#bonus: Elias has tried to make himself a face claim of the Beholding to some success

[lighthausen]

[Martin + Tapes] A Story About Martin's OnlyFans.

So I wrote this and talked about it with @fakecrfan about a year ago now. I was reminded today that it existed, so I thought, hey, might as well share it with anyone else that's interested!

For those who are new to the Martin + Tapes universe and/or need a refresh, here's a chronological link to fakecrfan's Martin + Tapes tag

For a quick overview, in this au, the Beholding is in love with Martin, and by extension, anyone connected to the Beholding, even a bit is also at least somewhat in love with Martin. Many Martin-tormenting shenanigans ensue.

—

Martin jiggles his apartment door. It's locked today, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything, so he whips out his phone and checks the website.

There are three feeds running. Martin sighs, unlocks the door, grabs the broom he set leaning against the wall next to it for this specific purpose, and gets to finding the new cameras.

The first one is simple enough, installed in the corner of his bedroom. Martin smashes it like a bug under the handle of his broom. The second one, in his shower of course, is more difficult. They installed it behind the showerhead and he can't quite get a good angle with his broom, so he has to remove it by hand. The final one is easy, under his couch, not too much to be seen there. He sweeps it out and crushes it under his food with a satisfying crunch.

He checks the website again. All the feeds are gone. He breathes a deep sigh of relief, when— oh. They aren't all gone. There's one left, an audio feed. Martin groans then muffles himself when he hears his own groan played back. Great, just great. Martin decides to try humming a bit as he moves around, attempting to see where the bug is based on volume, but just as he starts to get a sense of where it is, the feed cuts off. Martin curses.

It takes an hour to find it. It ends up being in his pillow. How unoriginal. He breaks it, throws it out, takes a nap, and finds when he wakes up that the parts after the feed was cut were uploaded after. His eyes are drawn towards the comments.

listen to all his stomping and muttering, aauugh he’s SO cute

OMGGGGG the ENDINGGGGGG!!1!!!!! His little “There you are” before it cuts off eeeeeeeeeeeeee, HE’S TALKING TO ITTTTT, TALKING TO US!!!!😍😍😍😍

Something I find so charming and unique about him is his habit of talking to inanimate objects. I think it really speaks to how lonely he’s felt his whole life that he’s had to—

Martin turns his phone off. He doesn't feel much like eating right now, so he rolls over and goes back to bed.

—

The broom comes up in website discussion. He only knows this because the page where the camera feeds are has the most recent forum posts underneath it.

(What they say, I'll leave to the imagination, but Martin/Martin's Broom is the third most popular Ao3 tag in the Martin Blackwood RPF fandom. The first is Martin/Reader of course, followed by Martin/The Beholding)

(The Beholding was popularized in the Martin fandom after Martin was recorded saying "This isn't you! You're not in love with me, it's the Beholding monster thing—!" This was directed at YouTube star MrBarbarian in his video I LEAD A PARADE THROUGH LONDON TO PROPOSE TO MARTIN BLACKWOOD.

The video's virality, combined with some prominent members of the fandom stating they served the Beholding solidified its place in the Martin Blackwood fan-sphere.

The Beholding is often depicted as a tall, thin, white man with a third eye, a top hat, and a bow tie. Its attributes include sharp teeth, mind-reading, compulsion, a very long tongue, and an entourage of eye-covered tentacles.)

Anyway.

Things get worse and worse. They stop livestreaming the camera and audio feeds, opting instead to record privately and share stuff afterward. Martin keeps finding bugs. He never knows if he's got them all. He’s sure he hasn’t. Simply existing in his apartment is nerve wracking.

Final straw— he walks in and grabs the broom by the door as he always does, only to find that it’s… sticky. Martin shrieks and drops it. His hand is covered in a substance that Martin does not want to think deeply about as he rushes over to the kitchen sink to scrub himself clean with too-hot water. It leaves his hands red, and his eyes prickling with tears. He turns the sink off. That’s when he notices it, placed blatantly on the wall in front of him sits yet another camera. Martin can’t even bring himself to break it. He grabs his bag and runs, not bothering to lock his apartment.

He can’t stand to stay there tonight. He can’t go to a hotel or anything either, they’ll just bug it too, probably before he even gets there! With few other options, he goes to Tim, the best about boundaries of the archives gang. Not that he’s any good, it’s a very low bar, but still, he’s part of the Eye, so his apartment won’t be bugged. Tim is ecstatic to have him.

Tim is also genuinely sympathetic about the people bothering him, seems upset on Martin's behalf, even. He advises Martin to control the narrative. Give the audience something, threaten to take it away if they break into his apartment again.

"It feels better, when you make the choice," says Tim. "Like, sure, I suppose I was happy enough after that happy hour last month, when Jon and Sasha had to tie you to the radiator so you couldn't recklessly leave in the middle of the night, all alone.” Tim laughs at the memory. "But this? Having you here of your own free will? This feels amazing! I'm sure it'd be a similar situation for your other fans."

Martin wraps his arms around himself, avoiding looking at Tim, or the radiator. “You really think so?” he says.

“Absolutely!”

“Hmm… that’s something to consider. I really do want my apartment back.”

“Yeah! …But you’re not leaving tonight though, right? It’d be dangerous with so many creeps around.”

Martin shudders, feels the phantom heat of the radiator against his skin. “No, Tim, I’ll stay tonight.”

“Great! I’ll get the wine!”

—

After putting a lot of thought into it, Martin starts an OnlyFans.

The pictures he has on there are… rather bland. They’re the inoffensive kind of selfies and photos one might post on Facebook that family can see. They are ridiculously priced.

Despite this, the bugging stops. And for some time, Martin finally feels like he can breathe. He continues to check the website, content with how no new camera or audio footage is being uploaded about him. However, as he looks, he still sees the forum posts, the people online analyzing every single detail about every single photo.

Ughhhh there’s toooooo few photos on there, like, I’ve analyzed them all a hundred times already, when’s the new content coming??????

Hm. That doesn’t sound good. Martin posts more frequently. Which works, until…

These photos are great and all but they’re getting so samey, I want to see a real, authentic Martin, like in the videos people used to upload.

The people are getting antsy. “Give them what they want,” Tim said. Alright, he can do it. He creates a new, even more expensive pricing tier, with slightly less tasteful photos, ones that someone might share on a private Instagram that only friends know about.

They love it of course. And these photos are easier to take. Things are working out just fine. But…

WHEN is he gonna show some SKIN, like, COME ON

Seeeeeriously, i’d pay sooooo much to see his tits again

Martin sucks in a breath. Okay. They want skin? They’d pay a lot? Fine. Give the people what they want. He takes one new photo, and, y’know, just to see what happens, he’s gonna set this new pricing tier to be a million— no, that's too easy— a billion pounds.

(Is this possible? Probably not. Let’s pretend.)

The photo in question is fairly tame. A shirtless mirror selfie where he's biting his lip and posing in a way that could be construed as provocative. He’s also holding the broom (which he thoroughly cleaned).

He doesn’t expect anything as he lists it. Just for fun he checks out the fansite, and sees people going nuts about the new hidden photo. He chuckles and heads for bed.

When he wakes up and checks his phone, he gets a news notification about major data breaches across multiple corporations, about CEOs getting hacked and losing a ton of their assets, about stocks for companies associated with them plummeting drastically. He also gets a notification informing him 57 people have purchased access to his new photo.

—

A lot happens in the following days.

There were attempts to find the perpetrators of this mass-data breach and money loss, to no success. They got away with it.

There are news articles "The Photo That Sank 14 Companies" "How Martin Blackwood, Sexiest Man Alive Caused Brief Economic Collapse"

None of these articles portray Martin in a negative light. Quite the opposite actually! They all assert he deserves the money and that the photo is insanely hot.

They all mention the broom.

You can find those lamenting what happened, who do not like Martin Blackwood online. There’s plenty of posts about it, but the ones that get more than a tiny bit of traction almost always get deleted and the accounts they belong to go mysteriously silent.

There are those who attempt to sue Martin over what happened. None of these lawsuits go very far.

One of the buyers is Elias. He used Peter's card, which he has free access to.

Martin feels Extremely Guilty

And. That's an unfathomable amount of money so Martin will lose access to it before he can do too much. But…

Some things that could happen:

He donates as much as he can of it

Some goes to innocent people who lost their jobs due to this whole… situation. It's difficult to find them, but he asks Sasha (and therefore all of the Eye people) if he can get a list of them. He gets one within an hour.

General charity donations, going through gofundmes, giving away a lot to his mother's care home (is his mother still alive? She would get a ton of money.)

He also buys out his apartment building and gifts the apartments to the families living there.

Unfortunately, a day after he does this, one of his neighbors knocks on his door and tells him and tells him that someone just offered to buy their apartment for 10 times its cost and they accepted, just wanted to let you know, Martin.

Then the rest of his neighbors reach out to him with the same story.

Martin's apartment building is now filled with Eye freaks.

He would definitely lose access to the money after this, having that much money gives him far too much power for the Eye to be comfortable with. Instead, the money goes into a private account that the Eyevatars can use only on Martin. A trust fund, of sorts, that they can lovingly torment Martin with.

Cherry on top, he can't sell the apartment or apply to live anywhere else (Eyevatars see to that) So it's his apartment or the archives.

Martin has also been banned from OnlyFans.