It is a terrible thing that Douglas is doing! However, he's not a psychopath, so once the deed was done, it wasn't possible for him to regard Martin as an object. So it's bad at first, but won't be, eventually. :D

Yes! Martin is one of the world's fighters, to be sure. He is the very personification of resilience. I haven't seen the discussion on the chatter post, but I looked up the costs while I was researching for the fic and it's just HORRIFYING. You can kind of see why Martin just got the van and the multimeter. :-/ But he's very much his own man, and persistent, and I love it!