Chapter Text
It starts, as so many things in Vanessa’s life have, on a dark and stormy night. The witches breached the stronghold of Grandage Place a week or two earlier, and Vanessa has spent a week sleeping in Ethan’s room, too shaken to be alone. At first, he slept on the small sofa in his room, but she noticed how much stiffer he seemed the mornings after, how he braced his hands on the small of his back when he stood or absently kneaded at his shoulders as he sat and read dime novels by the fire. She insists that the bed is big enough for two to sleep chastely, and after some chivalrous attempts at protest, Ethan gives in. She watches smugly as he settles in next to her, his big body straight and long instead of curled up on a sofa half his size.
She can’t rightly say if it’s the movement of the mattress as he lifts his weight from it that wakes her, or the storm. Perhaps it’s both, some psychic attunement to cosmic shifts and imbalances. Regardless, she wakes to find Ethan gone, his blankets thrown back, and the faint noise of someone moving around on the floor below. Silently, she creeps downstairs and toward the noise with her heart in her throat, and she nearly swoons with relief when she peers around the kitchen doorway to find Ethan in his nightclothes, a platter of the evening’s cake in front of him.
She watches as he wolfs down mouthful after mouthful, his free hand braced on his stomach, and bites back the gasp that threatens to leave her when he pauses to let out a low, rumbling belch. She expects that soon he’ll stop, and she’ll have to flee upstairs or feign sleepwalking to throw him off the scent. But he keeps eating, bite after bite until the entire remaining half of the cake is gone. He exhales, groans, belches again. Vanessa presses her thighs together and tries not to squeak. God damn her for convincing him to share the bed! At least if he remained on the sofa she could try to alleviate the problem herself.
Without the extra layers of his waistcoats and sweaters, she can see, even from the threshold, where his stomach is beginning to bow out. Almost certainly the cake, she thinks, but how many nights has he eaten like this? Ethan always eats heartily at meals, more so than Victor or Sir Malcolm. He exudes health in his strength, his breadth, the pink of his round cheeks. How long until that much excess begins to become obvious?
She bites down hard on her tongue as Ethan turns back to the larder. As quietly as she can, she rushes up the stairs and hurls herself back into bed, willing her breathing to slow, and she waits.
It’s another ten minutes or so before Ethan lumbers upstairs; she can hear the slow weight of his footfalls if she listens closely. As he approaches their room, she rolls so that she's faced away from the door, not trusting herself not to give the game away. And a good thing, too: Ethan is breathing heavily, as if he’d taken the stairs at a brisk run, and he exhales in deep groans and soft belches. He paces slowly around the room as she lies, heart pounding, heat spreading through her. She imagines his hand braced on his bulging stomach, imagining him pacing because he was entirely too overfull to lie down. What else can he have consumed after so much cake?
Silently she slides her hand to her mouth and bites down on her knuckle. She will not give herself away.
Finally Ethan exhales once more and sits down heavily on the mattress; she crushes her eyes shut as his side sinks. Slowly he eases himself onto his back, his breathing still labored, and his stomach gives an unhappy gurgle. He groans and shifts, and Vanessa stays awake far longer than she should, listening to his noises of discomfort as he digests.
She waits until it happens a few nights in a row, and then she screws her courage to the sticking place and follows him downstairs. She watches for a while as he eats cream cake fresh from the icebox, as he gulps milk between bites. Once he sets the bottle safely on the counter — she can’t bear the thought of anyone else seeing him like this, much less seeing her on his tail — she raps softly on the doorframe and says his name.
He whirls around, his face flushing. “Miss Ives. Did I wake you?”
“In a manner. Did something wake you?”
Ethan shifts his weight. “Couldn’t fall asleep.”
She nods, taking a step into the kitchen. “Do you do this every night?”He stands stock-still as she crosses the room toward him. “Miss Ives, if I’ve offended you somehow —”
“I’m not offended,” says Vanessa, surprised. “Merely intrigued. Do we not feed you enough during the day?” She tries to keep her voice light, unaccusing. The last thing she wants is for Ethan to decide that he’s overstayed his welcome at Grandage Place.
He regards her carefully for a long moment, and Vanessa half-smiles. “You’re not in trouble, Mr. Chandler. You needn’t look at me like I’m going to punish you. I just want to help you eat your fill.”
Ethan’s gaze doesn’t uncloud. “Then why do I feel l like a pig up for slaughter?”
Vanessa laughs. “Perhaps because you’ve been eating like one.” Then, more gently, “Ethan, really. I’ve heard you get up in the night and I’ve had to check that it isn’t somesort of threat, you understand.” He nods, and she continues, “It’s truly no business of mine what you eat, or how much. All I ask is that you save me a small slice of cake for my breakfast.”
Ethan opens his mouth to reply, then brings his fist to his lips and catches a soft belch. Vanessa blinks, caught momentarily off guard, but he notices, and some of the furrows smooth from his forehead.
“Miss Ives, if I didn’t know better I’d think you got something out of this.”
“Then perhaps you don’t know better,” she murmurs, drawing closer. “I find your habits intensely appealing. I’d like to help. May I help?”
“Help …?”
“Help feed you,” she says, gathering the skirt of her nightdress and perching on the counter beside the cake. “If you’re amenable.”
Up close, she can see how his jaw has softened some beneath his beard, how his stomach pushes out more than it did a month ago. “Do you get something out of it?”
Ethan reddens again. “Helps me sleep, I suppose,” he says hesitantly. “Hard to think about much else when you’re too full of cake to move.”
Vanessa draws in a sharp breath. “And do you find it strange that I might find this appealing?”
There — Ethan smiles, the way he does when Vanessa makes some sardonic aside out of Malcolm’s earshot or catches the same absurd snippet of conversation out on the street as he does. “Now, Miss Ives, you must know that’s the least strange thing about you.”
“So it is,” she agrees. “Now, eat, it’s very late. You need your sleep as well, Mr. Chandler.”
She feeds him — cake from the platter, milk from the jar, bread from the loaf until his every breath is jagged and shallow. “Miss Ives,” he gasps finally, one hand pressed to his stomach. He’d collapsed into a kitchen chair, she beside him, as his stomach grew more and more distended. “All right, Miss Ives, enough. I’m fit to burst.”
“Too much?” she asks, dismayed, setting aside the butter bell. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He belches helplessly, leaning back and spreading his legs to give his stomach more room to swell. “No — I’m all right. Just found my limits, I think.”
“You did quite well,” she assures him, daring to stroke at his hair. “Nearly a whole loaf of bread as well as all that cake, and you did eat quite a lot this evening as well.”
“Can’t help it,” he mumbles, hiccuping into his fist. “The food here’s the best I’ve had in years.”
Vanessa smiles. “I only wish I could take even the smallest amount of credit for that. I rather think eating so much of my cooking would constitute punishment.”
Ethan chuckles weakly, more of a huff than a laugh. “Well, you want to keep shoveling food into my mouth in the dead of night, I won’t say no. Might need to let my pants out soon, though.” He palms his belly. “All that cake’s starting to pile up.”
Vanessa catches her breath. “Only if you let me tag along.”
“Only prudent, I s’pose.” He belches again and excuses himself. Vanessa counts herself lucky that he avoids her eyes, lest he see how pink she’s turned. “I keep this up, I’m sure I’ll need more than one trip to the tailor’s.”
“Of course we’ll need to keep you in things that fit,” she replies, trying to tamp down the abject excitement spinning through her. “You’re a handsome man, Mr. Chandler. I hardly think that will change with more of you.”
He aims a fond, roguish smile at her. “You just want to fatten me up so I’ll keep you warmer at night.”
Vanessa stands to return the bread to the breadbox so he won’t catch how flustered she is. “Maybe so,” she intones, making him laugh. “If that’s an invitation to stay, I just may take you up on it.”
“Whenever you like,” he says, resting a hand on the mound of his stomach. “Fine if you don’t want to stay every night, but I’m always glad to have you.”
“I’ll come back up with you tonight,” she agrees, taking his hand. “Now, do you think you can make it back up the stairs?”
Ethan groans. “No, ma’am.”
They make it to the base of the staircase before Ethan needs to pause and catch his breath. He catches belch after belch in his fist, his heavy, overfed stomach complaining at the smallest of movements.
“Sorry, Miss Ives. Not at my best right now.”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” Vanessa murmurs breathlessly.
Finally they haul him to his feet and he makes it another few steps before he pauses to hiccup, belch, hiccup again. “Do you feel all right?” she whispers, and he nods.
“I feel … overstuffed. But not bad. I’ll sleep well tonight thanks to you, Miss Ives.”
She pats his belly as it heaves with his breathing. There’s more give than she expects, for how much he gorged himself. “You should. Look how full you are, you ate so well.”
Another belch, and a sigh of relief that completely undoes her. “I think I can make it now, if you help me up.”
She takes him by the arm and guides him back to bed, props him up with pillows and draws the blankets over him. “Best to avoid your stomach,” she murmurs, kissing his forehead the way he’d kissed hers the first night she’d slept here. “Sleep well, Ethan. Breakfast is in a few hours.”