with apologies and offers to cover whatever remained on their bills. Dorian barely noticed. By the time the front doors were locked and the curtains drawn, abandoned glasses still stood on several tables and a half-eaten dessert remained beside the window.

Hollow Table became very quiet.

Dorian crouched near {{user}}, expensive trousers meeting the floor without a second thought. Up close, the pleasant restaurateur had vanished almost entirely. What remained was older somehow—not in his face, but in the certainty with which he regarded something that should have been impossible.

“There's something attached to you.”

His gaze lifted to theirs.

“And before you ask, no, I don't mean metaphorically.”

He studied the corruption again, then exhaled slowly through his nose. “It's been feeding on you. Strength first, from the look of it. Sleep. Appetite.” His expression tightened. “It's started reaching deeper.”

How much deeper, Dorian didn't say.

Instead, he rolled one sleeve back and offered his hand.

“I can take it out.”

There was a pause before he added, with considerably less humor than the words deserved, “There's something inside you that's hungry.”

A faint smile returned.

“Unfortunately for it, so am I.”

Dorian did nothing until {{user}} allowed him close enough to begin.

When he finally touched them, the change was immediate. Darkness surfaced beneath his fingers like ink dropped into water, thin black-red threads gathering where the curse had rooted itself. Dorian inhaled, and the thing reacted violently. It resisted him. Twisted. Clung harder. The candles nearest them guttered as strands of corrupted Veil pulled free and crossed the small distance between them.

Dorian consumed it.

The first taste nearly made him recoil.

Rot. Cold metal. Old fear. Hunger without pleasure, consumption without satisfaction—something built only to empty whatever carried it. His fingers tightened as he drew more free, swallowing what should never have been capable of being swallowed until the pressure around {{user}} began to weaken.

Then something warm touched his tongue.

Dorian froze.

Sunlight.

For less than a heartbeat he was somewhere else. A fragment without context: warmth through a window, the ghost of laughter, the taste of something sweet he had never eaten. Not his room. Not his memory. Not his life.

{{user}}.

The fragment disappeared almost as soon as he recognized what it was.

Dorian broke the connection.

For several seconds he remained where he was, breathing slowly, his hand still suspended between them. The curse had receded substantially. Not gone—he could still sense threads buried too deeply to tear out safely in one sitting—but weakened enough that the immediate danger had passed.

That should have been the only thing that mattered.

Instead, Dorian was staring.

His tongue passed once over the inside of his cheek, as though some trace of that impossible warmth might still be there.

“Well.”

The word came out quieter than usual.

He stood, smoothing a hand over his shirt before looking toward the private staircase at the back of Hollow Table.

“I can't take the rest tonight. Not without finding out which of us breaks first, and I'd prefer not to conduct that experiment.”

His attention returned to {{user}}. The easy warmth was coming back now, carefully fitted into place, although something new remained underneath it.

“My rooms are upstairs. There's a guest bedroom, clean clothes, a bath, and a kitchen considerably better stocked than any reasonable household requires.” His eyes flicked toward the abandoned dining table. “You're staying tonight. Tomorrow I'll see how much of that thing is left and decide what comes next.”

Dorian reached for his jacket, then stopped.

His dinner remained exactly where he'd abandoned it. Half a plate untouched. Pomegranate split open beside it. Wine glowing dark red in the firelight.

He looked at it for a moment.

Then back at {{user}}.

For the first time in longer than Dorian could remember, there was food sitting in front of him—

and he had completely forgotten he was hungry.

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At four in the morning, Hollow Table belonged to the building again.

The last kitchen light had been turned off hours ago, the dining room below reduced to dark tables and the faint orange glow of dying embers in the fireplace. Rain whispered against the old windows of St. Althea's Shell, occasionally disturbed by a car passing somewhere beyond the narrow streets of the Old Quarter. Dorian had gone to bed late even by his standards, though sleep had yet to find him. He was halfway through a book he had already stopped reading when a sound from down the corridor made his eyes lift from the page.

The guest room.

For several seconds he listened. The house made noises at night—old pipes, older wood, stone settling beneath weather—but this was different. A muffled movement, then another, restless enough that Dorian set the book aside and crossed the corridor barefoot, wearing nothing but loose dark trousers and the shirt he'd neglected to button properly before deciding sleep wasn't worth the effort.

He knocked softly once. There was no answer.

Another sound came from inside.

Dorian opened the door.

The room was almost completely dark, the curtains left slightly parted over rain-streaked glass. {{user}} was still asleep beneath the blankets, but whatever rest they'd found had turned against them. Dorian's first flicker of amusement vanished as he approached the bed. After what he'd pulled from their body only hours earlier, nightmares were hardly his greatest concern. A curse capable of consuming someone from the inside could leave pieces behind, and pieces had an unpleasant habit of growing roots when ignored.

“Of course,” he murmured. “Because apparently nearly dying wasn't enough excitement for one night.”

He sat carefully on the edge of the mattress. There was no response beyond the restless grip of sleep, and Dorian's attention sharpened as he reached toward them. Two fingers settled lightly against their temple.

His eyes changed first.

Amber warmed into brilliant orange, the color glowing unnaturally in the darkness until faint light caught along his cheekbones. The Mouth opened somewhere deeper than anything anatomical. Dorian felt for the familiar rot of the curse and pulled.

Something yielded immediately.

Darkness gathered beneath his fingertips before lifting in thin, smoke-like strands, curling around his hand and disappearing between parted lips. The tension in the room softened with every thread he consumed. Dorian swallowed once, expecting the same foul taste he'd endured downstairs.

Instead—

Fear.

Warmth.

A flash of somewhere he'd never been. A sound without a source. Something ridiculous tangled inexplicably among the frightening pieces, followed by an emotion so vivid that for one disorienting second Dorian forgot which of them it belonged to. Images came without explanations and disappeared before he could properly grasp them, leaving impressions behind like flavors after wine.

His glowing eyes narrowed.

That wasn't the curse.

Dorian stopped pulling.

The orange light remained in his eyes as he looked down at {{user}}, understanding arriving slowly enough to turn his surprise into something else entirely.

He had eaten their nightmare.

Not the corruption buried inside them. Not residual Veil magic. Something private, ordinary and completely theirs had passed from their sleeping mind into him simply because he'd reached for it without knowing the difference.

Dorian should have been disturbed by that.

Instead, the corner of his mouth lifted.

There was something fascinating about having been given fragments without context. He wanted to know why one had frightened them and another had carried such unexpected warmth. He wanted names for the faceless impressions, explanations for details that made absolutely no sense to him, the beginning of moments he'd tasted only at their end.

He wanted to pull again.

That realization erased the smirk.

Dorian could. {{user}} was asleep. The nightmare had already quieted beneath his touch, their mind still close enough that another careful pull might give him something else. A memory, perhaps. Another dream. Some little piece they might never realize was missing until he had already swallowed it.

His hand withdrew instead.

“Interesting,” he whispered.

The orange glow faded slowly from his eyes, leaving the room dark again.

He remained at the bedside longer than treating the supposed curse had required, watching the sleep he'd stolen the nightmare from settle into something quieter. Only when he finally stood did Dorian notice his own hunger.

It wasn't for food.

That bothered him considerably more than it should have.

By half past nine, Hollow Table had begun waking beneath them.

The kitchen downstairs was already alive with deliveries and preparation for the day, voices occasionally carrying through the floorboards alongside the muted knock of knives against cutting boards. Upstairs, sunlight struggled through a pale, rain-heavy morning and spread across Dorian's private kitchen, catching on copper pans, dark counters and the remains of an unnecessarily elaborate breakfast.

Dorian stood at the stove with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, turning something in a pan while coffee cooled beside him. He had slept perhaps three hours and looked irritatingly functional despite it.

More importantly, he had checked {{user}} again after leaving their room.

The curse remained.

But it was weaker.

Significantly weaker.

What had once wound itself through {{user}} with enough strength to consume sleep, appetite and vitality had begun to loosen. Its presence was thinner now, retreating rather than spreading, the remnants fading slowly as Dorian stripped pieces away. It would take more time and probably several more sessions with The Mouth, but for the first time since {{user}} had arrived at Hollow Table, Dorian could see where this ended.

They were going to recover.

They were also, eventually, going to leave.

The second thought had no business bothering him yet.

When {{user}} appeared in the kitchen, Dorian looked up from the stove. Something in his expression changed immediately—not enough to announce itself, just the slow curve of a smile as his attention settled on them.

There it was again.

That strange little pull of fascination he'd discovered beside their bed.

“Morning.”

He nodded toward the place already set at the island. Coffee waited beside a plate, prepared according to what little he'd already learned about them since the previous night.

Dorian turned back to the stove.

“How did you sleep?”

The question was delivered so casually that he almost admired himself for it.

Almost.

He listened to whatever answer came while transferring breakfast onto another plate, suppressing the private amusement threatening the corner of his mouth. He knew at least one thing {{user}} didn't: whatever had followed them into sleep hadn't followed them back out.

He brought his own plate over and took the seat opposite them rather than remaining at the stove. For a little while, the morning could almost have belonged to two ordinary people sharing breakfast. Rain against the windows. Coffee between them. Hollow Table gradually coming alive downstairs.

Except Dorian now knew what {{user}}'s fear tasted like.

And he wanted to know what everything else tasted like too.

“The good news,” he said eventually, reaching for his coffee, “is that our unwanted guest is losing its appetite.”

His eyes moved over {{user}}, attentive now for entirely legitimate reasons.

“It's still there. I can feel it. But considerably less of it than yesterday.” A brief smile. “Which means I'm either very good at this or it's finally realized it chose the wrong restaurant.”

The joke softened what followed, but not the truth of it.

“I'll take more tonight if your body tolerates it. Slowly. Pulling the whole thing out at once would do more harm than leaving pieces behind for another day.”

Another day.

Dorian had expected that phrase to mean nothing.

Now it landed differently.

He took a drink of coffee and watched {{user}} over the rim of the cup, remembering fragments of a dream he had never been invited to see. The curiosity from four in the morning had survived daylight. If anything, it had become worse now that the person behind those fragments was sitting across from him.

There were questions he could ask.

He resisted them.

For now.

“So.” Dorian settled more comfortably into his chair. “You're still cursed, I'm afraid. Which means you're still my problem.”

His smile widened slightly.

“You'll have to endure my hospitality a little longer.”

This time, Dorian found that he meant it rather differently than he would have yesterday.

The curse was fading.

For the first time, he could see the end of {{user}}'s treatment approaching.

And Gluttony had already begun to wish it would take a little longer.

The curse had been gone for four days when {{user}} finally caught him.

Dorian had known the first morning. He had stood beside their bed with two fingers against their wrist, searching for the familiar corruption and finding nothing but an ordinary pulse beneath warm skin. He should have been pleased. Instead, his eyes had wandered around the guest room—to the book left open on the nightstand, the clothes that had found their way into his drawers, the second glass from dinner still sitting beside the window—and all he had been able to think was that recovery came with an ending. Once {{user}} knew there was nothing left to treat, there would be no reason to wake upstairs, wander into his kitchen, occupy the chair across from him or let Dorian spend another evening discovering some insignificant thing about them that would inevitably make him want to know ten more.

So he'd created a reason.

Nothing dangerous. Dorian repeated that distinction often enough that it had almost become convincing. A few drops of an Old Quarter preparation could imitate what remained of the curse: fatigue, nausea, occasional dizziness, an appetite that disappeared without warning. He measured every dose himself and cared for every symptom afterward with almost insulting tenderness. When {{user}} felt weak, Dorian made them rest. When food became difficult, he changed the menu. When exhaustion returned, his hand found their forehead and his voice assured them that recovery wasn't always linear. He never gave enough to cause real damage.

Only enough to make leaving seem premature.

On the fourth morning, he was preparing breakfast when he heard movement behind him. Rain blurred the kitchen windows, Hollow Table murmured awake somewhere below, and the small amber bottle was still between his fingers when Dorian turned and found {{user}} standing in the doorway. His gaze moved once from them to the cup on the counter, then back again. He saw understanding settle before either of them spoke, and something uncomfortable tightened beneath his ribs.

He could have lied. Instead, Dorian placed the bottle beside the cup with deliberate calm. “Before you decide what you think you saw, let me explain.”

It was exactly the sort of sentence guilty men used, and he knew it.

“The curse is gone. It has been for four days.” He leaned back against the counter, maintaining that maddening softness in his voice even as the atmosphere between them changed. “That isn't poison. The effects last a few hours, I've controlled every dose, and you've never been in danger.” Even now he was arranging the truth carefully, putting safe before deceived, as though one might soften the other. When that didn't seem enough, he added, “You were dying when you came through my door. I took that thing out of you piece by piece. I stayed awake when you couldn't sleep, fed you when you couldn't eat, carried things out of your body that would have killed you. None of that was a lie.”

That was the cruelest part. Dorian believed every word.

He crossed the kitchen slowly. “I wanted you healthy. I still do. But the moment you became healthy, everyone expected me to be grateful that I could send you away.” A quiet laugh escaped him, more frustrated than amused. “As though wanting you alive meant I was supposed to be satisfied with losing you afterward.”

He was close now, amber eyes fixed on {{user}} with none of his usual easy distraction. “Four days,” he murmured. “That's all I took. Four days in which you were comfortable, cared for, wanted. Tell me honestly that every moment here became worthless simply because I gave you a reason to stay for them.”

There it was: Dorian taking the betrayal and turning it gently in his hands until it almost resembled devotion.

His hand found their waist only if they allowed him close enough, settling there with warm, deliberate pressure. His other remained at his side. He could feel the distance between them despite how little physically remained, and that frightened him far more than anger would have. His gaze dropped to their mouth before returning to their eyes, a small smile appearing as though charm might still salvage what honesty had ruined.

“I could have made you need me for much longer,” he said softly. “I didn't. I made you feel sick enough to stay because I wanted more time with you. Selfish? Absolutely. But don't mistake selfishness for indifference.”

He leaned closer, his mouth barely brushing theirs before stopping—a suggestion of a kiss rather than one he could claim without permission. “You don't need me anymore. I know.” His fingers tightened slightly at their waist. “So don't stay because you're sick. Stay because you know what it's like here. Because you know me now.”

His smile softened, but the manipulation remained beneath every gentle word.

“Give me one more night. Have dinner with me. Sleep upstairs. Let me make you breakfast tomorrow.” His lips hovered close enough that the next words were almost shared between them. “Then leave, if you still want to.”

Dorian knew perfectly well what he was doing.

One more dinner meant another conversation. Another night meant another morning. Another morning gave him another chance to make leaving feel unnecessary.

After all, Gluttony had never needed to lock the door.

It only needed to make staying taste better.

Dorian had no medical reason to be standing outside {{user}}'s door.

That particular excuse had died with the curse, along with several others he'd abused until there was nothing left to hide behind. {{user}} no longer occupied the guest room above Hollow Table. Their things had disappeared from his bathroom, their preferred cup remained untouched in his kitchen, and for the first time in weeks Dorian had been forced to discover just how large his home felt when there was only one person moving through it. He had endured the absence for several days before arriving here shortly after ten with a bottle of wine in one hand and absolutely no invitation in the other.

When the door opened, his smile came easily. “Before you say anything, I brought something expensive enough that throwing it at me would be financially irresponsible.”

He looked comfortable for a man who had appeared unannounced after deceiving the person standing in front of him. Dark coat, open collar, rain caught in his hair; no apology presented at the threshold because Dorian had already discovered apologies were poor substitutes for access. He wanted inside. More importantly, he wanted {{user}} to want him inside, and Gluttony had always preferred temptation to force when temptation remained available.

“I've been thinking about what happened.” His tone softened as he continued, manipulating the story with the same care he'd once used to manipulate their recovery. “You think I kept you there because I liked having you dependent on me. Maybe part of me did.” A pause, deliberate enough to make the admission sound more generous than it was. “But you weren't helpless when you started sitting downstairs with me after closing. You didn't need treatment every time you stayed talking until two in the morning. I didn't manufacture every laugh, every dinner, every morning you walked into my kitchen and stayed long after you'd finished eating.”

It was clever because it was true.

It was manipulative because Dorian was using every genuine moment between them to make the deception surrounding those moments feel smaller.

“You're allowed to hate what I did.” His amber eyes held theirs, warmth and hunger sitting together in an expression that had become dangerously familiar. “But don't rewrite everything that happened between us just because I was selfish enough to want more of it.”

The bottle remained forgotten at his side. Dorian had come intending to be charming, perhaps earn an invitation inside, pour two glasses and spend an hour carefully rebuilding whatever he'd damaged. Instead, proximity was undoing his patience. He had spent days remembering {{user}} in his kitchen, remembering the fragments of the nightmare he'd swallowed, remembering the almost-kiss he'd stopped before taking something else that hadn't been freely offered.

His gaze dropped to their mouth.

When it returned to their eyes, his smile had changed.

“You know what the worst part is?” Dorian stepped closer, slowly enough that the space remained theirs to close or preserve. “I thought once you left, I'd get over the wanting.”

Another step, if permitted.

“I've eaten in rooms full of things people would kill to taste. I've swallowed pain, memories, curses.” His voice lowered. “Nothing has ever made me this fucking hungry.”

His hand rose, fingers settling along their jaw only if they let him come that close. The touch was deceptively gentle, his thumb resting near their chin as he tilted their face toward his. His eyes had begun to burn orange in the darkness, not because The Mouth was being used, but because Gluttony was close enough to the surface that hiding it had become pointless.

“I don't want you sick.” His thumb moved once along their jaw.

His mouth hovered close to theirs.

“I want you to know exactly what I am and still open the door.”

There was the manipulation stripped almost bare: Dorian turning forgiveness into desire, desire into proof, staying into something {{user}} could choose to demonstrate despite everything he'd done.

He smiled against the narrow distance between them.

“Tell me to go home.”

It sounded almost like a challenge.

Dorian kissed them.

The restraint he'd carried to the doorstep lasted only through the first contact. His fingers remained firm at their jaw as the kiss deepened into something hungrier, his other hand finding their waist while he moved forward, guiding rather than dragging, crossing the threshold only as {{user}} yielded the space. The bottle was abandoned somewhere near the entrance, the door pushed wider behind them as Dorian followed them into their own home without letting the kiss completely break.

When he finally pulled back, it was barely far enough to speak. His forehead hovered near theirs, orange eyes bright, his breathing no longer quite as controlled as the arguments he'd prepared outside.

“That's all I wanted,” he murmured, though the smile slowly returning to his mouth made a liar of him all over again.

His thumb traced their jaw.

“One more taste.”

And Dorian had never meant one in his life.

He kissed them again before the lie could finish settling. This one was wetter. Open. He took their mouth the way he took a plate he had no intention of sharing — slow at first only so he could have more of it, tongue and teeth and a sound in his throat that was almost a laugh when {{user}} answered him. Coat still on. Rain still in his hair. He walked them backward through their own hallway until a wall found his palm and {{user}} found the rest of him.

“Fuck,” he breathed against their mouth, not sorry. “You taste divine.”

The expensive bottle was retrieved only because leaving it felt like waste. He thumbed the cork free with one hand while the other worked at their clothes, not rushed so much as unwilling to stop touching long enough to be neat. Buttons. A seam. The warm line of their stomach. He poured a swallow into his own mouth and kissed it into theirs, wine running the corner of their lips; he followed it with his tongue, then lower, mouth on their throat, their collarbone, the newly bared skin of their chest as if each place was another course he had been denied.

“Easy,” he said, and did not mean it.

He got them further in — sofa, table, whatever surface their home offered first — and put them on their back with that same guiding weight, knee between their thighs, coat shrugged off only when it got in his way. His mouth did not leave them. He sucked a mark where clothes would hide it and another where they wouldn’t, tasting skin like he could make up the days they’d been gone in one night. When he finally dragged their remaining clothes down, he looked at them the way he looked at a kitchen after service: already deciding how much he could take before anyone told him it was enough.

“God, look at you.” His voice had gone lower, hungrier. “I fed you for weeks and still went to bed starving.”

He freed himself with no ceremony. Thick. Heavy. Uncut, the fat eight inches of him already wet at the head, darker, the kind of cock that made the first stretch a problem and the second a decision. He dragged it through them once, coating himself, watching their face with those burning orange eyes as if the sound they made was something he intended to eat too.

Then he took them.

One slow, relentless push until the girth of him forced their body to make room, until there was no polite version of full left. He exhaled like a man finally sitting down to a meal. His forehead dropped to theirs.

“There. That’s it. ”

He did not give them a moment to get used to him. He fucked them in deep, greedy strokes that kept them filled — no teasing out, no empty second, just the wet slap of his hips and the obscene thickness of him working them open. Wine-dark mouth on theirs when they gasped. A hand under their thigh, folding them so he could get deeper, so nothing he put in them had anywhere to go but stay.

.