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Jean's house has termites.
They are, as it happens, very polite termites. They stay scrupulously away from load-bearing beams, so that he never has to worry about his roof collapsing onto his head. He does have to replace the non-load-bearing walls occasionally -- and the porch railing, and the interior doors, and the kitchen table -- but they stay away from the bookshelves, so overall he counts it as a win.
The bedbugs are polite enough not to bite. Jean is pretty sure this should not be physiologically possible, but he's learned better than to ask too many questions. The mosquitoes do bite, but they don't bite him, and they're careful about only biting one animal so they don't spread disease.
He didn't have silverfish until he designated a bookshelf to devote entirely to a collection of really, truly terrible books. It features Fifty Shades of Gray and To Train Up A Child and Dianetics and tie-in novels for various franchises. Now he does have silverfish, but only in the one bookshelf, so that's okay.
His favorites are the bees. (The spiders are his sister's favorite, but she doesn't mind that he likes the bees best. Bees are good too.) He has hives and hives of them, and none of them ever sting him, which is good, because if they did they would die and that would be awful. They make more honey than they need, so every so often he gets to go open up one of the hives (he warns them first, politely, so none get squashed by accident) and fish out jars and jars full of honey. He has a pantry full of it, all different colors, shades of gold and brown and pale and even auburn. Sometimes he shares it with the bugs.
The bees need flowers, of course, but he has forty acres all to himself, and when the grasshoppers know to stay away and the worms know to come and thrive, that can grow a lot of plants. He gets monarch butterflies every fall when they migrate, and he stands outside counting them and crying. He doesn't love them quite as much as he loves the bees, but he still loves them, and there's fewer every year.
They miss him, when he's gone, traveling to act or to attend conferences or to do other things, and he misses them. There's bugs everywhere, but his house has so many, and such good ones. His sister sends him all sorts of strange and foreign creatures: dung beetles with carapaces that shine like jewels, long-legged spiders that weave him clothes of strange fabric, African termites that build clay statues at his command.
They're letting him be, right now, so he can focus on his work, but he can still see them moving out of the corner of his eye, and it makes him smile: small winged things darting irregular paths through the air, or heavier bugs scuttling across the floor, going about their business. He never has to be alone.
Jean clicks out of the ninth article on bee depopulation and squints at the screen, tired-eyed. increasing bee population, he googles.
Ten minutes later, after working through a fruitless page of results: getting bees to breed more
After another ten minutes: bee mating
bee sex
what do bees think is sexy
how to seduce a bee
In the picture, Z is sprawled on a bed, leaned back against the wall. The sheets are stained with blood, and there’s a scalpel and a coil of bloody wire abandoned on the bed next to him.
One of his arms is flayed from halfway above the elbow, like a gory opera glove. He’s trailing his skinned hand down his chest, leaving a glistening trail of blood behind.
![[lung]](https://d1anwqy6ci9o1i.cloudfront.net/users%2F94%2Ficons%2F8e431906-d75d-4cfe-bdd5-25a78ea1a849_4a3afd4679b0367e54528e0ee5f413bf.jpg "[lung]")
[14:13] z: ❤️
[14:13] z: full vid drops tonight
[14:13] z: gonna go edit. love you all
* z has changed their name to z|afk *
[14:14] draculet: well i know where i'm sitting for the rest of the day
The chat goes on, speculating idly about the video, discussing other things.
It's hours before a link flashes up at the top of the page.
He doesn't try to monologue in this one.
In the beginning of the video, he cleans the skin of his arm, his palm and the back of his hand and between his fingers. He's meticulous about it.
When it's done to his satisfaction, he moves the camera with his other hand, crawls onto the bed, picks up his scalpel.
He slices careful lines down his arm, over his fingertips and palm, around his wrist, separating everything into neat sections, gasping softly.
Blood is already dripping off his fingers when he starts to cut away skin.
He gets louder and louder the more he cuts and peels away. When he gets to the tricky sections between his fingers, he picks up the razor wire and wraps it around his other fingers, pays no mind to the way the wire cuts into them as he slides it under the skin.
He has to stop to catch his breath, whimper and muffle the noise, by the time all the muscle is bare.
He drops the wire, and runs his skinned hand down his chest, gasping, barely skirts the waistband of his pants.
It's clearly hard to unbutton them and pull them off with just his one free hand, but he manages it.
He halfway sobs when he takes his cock in his bloodied hand and starts to stroke himself with it, shudders like he's freezing to death. He can't support himself upright at all, anymore, and he slumps back against the wall.
He can't keep his eyes open, not the whole time, but when he manages to lift them he looks right into the camera, supplicant and idol at once.
When he comes, covered in blood and sweat, eyes dripping but not quite like someone who's crying, his whole body shakes.
The video ends with him kissing his own palm.
He doesn't have words for the things he feels, watching it.
It takes him a while to find the word for what he feels when it ends.
He hasn't felt lonely since he was five years old.
The chat is buzzing, discussing the video. Foggy praises the explicit content, specifies some details of exactly how he enjoyed it and gets in a brief fight with chimeraglo about whether said details are appropriate feedback. Kira returns to inform everyone he hopes Z's arm rots off. Deadleaf gushes about how beautiful it is under Z's skin and how seen they felt. Palais says they're going to take some skin off and post it as a tribute.
He agrees with deadleaf about beauty and encourages palais's tribute and helpfully shares facts with kira about the use of maggots to treat gangrene.
He asks, also, if the fans ever meet up in person.
[21:30] deadleaf: sometimes!
[21:30] deadleaf: a lot of us are in california but there are little meetups other places i think
[21:31] deadleaf: they're hard to get to sometimes but it's so worth it!
[21:31] secondsting: Oh, that's convenient, I'm in California as well.
[21:31] secondsting: Does Z ever come?
[21:32] deadleaf: oh yay!!
[21:32] lemontired: not a lot. usually just for a few minutes when he does
[21:33] lemontired: long enough to see him though
[21:34] foggy: if you're trying to hook up with him let me tell you
[21:34] foggy: it doesn't work
[21:34] lemontired: that's bc you're foggy
[21:34] lollicabra: z's a fucking weirdo
[21:35] lollicabra: that's why we love him
[21:35] foggy: speak for yourself
[21:35] secondsting: I told you, I'm a drone.
[21:36] secondsting: Don't you love him because he's beautiful?
[21:36] foggy: what does that even mean
[21:36] lollicabra: i mean i guess he's pretty?
[21:37] lollicabra: that's not the important part though
[21:37] lollicabra: ok jeeze dude
[21:37] foggy: what is being a drone though
[21:38] deadleaf: he's beautiful on the inside and the outside
[21:38] deadleaf: and not just um that way u//_//u
[21:38] kira_kira: hooooly fuuuuuck
[21:38] kira_kira: why do you all like this garbage
[21:38] chair: Beauty is more than appearances
[21:39] padparadscha: this is kind of...creepy, guys.
[21:39] secondsting: Deadleaf gets it.
[21:39] secondsting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_(bee)