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“Statement ends,” Jon says, and ends the recording with a push of the button. He exhales slowly, letting his shoulders slump as the weight of the performance (of the insistent feeling of being watched) slips off him. He’ll pick it back up and include the follow up later, but for now he can just let it be. He puts papers back in order, slipping them into their correct places in the folder. That’s the Rysdale statement taken care of for the most part, and now he can move down the list. It’s only noon, but it feels as if he’s been going at a steady clip all day, progressing on various threads and striking tasks off the to do list.
He works in the Archives, of course, so there is always more to do, a dusty, cobwebbed mountain of neglected work bequeathed to him by the damnable late Gertrude Robinson, may she suffer in the afterlife for her paperwork crimes. But things have been… things have actually been not so bad, lately. It feels like he’s finally getting the hang of this, settling into a productive groove. It all feels less chokingly overwhelming and impossible. He can do this; it will simply take time.
There’s a gentle knock at the door, and Jon’s smiling with recognition even before a voice calls out, “Jon? Can I come in?”
It helps that he’s gained some confidence in a certain assistant. Martin had used to feel like a bumbling, hapless saboteur, a handicap when Jon was already struggling to stay afloat. He’s happy to say that he’s learned some proper appreciation for the man since then.
“Come in,” he says, and Martin enters with an entirely unsurprising mug in hand. It is the usual time for a tea deliverance; Jon has developed a certain fondness for the ritual by now.
“Hey,” Martin says happily. “I got you a cuppa, if you want some?”
“Thank you, yes,” Jon says, helpfully moving papers out of the way on his desk. As if he’d say anything else. Martin’s tea is wonderful. The mug is gently deposited on his desktop, and Jon picks it up with a pleased hum to take his first sip.
“Careful,” Martin says, and Jon reflexively pauses. “It’s still hot. Maybe blow on it first?”
Jon moves to obey, blowing gently on the surface before taking a tentative sip. Martin’s right; it really is quite hot. He’d best be careful not to scald his tongue.
“Good?” Martin asks.
“Excellent,” Jon assures him, and Martin’s smile brightens further. There’s a feeling that travels underneath Jon’s skin, a little thrill of pleasure at the sign of happiness. He ducks his head and tries to hide any obvious pleasure on his face by drinking more of the tea. Carefully, blowing first.
Martin is full of helpful, useful little suggestions like that. It used to grate, and now he doesn’t quite understand why. As soon as he’d started actually listening to those little suggestions, everything just… smoothed out. Martin only wants to help him. He’s a good coworker in that way.
A good friend.
Jon drinks more tea.
“Um,” Martin says, and Jon pauses to look at him expectantly. This seems to only make Martin freeze up, color rising to his face, shoulders hunching. There’s a nervous, shy sort of look to his face, his now empty hands fidgeting like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Before, this inexplicable hesitance would have only frustrated him. Now, it makes him sit up straight with a mix of concern and curiosity.
“Martin?” Jon gently prods him. “What is it?”
“Well--” Martin stammers, looking a little bit like an uncertain trapeze artist taking their first tentative step out on the tightrope. “The thing is, is-- I, um, I’ve got something to-- to tell you?”
“... Yes?” Jon says, curiosity growing, just barely biting back an urge to more blatantly cajole Martin along. “Which is?”
Martin takes a deep, bracing breath, as if preparing himself to plunge himself into water. He’s always had a talent for blushing, but his face looks remarkably red now.
“Okay,” Martin says, and it comes out strangely breathless despite his deep inhalation. “Okay, so-- um, the first time I met you? Like, like the first proper time? When I told you about the dog?”
The dog Martin let into the Archives. The memory takes a moment to connect, and Jon winces slightly as he does. That had been, in hindsight, rather a rude overreaction. It had been a perfectly innocent mistake. What a first impression to make…
“Yes, I remember,” Jon sheepishly admits. “I was-- tense, that day.”
“Right,” Martin says, nodding a little too forcefully. “Well, I-- you know, just as I opened the door and got my first proper-- proper look at you? Before any of that other stuff? My first thought was just wow, he’s pretty.”
Jon doesn’t quite register the words for a second, and then when he does he feels a visceral shiver travel up his spine, shock wiping all of the thoughts in his head clean away. All of his words vanish from his throat.
“And-- and then I told you about the dog, and-- well, heh, you know how things went from there!” Martin charges forward, laughing nervously. “Not-- not exactly a great start. You didn’t really like me for a while there. At all.”
“Martin,” Jon gets out, still stunned by being called pretty, of all things. Heat rises to his cheeks as pieces suddenly start to connect in the back of his head-- Martin wanting to tell him something, flushing and flustered. All of his helpful little suggestions, his hovering and doting that had felt overbearingly condescending at first… He’d even closed the door behind him for once, Jon belatedly notices. Is Martin really--?
“Just-- just let me get through this first, please? Just let me explain,” Martin says, and Jon closes his mouth immediately. Martin flashes him a quick, fond smile for it, and that pleasurable little tingle squirms underneath his skin again. “It felt like whatever I tried to do to make things better just did the opposite instead. Annoyed you, made you mad at me. There-- there’s not a lot I can do for you that you can’t do yourself. Or that Tim or Sasha can’t do better. I make a mean cuppa, but-- archiving isn’t really… it’s not my thing.”
Jon wants to speak up to assure Martin that he is a plenty capable archival assistant, that Jon has grown to be very grateful for his presence. But Martin had asked him to remain silent for this, so he bites his tongue. Martin has so many helpful little suggestions, and all Jon has to do is listen to them.
“But then I realized that there’s a thing that I can do for you that you can’t. I can get rid of spiders for you. You-- you don’t like them. You just try to squash them, but-- I could pick them up and just take them outside for you, so you never had to see them in the first place. Which, hey, that’s good for you and the spider, right? It’s not like they want to hurt anyone. So I started doing that, taking spiders out of the archives whenever I spotted them before you could.”
Martin first spoke in a quick, nervous ramble, but by now his voice has slowed down to that of someone telling a story. Jon tilts his head confusedly, uncertain of what direction this story has now taken. But Martin wants him to be quiet for this, and if he just listens then eventually this will all start to make sense.
“The archives actually have a lot of spiders,” Martin says. “Like, a lot. Too many. I didn’t notice until I actually started keeping an eye out for them, instead of just noticing them here and there, but-- there’s way too many? I get that messy basements are the classic place for spiders to swarm to, but this place is chilly. To keep the documents from rotting, right? Spiders don’t like the cold. They’d find somewhere better in the building to spin their webs and catch their prey. But instead it’s like they’re all down here. I thought that was really weird. They seemed like just regular, normal spiders. Harmless, black, skittering things, some small enough that you can barely count the legs, some large enough to span my whole hand. They’d sit still and in place, too, once I picked them up. There wouldn’t be any panicked skittering or trying to escape, me having to keep them trapped. They just sat on the palm of my hand and didn’t so much as twitch until I took them out.
“There never seemed to be an end to them, either. Like, no matter how many I took out, there were just as many left. I thought they must have just been crawling right back in through some crack or hole in the wall. A few times, I’d come inside and realize that some spider had caught a ride back into the archives on me, perched on my trouser leg or climbing up my jumper sleeve. Which, you know, never really bothered me. I’m not scared of spiders, never have been. They just want to help out, Jon. Do their part.
“But still, the whole point of what I was doing was to help you not have to deal with them, to not be upset-- and to save some innocent spiders too. So-- I started hiding them inside, since they seemed so insistent on staying inside the archives. I’d shove and poke them into hiding whenever I spotted them out in the open where you might see them. One time, when I heard you approaching and I was in the middle of dealing with a spider, I just panicked and pushed it up my sleeve before you could see. Later, I couldn’t find it again. I-- I didn’t think much of it at the time? Just thought it had crawled back out while I wasn’t looking.
“Slowly, I started finding more and more spiders on me. In my hair, on my clothes, climbing over my fingers. Like they were getting used to me, learning that I wouldn’t hurt them, just help them. Then, one day, I caught one of them. I was in the loo, fussing over my hair in the mirror, and-- I saw it. A spider crawling out of my nose. I saw it.
“It didn’t scare me. Not at all. I was surprised, don’t get me wrong, but it-- it didn’t spook me? I get that spiders aren’t really supposed to be in you, but… it didn’t hurt? I felt fine, so-- so I didn’t really see any point in making a fuss about it, you know? It’s just spiders. After I’d seen that first one crawl out of me, it was like some sort of jig was up, and all the rest of the spiders stopped pretending, stopped trying to hide it from me. I could feel them crawling in and out of me after that. Wriggling and squirming out past my eyelids, tickling through my ear canals. It still didn’t hurt. Just felt kind of funny.
“I’ve got spiders under my skin. So what? It doesn’t hurt. I-- I’m happy, if I’m helping them. Giving them somewhere warm and safe to shelter in. It’s almost nice, really. And after a while I… I sort of did something kind of bad. You still didn’t like me. I still wanted you to like me, but I didn’t know how to do that. And then one day I… I walked into your office to ask you about something but-- but you were asleep. Just right there, on your desk. Terrible for your back. But you looked so tired I didn’t have the heart to wake you up. You looked… You looked really nice. Your face all soft, not frowning at all. So I just looked at you for a while. Not-- not in a creepy way! I just-- it just happened. It was just for a minute.
“That’s when I got the idea. Christ, I know it must sound so weird, but it felt like it made perfect sense at the time. I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled, and I felt a spider wriggle out of the cut there, into my mouth. Just a small one, really. I spat it out into my hand, and then… then I put it down on the desk. Right next to your hand. I watched as it skittered towards you, until it came to your hand. I watched as it crawled up onto you-- and then in underneath your fingernail. Out of sight. I knew it would find a way properly into you from there. Spiders are really good at finding nooks and crannies to squeeze their way through.
“God, it sounds so ridiculous when I try to explain it. I just-- it felt like-- like I was sneaking a piece of myself into you? I know I should have told you, I’m sorry. It was just a guilty little pleasure. Harmless. Just something small that would cheer me up whenever I thought about it. But then-- but then I realized that it was more than just that. With that spider in you, with my spider in you, I could keep track of you. It felt like I knew it would be you opening a door a split second before you did it. Like I could guess where you were, and I’d always be right. I-- I really liked that. It just-- it felt nice.
“So I snuck more spiders into you, while you weren’t looking. While you were sleeping, or distracted. I put them in your food, or your bag while you were out of your office, or I’d try my best to put them on your clothes without you noticing. They’d find openings into your body, ways to sneak in and make their home in you. And the more spiders I got into you? The better everything got.
“It’s like the more of them there were in you, the more-- the more pull I had on you? Not enough to control you, but enough to nudge you. I could tug your attention towards me, or onto or away from whatever I wanted, like pulling on a leash. The easier it was to convince you to do stuff. The more you listened to me. The more you liked me. You actually like me now, Jon. That’s amazing! Isn’t that amazing?
“I know I shouldn’t have kept this a secret from you for so long. I’m-- I’m sorry about that. I just-- I got nervous, thinking about how you might react. Maybe you’d get mad about it? But-- I’m telling you now. I put my spiders in you, Jon. They’re underneath your skin. There’s dozens of them, almost a hundred. They-- they like you. They like how warm you are. They like making their home in you. They really, really like you.”
Martin confesses this last bit in the same flustered yet brave way someone may reveal an innocent crush to the object of their affections. There are two light pink splotches stubbornly clinging to his cheeks, but his spine is straight and his hands are fisted into tight knuckles at his sides as he looks straight at Jon as he delivers his words.
Jon feels cold and distant from his own body. From this moment.
This can’t be real.
“That-- that’s the main thing I wanted to tell you,” Martin says. “That, and, um-- I like you too. A lot! That-- that’s everything! That’s all I wanted to say.”
Jon opens his mouth. Nothing but the breathless start of a syllable leaves him, the beginning of a sentence dead in the cradle.
For some reason, this makes the nervous, tense expression on Martin’s face soften.
“Lost for words?” he asks sympathetically. “That’s okay. I can-- I’ll tell you what to say and do, Jon. You can just listen to me.”
“You can’t be--” Jon gets out. You can’t be serious. He loses his breath before he can manage to get the whole sentence out. It’s difficult to breathe; he feels dizzy, nauseous.
This can’t be real, he thinks again. A nightmare. Yes, that’s right. He must be in a nightmare.
“Shh,” Martin says kindly, and Jon’s mouth automatically clicks shut before he can even think to do anything different. A split second later, horror yawns open cold and terrifying in his gut as he realizes what he just did.
He obeyed. Thoughtlessly, immediately.
“It’s okay,” Martin says softly. “I-- I know this must be a lot to take in. It’s okay if you need a bit to just… process. How about for now-- just for now-- how about you give me a smile?”
Jon tries not to listen. Tries not to obey. He tries.
But underneath his skin, he finally, finally feels it. Recognizes it for what it is. Dozens of spiders skittering underneath his skin, moving, crawling-- pulling his mouth into position. Stretching the corners of his lips up, showing teeth.
“There we go,” Martin says in warm approval, and the spiders underneath Jon’s skin all thrill and shiver with pleasure at the praise. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? I’m here to take care of you, Jon. All you have to do is listen to me.”
Jon--
Jon smiles.