Archive of Our Own

The first time Martin saw Jon kill a spider in the Archives, it was minding its own business. Jon noticed it in the corner when the movement of a moth struggling in its web caught his eye. He paused mid-conversation with Tim, and without any fanfare, dropped a tissue on both the hapless arachnid and its prey before squashing the whole deal under his shoe. Then he threw away the crumpled tissue and went back to his conversation as if nothing happened. Tim barely even broke stride, like he was accustomed to this. So Martin wrote it off as another Jon-ism.

But he began to notice a pattern as he got to know his new boss a little better. The Archives were a dusty old basement of a dusty old building. There were lots of spiders. it happened. That fact didn't seem to bother Jon, except that he was completely unable to leave them be. It was such an odd thing, Martin thought. Almost compulsive. Jon calmly, efficiently assassinated every spider he encountered, always neat and collected, no shouting or screeching or outsized dramatics over one tiny bug like you saw with some people. But despite his apparent lack of fear, Jon didn't tolerate spiders.

It was a bit of a shame. Martin much preferred spiders over the other kinds of such creepy-crawlies that frequented basements: the populations of which spiders generally controlled. Plus, Martin had seen those tiny little pantry moths around here, and didn't they eat paper or something? By preserving the spider population, Martin could argue that he was helping with record preservation.

Martin intervened on the spider's behalf next time Jon went after one. It was tiny and pale, little more than a baby, and there was no reason to kill it. It hadn't built any inconveniently-placed webs, or dropped into anyone's hair. It was literally just chilling.

But Jon was so startled by Martin swooping in to save the thing, he froze on the spot. Martin scooped it up and started in on his usual lecture about their role in the ecosystem and how helpful they can be – he even mentioned the moth thing! - but he trailed off when he glanced up and saw the blank look on Jon's face. His wary brown eyes were fixed on the spider where it cautiously explored Martin's hand. He clearly hadn't processed a word Martin had said. The assistant sighed.

"I'll just, erm... I'll just take this fellow outside, shall I?" he murmured, clearing his throat.

"You do that," Jon said, his lip curling into a suppressed sneer before he turned on his heel and stalked off. His tone was so brusque that Martin actually, physically winced. Ouch. Not earning yourself any points there, Blackwood.

Okay, he reasoned, so maybe a bit more afraid than I thought. Just better than average at hiding it.

Still, that wasn't a reason to victimize a whole species of largely-innocent creatures. Martin made a point of escorting every spider he saw out to the garden; on his hand if Jon wasn't watching, or in a cup if he was. Amidst all the scorn and nitpicking that Martin bore without complaint, this was his one act of rebellion. Every spider he saved felt like a victory in a battle only he knew he was fighting, but it was a small satisfaction all the same.

And Martin had learned to savor his small satisfactions in life.

...

Martin could almost understand Jon's distaste for spiders after he read the Vittery case file; though he stared at Jon like he’d sprouted a second head when he claimed a natural explanation for the contents of the autopsy report.

“Maybe you’re the one who needs to be medicated,” he muttered under his breath as he walked away with the case file, once he was absolutely sure he was out of Jon’s earshot. Tim heard him and guffawed, bringing a petty little smile to Martin’s face.

But then everything else happened when he attempted to re-investigate said file, and that all had nothing to do with spiders. After two weeks locked in his apartment in fear for his life from worms, of all things, the sight of a perfectly ordinary spider spinning a web in the corner of Document Storage brought Martin to relieved tears. It practically made him feel safe.

Well, that and the gentling of Jon's voice when he offered Martin someplace to sleep: a promise of all the protection and help that the Institute (that he) could offer. That first night, Jon didn't go home to his own apartment. He claimed he just happened to be working late and it had nothing to do with Martin; but every time Martin woke from his periodic nightmares and looked around himself in a panic, he could see down the hall that the light in the Head Archivist's office was still on. It was all the comfort Martin needed, just knowing he wasn't completely alone in this. Someone believed him.

Jon did go home around 9 PM the next night, visibly swaying on his feet and unable to justify another all-nighter, even to himself. But he stopped in to check on Martin before he left. He offered to bring him some groceries the next day, and do a load of laundry for him whenever he needed. Martin had expected to look up and see pity, extended alongside his generous offer like a consolation prize. But it took his breath away when their eyes met, and all he found there was empathy. Empathy and guilt.

He managed a nod and a mutter about sending him fifty quid for the food. Then Jon entrusted his building keys to Martin so he wouldn't be trapped inside the Institute at night, and Martin locked up after him. He double-checked all the locks. Then he went and laid in his (Jon's) cot to stare at the dusty ceiling for awhile, feeling conflicted.

The thing was, Jon's kindness in this fraught moment was... endearing. Martin knew, logically, that it only felt special because he had just been through something traumatic. He was latching onto the first and nearest person who made him feel safe. Plus, this was such a stark contrast to the caustic tone and abrasive manners Martin had come to expect from him. He would never have thought Jon was capable of being so... sweet. It was doing terrible things for his crush.

It had been easy to fantasize about his handsome boss who hated him. The unattainability was part of the appeal. This... this was harder. He didn't know what to do with a Jon who was genuinely endearing.

But Martin also knew he probably shouldn't find this so endearing. He shouldn't want to wipe the guilt from Jon's face, or reassure him that this whole thing wasn't his fault. Because... it kind of was.

Sure, Jon had no way of knowing that the texts he was receiving weren't from Martin. They weren't close like that. Jon's calls and voicemails went unanswered. It wasn't his place as Martin's employer to pry further. Looking up Martin's address in his employee file so he could go harass him about not coming to work would've been a bridge too far. The most that could've been expected of him was to call in a wellness check. Based on the increasing urgency of his attempts to contact Martin, it looked like he probably would've sent a wellness check if he'd gone a few more business days without hearing Martin's voice, seeing his face, or receiving a doctor's note in his inbox. One of the first things Martin had done that day was get a new phone with his old number and data loaded into it. He’d seen the texts. Listened to the voicemails. Jon had started to sound genuinely concerned by the end of that second week. After all that time Martin spent thinking he was alone and forgotten, knowing someone was worried about him – anyone at all – did actually bring him to tears.

But... Jon had reason to be guilty all the same. It was kind of his fault that Martin crossed paths with Jane Prentiss in the first place. He would never have gone back to that basement if Jon hadn't made him feel so insecure, so inadequate, so less-than. Martin knew that his initial report on the Vittery case was airtight, because he had Sasha review it for him before he submitted. And yet Jon still found a reason to tear Martin a new one for his 'sloppy work'. He wouldn't have scolded Tim or Sasha for reaching the obvious dead-end on this case, for not digging deeper when there was clearly no deeper to dig. (At least, not without flirting or hacking his way into privileged information that the Magnus Institute was in no way legally entitled to). Jon's double standard was the thing that ultimately put Martin in such a dangerous position. As Martin's boss, he should've been more conscientious of the way his criticism could be interpreted. He had power over Martin's employment status; of course Martin would feel pressured by his demands.

Maybe Martin should've had bit more backbone. He didn't have to be such a try-hard, vainly striving to prove himself to a man who would probably never respect him. No one would've blamed him if he'd written Jon off as a unreasonable, clocked out, and gone home for the night without a second thought.

And now, maybe he shouldn't take Jon's change of heart to be anything more than the bare minimum of care and sympathy. Jon felt righteously guilty for the position he'd put Martin in; he was just trying to make up for it now. That didn't mean he cared for Martin any more than one decent human being should care for another. Martin shouldn't, couldn't assume it meant anything more.

But he did. He really, really did. And wasn't that just pathetic of him?

...

Martin and Jon built up a weird sort of rapport in the days that followed. Jon went out of his way to accommodate Martin while he lived in the Archives, doing everything in his power to make him more comfortable, more safe. There were times where it felt like the two of them against the world. Even Tim and Sasha didn't seem to fully believe Martin's story. They definitely believed he had been attacked and held hostage by someone. They agreed that the worms were weird, when the things started showing up around the Institute. They humored Martin, did little things to help and cheer him. But sometimes, when he was feeling especially freaked out, they said all the wrong things in a misplaced attempt to console or pacify him. They exchanged concerned looks behind his back. Elias outright dismissed him, and made sideways barbed comments to Jon about his ‘indulging’ Martin’s extended stay in Document Storage, despite the immense breach of policy.

Jon believed him, though. Jon went to bat for him. He was in Elias's office nearly every day, defending his decision to shelter Martin in the Archives, trying to get them more security, or even just acknowledgement of the danger. He wasn't quite so outwardly hysterical about the worms as Martin. But he, too, grew uneasy as days turned into weeks and the worms kept showing up with no sign of Prentiss herself. The fact that Martin wasn’t alone in his anxiety reassured him that he hadn’t completely lost it.

But the other thing was... anxiety made Jon extremely snappish during the day. And Martin wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders right now. So... mistakes were being made at work. Mistakes reflected badly on the department, which reflected badly on Jon, which increased the pressure he was under. And he was not a man who did his best work under pressure.

So despite their rapport in the evenings, Martin and Jon continued to clash in the daylight hours. Which meant that Martin still needed one little way of getting back at Jon. And so, out of a weird mixture of affectionate spite and pure frustration, Martin doubled his efforts to rescue every single spider he saw; preferably in front of Jon, for maximum pettiness. Their silent war for the fate of the Archives' arachnids continued and intensified: Jon killing and Martin saving. (Though the population density never changed enough to indicate that either effort was making a difference.)

...

They reached a breaking point on week five of Martin's stay in the Archives.

Jon was stressed. Martin consoled himself with this fact as he stood there growing increasingly red in the face, fidgeting with his hands and avoiding eye contact while he waited out the tirade. Jon clearly didn't get more than a handful of hours of sleep last night, and then this afternoon he returned from another fruitlessly passive-aggressive meeting with Elias to find another report from Martin on his desk with poorly-formatted citations and no index or bibliography. His frustration was kind of justified, at this point. Jon thought Martin had a Master's degree, because Martin's CV said he did. Thus, Jon was holding him to graduate standards. It was not Jon’s job to teach “basic formatting conventions” to Martin when these are things he should already know. Issues like this had shat them both to tears since Day One.

The lecture was practically routine by now. Jon had had this same conversation with him at least four times before. At the very least, Martin should've asked one of the others to look over his work so they could remind him about the citations; but they were both out and busy with their own tasks, and it wasn't fair of Martin to increase their workloads just because he couldn't do his own job. It wasn't fair of him to increase Jon's workload either, at a time when he was obviously struggling with the promotion as well as the shadow of Jane Prentiss hanging over their heads, and trying very hard not to let on that he was struggling. Though Jon didn’t say that last bit aloud. Martin inferred it from the volume and pitch of the aforementioned lecture.

He mentally excused Jon's cutting tone, excessive nitpicking, and thinly-veiled insults to his intelligence, letting his mind wander to its usual corner and making sorry noises every once in awhile. Just like he used to with his mother, he would dissociate for a bit while he let Jon tire himself out, then go fix his errors. All would be well again by the time he came back with an apology and a fresh cup of tea.

Because Martin had largely tuned out the lecture, it was him who noticed the spider first. It was a big bugger, twice the size of the common house spiders that usually got down here: fat with a brown body and long, long legs. Even Martin would admit it was creepy-looking, and he liked spiders. It crawled from its apparent hiding spot in the dying snake plant next to Jon's desk, the tips of its two longest legs touching delicately at the stack of manila folders by Jon's hand while it felt its way to the top of the pile. It looked like it was stalking towards the desk lamp, which had a tiny moth flitting around the bulb.

Martin was silently plotting a sneak rescue in his head when Jon's voice snapped him back to sharp attention.

"MAHTIN! Are you even listening to me?! This is what it's supposed to look like," he snapped, snatching up the folder with the spider on it and flicking it open to show the second page of one of Sasha’s reports, with the attached figure caption. The flick of the folder cover sent the spider flying onto Jon's chest where it grabbed onto his charming little tweed jacket, without Jon even seeing. The man was so focused on ripping into Martin, he remained oblivious to the arachnid slowly crawling its way up towards his neck. Martin winced.

"Erm, Jon? Sorry to interrupt, but you've got a, um..."

He pointed at the spider and Jon, his brow still pinched with fury, gritted out an irritable 'what now,' as he looked down.

He froze stock-still. His face went utterly blank, the rage draining out of him and leaving him statuesque for a too-long moment. The spider froze too at first. Then it resumed its slow path towards his collar, and Jon visibly paled.

"Martin."

"Uh-huh."

"Is that a spider."

"Yeah."

Jon took a deep, measured, somewhat shaky breath. The spider made its way from jacket to shirt, and Jon actually, audibly whimpered when he felt the feather-light touch of its legs on his chest through the cotton. His voice was a strained half an octave higher when he asked,

"Can you please get it off me. Now."

Martin jolted. What was he doing, standing around like an idiot?! "R-right, yup, hold on lemme - oh screw it," he dithered, his hands fluttering around for something to capture it before he gave up and just snatched the thing bare-handed.

He had to admit, the sensation of its panicked legs scrabbling against his skin was ghastly. His hand spasmed out of pure reflex, crushing the arachnid in his palm. He grabbed a tissue to wipe the smear of guts and limbs away, dropped that in the bin, then took some hand sanitizer from the bottle on Jon's desk and rubbed it in with a disgusted shudder. The  sharp-sweet smell of hibiscus and alcohol fumes flooded their senses for a moment. Jon shivered delicately, but still he didn't move a muscle. His wide eyes darted all around the room like he was... looking for something.

"Thank you, Martin. That'll be all. Close the door behind you, please," he said, quiet compared to the impassioned ranting from before. All of a sudden he seemed sort of... vacant. Alarm bells started to go off in Martin's head.

"Erm... are you okay?"

"I'll be f-fine," he said, though his voice trailed off to a hoarse rasp. He gave himself a little shake, fumbled behind himself with one hand until he found the chair, and collapsed into it like his knees had gone watery. He waved Martin away, then folded his hands on his desk and stared into the middle distance between them, holding himself stiffly while he waited for Martin to leave. His knuckles flushed pale from how hard he clenched his hands together, and it looked like he was pressing the edge of one thumbnail into his own skin. But he really did seem to want Martin to leave...

Martin turned for the door, but at the last moment before he shut it he heard an ever-so quiet rustle of cloth behind him. He glanced back and saw that Jon had moved. He had set his elbows on the desk and dropped his head into his hands, thumbs squeezing his temples and fingers knitted across his forehead as if to hide his face, shoulders jacked up to his ears and trembling subtly. Martin knew he really ought to turn and leave, and close the door behind him. This seemed like a moment where Jon would want privacy.

But he didn’t look like he was breathing.

Martin hesitated, and stepped back into the room a little bit. Just to see what would happen. When Jon didn't instantly bite his head off he dared to ask,

"Um... hey, Jon? Are you... can I get you anything?"

"D-don't - I'm o- I'm okay, I don't - need you to… to..."

The stutter sealed the deal. Martin had been crushing on him for long enough to have noticed some things. The stutter only came out when he was apoplectically angry, or deeply upset and trying to hide it. Martin figured he had already incurred maximum Jon Wrath today: what was a little more insubordination?

Quietly, quickly, he closed the door and sat across from Jon at the desk, extending one hand across it palm-up. Jon didn't take it, his gazed fixed a thousand yards away, but Martin left it there as an open offer. Then he sat there for a half a second and panicked, trying to think what to do.

He'd never been to therapy himself, though he knew he had some sort of anxiety disorder and would probably benefit from a diagnosis. (At first he was just too broke and busy; now he just keeps putting it off). He’d learned most of his coping techniques second-hand from the internet, mix-and-matching different band-aid self-soothing methods until he found something that got him through the day. He knew what worked for him, but he had no idea how to help Jon. Breathing was a good place to start, probably? Jon still didn't look like he was breathing.

"Jon, can you take a deep breath for me?"

Jon's shoulders winched themselves up even tighter. Martin braced himself to be screamed at, but was instead rewarded by the thinnest, shakiest attempt at a deep breath he had ever heard. It was a start.

"Um, okay, j-just... just match my breathing. Here we go."

In his head he started doing a four-four-four count like in those grounding exercise Youtube videos that he always bookmarked and never used. He exaggerated each inhale and exhale into long, slow, audible gusts. Surprisingly, Jon obeyed. Or at least, he tried to. His diaphragm shuddered like he couldn't quite get enough air and was trying not to make a sound. Eventually he managed to get enough oxygen that his body unlocked, and he stopped squeezing his temples in that terrible death-grip. His breathing went the opposite direction, now shallow and fast, but still so silent. He ground the heels of hands into his eye sockets, shaking harder, and Martin started to panic as well. He didn’t know what to do. If Tim or Sasha were here they would know. But they weren’t, and Martin felt terribly inadequate. He was about to watch Jon have a full-on panic attack, and probably make it worse in his attempts to help, and then Jon would be embarrassed at best or angry at worst and hate him even more -

He realized abruptly that Jon’s hands had moved to his hair, ruining his updo as he raked his fingers through it in an obvious attempt to get ahold of himself... and to hide his face while he spiraled. Martin watched that warily. The moment he saw Jon start to pull, he reached out to touch the back of his wrist, hoping to just remind him of himself. He expected a flinch, but when that didn't happen, he dared to take one hand and give it a gentle squeeze. To his surprise, Jon clutched back hard. So he took the other slim hand in his and they just... held hands across the desk for awhile, Martin rubbing soothing circles into the backs of Jon’s palms, still doing that slow, deliberate, obvious breathing pattern even though Jon wasn’t following it anymore.

“You're okay. It's gone, I promise. You’re safe. It’s okay,” he was murmuring, without even thinking about it. Jon didn’t seem to be getting worse, but he wasn’t getting better either. Frantic, Martin raced down his list of mental crisis triage. He should probably make sure Jon wasn’t straight-up having a flashback, before he tried anything else. He swallowed dryly.

“Hey, erm... you still with me, Jon?”

He got a nod for his troubles.

“Okay, good. Do you know when and where you are?”

“My office, Thursday,” Jon rasped. Martin exhaled a tiny bit of relief.

“Okay, um... how about we try a grounding exercise, yeah? That okay?”

This prompted the tiniest of shrugs, and a renewed death grip on his hands. Martin wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but he took it as a sign to continue.

“Right! Okay, right. Let’s um... It’s called the 5-4-3-2-1 method, y’ever heard of that?”

A tiny shake of Jon’s head.

“That’s fine. It’s about the five senses, you just...” and then he trailed off as his brain very helpfully blanked on what, exactly, the five sense were and what order you were supposed to do them in. For fuck’s sake. He’d never actually used that one for himself, never found it helpful, so he had no practice. But hopefully it’d be more effective with someone guiding you through it. Of course, he was always alone when he had panic attacks, so... he wouldn’t really know.

After a too-long awkward pause and a few more dry swallows, Martin managed to get a handful of coherent thoughts together. He nodded once, mostly to himself, and tried again.

“You don’t have to look at me, you can keep your eyes closed if... if that’s better. You’re okay. Can you name four things you can feel? Tactile sensations, I mean.”

He winced at his own ineptitude, but Jon didn’t seem to notice. He took a difficult breath and let it out in a long, shuddering sigh before he spoke again.

“Erm... sh-shirt collar. Your hands. H-hair in my face.”

“Okay, good! Good, yeah that’s good,” he stammered. “How about a fourth?”

“Headache. Bad.”

“Ah... right. I’m sorry to hear that. We’ll get it taken care of in a moment, okay? How about three things you can hear?”

“Your voice. Your breathing. My pulse. Ventilation fan... broken.”

Martin gave a shaky chuckle. Now that he actually listened for it, the ventilation fan in here had an annoying little hitch to it. No wonder Jon was so short-tempered. If he had to sit in here listening to that thing click  in the silence all day, he’d be pissed too.

“Good, that’s four! Good... well, not the ventilation fan. That’s... really annoying, actually.”

That got a tiny scoff out of Jon. Martin smiled helplessly. “Right, so um... next is two things you can smell.”

“Hand sanitizer. Old paper and dust. Your cologne.”

“Good, that’s three, good! And, um... anything you can taste?”

“Um... ah, nothing really, I, ah...”

“That’s okay, that’s fine. Did you uh... forget lunch?”

“Got busy.”

“Right, of course. That’s okay. How about I go get you a fresh cuppa and some paracetamol, and then when you’re feeling better we can see about a sandwich or something?”

“No, not yet, I — can you just... can we just sit here for a minute?” Jon asked, his hands still shaking in Martin’s grasp. He clung on a little tighter and Martin felt his heart pang at the thought that Jon didn’t want him to leave.

“Yeah, yeah of course! That’s totally fine. As long as you need.”

Jon didn't respond except to make another, slightly more successful attempt to match his breathing. Martin kept up that deep, noisy, deliberate 4-4-4 count until Jon’s silent shaking slowed, then ceased. Finally Jon opened his eyes and took his hands back, shaking them out a bit as if trying to get the feeling back in them. In the privacy of his own mind Martin cheered and thanked his lucky stars. He couldn’t believe that worked.

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon muttered, his gaze pinned to the floor. “That was very kind of you to, erm... to help me, after I just...”

He flashed Martin a guilty little kicked-puppy look, and the assistant felt his poor weak heart pang again like it was being squeezed in a cage of thorns.

“Oh, erm, that’s alright, I mean, um... you’re right, of course. You’ve reminded me about the citations like, what, twenty times?” He laughed nervously, reaching over to take custody of the offending report. “How about I go fix this mess and make us some tea?”

“Yes, that... that will do, thank you,” Jon nodded, then cleared his throat loudly. His back straightened and his shoulders squared until the only remaining sign of what happened was the lingering pallor in his face, and the disarray of his hair. He rectified the hair with a few quick yanks and an expert twist of his hairtie, just getting it out of his face.

Martin turned to leave. He paused at the door for one last searching look, but Jon’s gaze was fixed on the middle distance again. Then he turned and closed the door behind him, as requested.

...

In the breakroom, Martin planted his hands on the countertop next to the electric kettle and sagged like a puppet with cut strings. Holy shit. He felt exhausted and nerve-raw like he was the one who just had an anxiety attack. All that over a spider!

Not that he could talk. He found himself in a similar state at least three times a week over the whole... worms situation. He was just better at hiding himself away when it happened. And in Jon’s defense, he really did try to get Martin out of the room. Martin was just a stubborn idiot with a desperate crush.

And god fucking help him, what a crush. He was starting to understand why people called it ‘heartache’. He felt a little bit like he’d been stabbed in the chest, all bittersweet and longing and wonderful and painful. For all his many flaws, Jon was really starting to cross the line from ‘endearing asshole’ to just ‘endearing’. Martin understood now, how Tim and Sasha had managed to be friends with him this long.

Martin dared to hope he was earning himself a place in Jon’s esteem, too. The way he clung to Martin’s hands...

He nearly slapped himself when the kettle pinged to let him know it had boiled, snapping him out of a daydream. What the hell was he thinking?! The man just had an anxiety attack, for the love of all decency! He was just… vulnerable, and Martin was there for him in that moment. It didn’t mean anything.

Martin firmly banished all thoughts of his hopeless infatuation back into their corner, and went about making their tea. It had taken him awhile to suss out what Jon liked, but eventually he’d earned himself a rare compliment with a strongly-spiced chai. He set two mugs of it to steep and then set the timer on his phone.

While he waited, Martin stood leaning against the counter and looked idly around him at the floors, the baseboards, the corners. He had taken to scanning any room he was in, ever since the worms. Usually he didn’t find anything. But the few times when he did find something had reinforced the habit.

A tiny hint of movement caught his eye. There, in the stack of folding chairs that no one ever used, a little common house spider was crawling up the leg of one chair in search of a spot to spin a web. Martin watched it warily.

This afternoon’s drama had forced Martin to re-assess Jon’s whole... thing, with spiders. He couldn't help but think back to Carlos Vittery's statement... the way it was worded had stuck in Martin’s mind.

“I know, I know, everyone hates spiders... but not like me. Not like this,” The man had said, just days before he died. “It’s not the sight of a spider that gets me, not the legs or the eyes or even the webs... it’s the presence of a spider. The knowledge of its being, somewhere near, waiting to crawl on you, and all the warning you get that gentle tickle of its legs as it climbs upon you... you have to understand the lengths I went to; how little I would tolerate a spider to live in my presence.”

Jon wasn’t like Vittery. Jon knew there were hundreds or thousands of spiders in this basement, and he came to work every day. Hell, he spent more time here than not. He didn’t freeze when he saw one. He killed them without hesitation.

But he never touched them, did he? Not with his skin. And as soon as he saw a spider in a room, his eyes never left it until it was dead or gone. Like he was waiting for the creature to... to what, exactly? To jump up and bite him? Martin wasn’t sure, but still he kicked himself for never noticing that crucial detail. He cringed to even think of the number of times he lectured Jon about how helpful they are.

Martin remembered his own frustration when Jon had dismissed Vittery’s story. He had just stared at him, absolutely agog at the way he'd tried to rationalize it, to brush it off as a freak accident of circumstance. Surely he'd known deep down that there was no rational explanation. His refusal to admit it hadn't made sense.

Now, though... now it was starting to make sense.

Martin stood up straight when the steeping timer went off. He prepared their tea the way they both liked, and pocketed the paracetamol bottle. Before he left, he paused to sweep away the half-built spiderweb with the broom. The spider hit the floor and tried to scuttle for the shelter of the baseboard.

He squashed it under his shoe.

Then he picked up the warm mugs and the pills to take to Jon. He promised the man a sandwich and an updated case report. He intended to deliver on both fronts.

...