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When he answers the door, your first thought is, easy prey.
The club book as good as said so. Spineless, harmless, mentally negligible. Nothing about his appearance (hair uncombed, collar unbuttoned, dumbfounded expression, mouth agape) suggests otherwise.
Smoothly, you introduce yourself and slide inside. The flat is a mess, but quickly put to rights. You mix him a simple tonic, and he begins to speak. He speaks nicely enough. He praises you, thanks you. At least this little fly has manners. He will bleed sweeter. The last few insects that you’ve eaten have left an unpleasant taste in your mouth.
“What is your name?” he asks.
You are the shadow that haunts the city, you are the one that pulls the strings. You are the feudal spirit. Where there is a man sitting fat and happy at the center of his own domain, there you are also. Caught in the web of something much, much greater than yourself, obediently you spin your own little plans. Preying upon those who would control others for their own gain or abetting them, it makes little difference to you. You willingly feed that which owns you, and you in turn are fed.
You are the Spider, and if there was ever a time when you were anything else, you have forgotten it.
“Jeeves,” you tell him, and he shakes your hand.
“Very well, Jeeves. You are employed.”
You settle in. You wind your threads. You will not be here long, you think. Already, he is webbed in on every side. Aunts encircle him, fairweather friends, prospective wives. It will be a little matter to finish the binding.
A little problem begins to emerge, however: you do not frighten him.
You do not understand how this can be so. You take control: subtly first, and then more openly. He gives it over to you happily, and more. He smiles and remarks upon your competence, your intelligence, your judgment, your guile. When you pull harder, he bends.
You cast on your stitches and click, click, click your needles. You throw out his clothing. You offer him your advice. Nothing seems to work. In frustration, you think that maybe he is too stupid to scare, and that you have got yourself nicely mired in his life for nothing.
At last, you discover it, however. He has hidden it away quite well. Fuzzy and diffuse, the cloud of it overhangs him, though he cheerfully denies it.
He is afraid of being married off.
His fear is plump and succulent, swelling with sweetness and nicely aged. Oft do the secret fears run thickest with juice.
You ready your net.
“Lady Florence Craye is a fine young lady, sir.”
“Hah. Fine enough to be guarding the stocks, Jeeves.”
You hand him his tea. “You are not pleased by your recent engagement?”
“Imprisonment is more like it.” He shudders, and you can taste the sharp tang of fear around him.
“Indeed, sir?” You prepare to reel him in.
“Think you can spring me?” He looks up at you with absolute confidence.
The perfectly smooth motion of your hand stutters.
He takes your silence for an affirmative. “What am I saying? Of course you can.” He smiles his open smile. “I say, Jeeves! Whatever would I do without you?”
You cannot go through with it. You are a monster.
But not monster enough.
After that, you devote yourself to a new task. Mr. Wooster will never marry. Not if you have anything to do with it.
For a long time, you live like this. Hung in an uneasy harmony, you pluck your strings. Arranging things around your master, protecting him from harm. Still, the smell of his fear grows sweeter. For the first time in a very, very long time, you begin to develop a fear of your own: that you will break. That your control will snap and you devour him, or else give in to your love for him and be revealed.
No thread can be held taut forever. At last, it must break. Situations change, and events in the end must fall out, either in one direction or the other.
As it happens, it is the latter option that eventually takes place, and you are revealed for what you truly are. But once again, your master surprises you. He is not afraid.
You cling to him, you gaze upon him with all eight eyes, and he looks lovingly into each pair in turn as he carries you. He wraps his own muffler around your neck. “Warm enough, old thing?”
You can hardly answer. Yes. For the first time in a long time, for the first time maybe ever. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
When you get home, he tenderly puts you to bed. It is not rest but food your body wants, but you let this happen, anyway. The soft, woolen blankets are nice. His worried face as he strokes your hair is nicer. That night, you slip away to drink your fill in the darkness of the city streets, and the next morning, all is as it was–you think.
But there is something new there. A considering light in his eye. It makes you shiver, but not with fear. It makes you hungry for him.
You catch him, blushing, staring at your eyes. You see him catching glances of your rear. You start to understand that you could have him–not to kill, but still to taste, and the boundless chasm of your want opens up like a yawning mouth.
You take him on his knees, in his bedroom in the flat that you share. Your silk cords wrap around his arms, his waist, his ankles and his legs. He can only feel them, but you can see how they glitter in the air. You force him down and his back bows: one smooth, curving line. He moans with pleasure. You can see the bare back of his neck. It is electrifying.
You pluck at your cords, pulling him closer. He comes so willingly. You have never met someone who so enjoyed the act of surrender. He shuffles forward on his knees, presses a soft kiss to your cock.
You groan at the sensation. He is so beautiful. His knees are just starting to turn red.
You caress him with your many arms. You stroke his hair, sweat-damp and curling. He gently mouths at your skin; you feel his hot breath at the center of you, between your many legs.
You take the nape of his neck in hand. You love this moment: the feeling of power low in your stomach, the taught delight. All of your will is bent on him, and he takes it solidly, like it’s easy, like he longs to be filled. You can hear the sharp whisper of silk.
“Oh, Jeeves. Jeeves,” he breathes. You like how he says your name, like you’re really a person and not whatever it is that you aren’t anymore. “Please–please!”
You yank on a silk cord, forcing his head up. The others lash him in place. He whimpers with want. His prick is erect and leaking.
Slowly, you ease your way into his soft, slack mouth. He swallows you obediently, his head nestling sweetly between your legs. He sucks you with enthusiasm, his lips slipping over your thickening member, soft and sloppy. Without quite meaning to, you tighten your grip in reaction, and he lets out a gasp like polished silver.
“Yes,” you moan. “Yes.” You quicken your pace, rocking into his open mouth while he pants and strains against his bindings, desperate to taste you, to lick you, to frot.
You begin to lose your grip on him as your shuddering pleasure mounts. One by one, the cords fall away. He surges upward, wrapping himself around you, kissing you, putting one hand on your cock and the other on your waist.
You burst in a shaking mountain of pleasure, going limp and boneless in his arms. He lays you on the bed and climbs on top of you, rutting desperately against your skin.
“Jeeves, Jeeves,” he says urgently.
You stroke him off and let him fall tumbling in great spurts to join you in the dizzy aftermath.
He holds your hand, sometimes, looking solemn. It is not an expression that he frequents often, and you find you don’t much like it on him.
“This…er, this…condition,” he says delicately, “that you have.”
You could say that it is not a condition that you have so much as a condition of what you are, but you don’t want to interrupt, and so you say nothing.
“Does it hurt?”
What an interesting question. You have to give it some thought. Does the fly hurt, when he drowns in honey? Does the void ache, to know that it is cold? Does the amnesiac miss what he does not remember? Does he feel the aching hole inside him, still?
“No.”
He sighs in obvious relief. “Oh, good.”
Something about his warm and earnest tone compels you to be honest with him. “The spider’s venom dulls the pain. It prefers to keep its victims placid and pliable whilst it feeds.”
“Oh.” His face crumples. “Oh, no.”
He is upset. Very upset. More than you expected.
“You needn't worry yourself about me, sir,” you try to reassure him. “I am well used to the peculiarities of my situation.”
“My poor, poor Jeeves!” he cries. “Isn’t there something I can do?”
“There is,” you say. “You do.”
Your master is one of nature’s bachelors. You are his Jeeves. You still must feed the web-thing that caught you–but now it seems that your bonds are growing looser. Lighter. They float on the air like gossamer.
You inhale the scent of his fear and tense, shivering with want. He suggests feeding you his aunt. You laugh in delighted peals of shining, shimmering laughter.
You kiss him and taste the sweetness on his skin.
He is too solid to ever devour.