Work Text:
“Statement ends.” Jon breathed in, shaking off the lingering emotions of the statement. It had been a strange one. Terrifying, like they all were, but… sad, too. Terribly, achingly sad.
There was no point dwelling on it. The events it detailed had happened years ago, and there was nothing to be done about it now other than record them.
“Before I dig too deeply into the background of this statement, I feel I should mention something that puts much of it in a slightly different light,” Jon began, shuffling the papers in front of him to pull the follow-up to the fore. “Tim actually managed to find a copy of Mr. Ramao’s marriage licence…”
He continued, giving the brief details of Tim’s research that supported the veracity of the statement, then diverging into the background of Mikaele Salesa and his history with the Institute. As he spoke his eyes wandered across the walls of his office, the stacks upon stacks of statements that lined the shelves. So many of them had connections like this, it seemed. Salesa, Jurgen Leitner, the ever-mysterious Gerard Keay… The more Jon dug into the depths of the Archives, the more he felt like he was only scratching the surface of the vast web of mystery and horror that they contained.
The web…
Jon’s words cut off as he wrinkled his nose, the careful, professional tone giving way to an empathetic “Urgh.”
There was a spider sitting on one of his shelves, a nasty, bulbous-looking thing with hairy legs and eyes that he could see glinting in the light even from this distance. It sent a shiver of fear down his spine, as spiders always did; but, more than that, the sight of it got his adrenaline up and his heart racing in a hot flash of anger, and he grabbed the box of tissues sitting on the corner of his desk with malice aforethought.
His chair scraped against the floor as he stood up; the spider didn’t move as Jon approached, tissue box raised like a weapon ready to smash it.
“I see you…” he muttered, glaring at the thing as he got close enough to kill it…
The door of his office opened behind him.
“Hey Jon, I’ve got that- …What are you doing?”
Jon yelped, jumping where he stood and hiding the box quickly behind his back as he spun to face the doorway. “Martin! I was- was just-”
Martin gave him a suspicious look, which quickly shifted to one of accusation. “You were about to kill a spider, weren’t you?”
“What?” Jon said, affecting confusion, though he knew he looked far too guilty to pull it off. “No, I was just…”
“Jon,” Martin groaned, exasperated. “Why? They’re harmless, and besides, you know they’re important to the ecosystem…”
“How could I not, when you keep lecturing me about it?” Jon muttered under his breath, then sighed heavily as Martin pushed his way around the desk toward him, and nudged him away from the shelves.
“Hey there, little guy, it’s okay,” Martin cooed, coaxing the spider gently off the shelf and onto the file he was holding. The file that he was supposed to be delivering to Jon, but apparently using it as a spider transport was more important.
A large part of Jon was tempted to grab that file from Martin’s hand and smash it into the wall, getting rid of the spider once and for all. But, alas, in the past few months he’d actually grown to respect Martin - damn him - and he couldn’t conscience an action that would be, truly, quite cruel to him.
Martin smiled softly down at the spider he was now carrying carefully on the folder, and Jon found himself torn between revulsion at the arachnid and a small, soft burst of warmth in his chest at the fact that Martin actually was smiling. He’d had a hard time, since moving into the Archives. Anything that brought him joy was something worth holding onto, in Jon’s books.
…Though a spider was really stretching the limits of his compassion.
“Can you just- take it out of here?” he grumbled, waving his hand at the thing in a shooing gesture.
“‘Course,” Martin said easily. “I’ll drop it out by the front steps.”
“Good.”
Martin moved for the door, and Jon settled back into his desk chair, prepared for that to be the end of the interaction. But Martin paused in the doorway, hesitated, and turned back.
“Look, Jon,” he said, firmly. “I get that you don’t like spiders. That’s fine. But I like them, so if you see any others can you just- can you please just call me in here to get rid of them for you? Instead of killing them? I’ll take them outside, you never have to see them again, I just really don’t want ‘being in the Archives’ to be a death sentence for them.”
He sounded truly passionate about the subject. As he spoke, his fingers tightened on the file he held, creasing the edges, and Jon kept a wary eye on the spider that was still perched on it to make sure it didn’t slide off onto the floor.
It would be so easy to say no. It would be so easy to say yes. It would be so, so easy to say yes now, and then continue killing spiders and hope Martin didn’t see.
“Fine,” Jon sighed, raising his hands in defeat. “I’ll let you know next time I see one. But if you’re not in the Archives, it’s dead.”
Martin shrugged. “Fair enough. Thank you.”
His voice dropped soft on the last words, sincere and earnest, and then he turned and finally, finally took the spider away. Jon sighed again.
He didn’t have to keep this promise. He didn’t. Next time he saw a spider, he could just go ahead and kill it, and Martin would never know.
~~~~~
There was a spider in his office again the next day. It was even bigger than the last, sitting on the same goddamn shelf, and he would swear it was looking right at him.
Jon’s hand twitched toward the tissue box.
Thank you, Martin had said, so soft, and he’d looked truly grateful.
Jon sighed, aggrieved.
“Martin!”
A few moments later, Martin appeared, still in his pyjamas with a breakfast burrito clutched in one hand.
“Jon? What’s up?”
Jon pointed at the shelf. “Spider.”
“Already?” Martin peered at the shelf, and chuckled. “Wow, that’s a big one! Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”
“You’d better,” Jon muttered, or at least started to, but then Martin absent-mindedly passed him the burrito to hold and the words were cut off in a noise of confusion.
Martin didn’t seem to notice, already approaching the spider and carefully shuffling it onto a file he snatched from Jon’s desk. Jon backed quickly out of his way as he then carried the spider back through the doorway, and watched suspiciously as he headed up the stairs to take it out of the Archives.
He was gone for a few minutes. Jon lingered awkwardly in the door of his office, not sure what to do next. He examined the breakfast burrito. It smelled good.
Martin reappeared, grinning. “All set!” he said cheerfully, swapping out the burrito for the file he had taken.
“Thank you,” Jon said curtly. It all felt like rather a lot of hassle when a simple whack with a rolled newspaper would do just as well.
“Thank you, too,” Martin said, still smiling. “I honestly didn’t think you were actually going to call me.”
Jon spluttered, as though he hadn’t been considering the exact same thing. “Wh- no, I- why- I promised!”
“You did,” Martin said, and Jon couldn’t tell if he was being smug or fond. Perhaps a bit of both. “Thank you.”
Jon cleared his throat. “Yes, right, well. If that’s all, I should be getting to work.”
“Sure thing,” Martin said, and they parted ways.
~~~~~
There were two spiders on his shelf the next day. And another one the day after that. Then three more. Four.
“Martin!”
“Martin!”
“MARTIN!”
~~~~~
“This is ridiculous,” Jon said, glaring at the no less than twenty spiders that were crawling over his shelving unit. “This is an infestation.”
Martin, beside him, sighed. “You… may have a point.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d just let me kill the damn things,” Jon grumbled, and Martin scoffed.
“Are you kidding? This isn’t just a couple spiders that survived and wandered back in. You’ve got a nest, or something.”
“Great,” Jon grumbled, trying not to think too hard about that. A few adult spiders he could handle, but a whole nest…
“We should probably get Elias to call in an exterminator, shouldn’t we.”
Jon blinked, surprised that Martin, of all people, would suggest that. “What about their importance to the ecosystem?”
“Ecosystem be damned, they’re ruining our filing system.”
It wasn’t a lie. No one wanted to go near those shelves now, not even Martin, and there was a growing stack of unsorted statements sitting on the edge of Jon's desk, doomed to remain there until one of them could muster the courage to put them back on the spider-infested shelves.
“Glad we’re on the same page,” Jon said approvingly, and turned on his heel to go find Elias.
~~~~~
It took a lot of convincing, but even Elias couldn’t deny that an exterminator was needed when brought face to face with a shelving unit that was, by that point, so full of spiders that Jon couldn’t even count them.
The fumigation was scheduled for a weekend; and, on the advice of the company Elias had hired, the whole Archives would get the same treatment, not just Jon’s office.
“In case the nest is located elsewhere, and they’re just finding their way to my office through the air ducts or something,” he explained to his assistants as they packed up their things the preceding Friday evening. “Better to do a thorough job now than have them come back in a few months and have to do the whole thing over again.”
Of course, with the whole Archives being fumigated, Martin couldn’t stay there. Jon had offered him his couch for the weekend, and Martin had accepted.
“Thanks for this, again,” he said as Jon unlocked his door and ushered him inside. They dumped the bags they were carrying - everything Martin owned, really, packed up nice and portable so it wouldn’t get any of the poison on it when the fumigation started - next to the couch, and Jon shrugged.
“It’s no trouble, really. Least I could do.” Especially since it was his fault Martin had run into Jane Prentiss, and had to start living in the Archives, in the first place.
Martin smiled at him, as though it wasn’t the least of anything, and Jon cleared his throat and turned away.
“Anyway, make yourself at home. I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook, but I’ll pull something together for dinner. Pasta alright with you?”
On Martin’s nod, Jon headed for the kitchen.
It was… strange, cooking for two. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it - university, maybe, when his flatmate had been through a bad breakup and Jon had been trying to cheer him up? Years, at the very least. Still, cooking for two was no harder than cooking for one when you got down to it, and it meant he wouldn’t have quite so many leftovers to try to deal with over the coming days.
If he got a little bit fancier with it than he normally would have done, digging for herbs in the back of his cabinet and chopping up fresh tomatoes instead of just using a jarred sauce, then that was no one’s business but his own.
The pasta was ready in short order, and Jon walked back to the living room to tell Martin it was done.
As Martin followed him back into the kitchen Jon noticed that he was looking intently at each wall they passed. At first he assumed he was just passing judgement on the paint color - though it was hardly Jon’s fault that his landlord wouldn’t let him change the bland beige to something more palatable - but the scrutiny continued in the kitchen, and he would swear to it that Martin was attempting to peer into the shadows of the kitchen cabinets, as well, when Jon fetched down two plates and wine glasses.
(Okay, yes, maybe the wine was overkill. Just a little bit. But maybe - just maybe - Jon was trying to impress Martin. Fancy pasta and wine may not have been the most normal dinner to share with your coworker who was crashing on your couch because your workplace was being fumigated and he didn’t have a flat at the moment but- well. Martin deserved nice things. And if Jon could give them to him, all the better.)
Jon only had one chair at his kitchen table - an oversight he was now severely regretting - so it was back to the couch to eat.
He watched Martin out of the corner of his eye as he lifted a bite of pasta to his mouth to taste, and felt a warm swell of satisfaction when Martin’s eyes lit with delight.
“What happened to not being much of a cook?” he asked, sounding pleasantly surprised.
“It’s just pasta,” Jon demurred.
“Damn good pasta,” Martin said, and dug into it with gusto.
They chatted amicably for a while about things of little importance - books and movies they had seen, places they had visited or wanted to go. It was, as always, surprisingly easy to talk to Martin. Though perhaps Jon should be less surprised by now, as this sort of light, pleasant conversation had become the norm for them over the past few months, an easy rapport they had built during early mornings and late evenings when they were both too tired to work and had nothing better to do than to get to know each other.
Jon couldn’t help noticing, however, that throughout their conversation Martin kept casting quick glances to the side, giving the walls and ceiling - and even, occasionally, the floor - suspicious looks. Eventually, he had to ask.
“What are you looking at?” he said, and hoped it didn’t sound like an accusation.
Martin startled, then blushed. “Um.”
Embarrassment was not the reaction Jon had been expecting. He furrowed his brow, the expression twisting a little around a smile, and asked, “Martin?”
“I’m-” he began, and huffed. “I’m looking for spiders, alright?”
“For-” Jon blinked. “For spiders?”
“Yes!” Martin repeated, sounding aggrieved. The ease of their previous conversation had disappeared. “For spiders, okay? Look, I just- after what happened in the Archives…”
“Martin,” Jon repeated, faintly amused. “I can assure you, I would know if I had a spider infestation in my home.”
“But what if it’s not an infestation yet?” Martin blurted, then bit his tongue.
Jon raised a confused eyebrow. “If it’s not an infestation, surely it’s not an issue.”
“Not yet, maybe.” Martin muttered it into the rim of his wineglass as he took a sip, looking anywhere but at Jon.
Jon… honestly felt a bit guilty that his arachnophobia had bled off onto Martin. He knew Martin liked spiders - or used to, at least - and even if he had a personal grudge against them, he didn’t want to be the one that took away Martin’s enjoyment of them. “I…” he began. “Look, Martin. It’s okay, there are no spiders here. I know it’s been… a lot, at the Archives, but you’ve got nothing to worry about-”
“I’m not worried about me,” Martin groused, and Jon blinked again.
“Sorry?”
Martin huffed. “Don’t say I’m imagining things.”
There was nothing Jon could do at that statement but gape at him, baffled.
“Look,” Martin said sharply. “Don’t you think it’s even a little weird that all these spiders just started- showing up? Out of nowhere? One day there’s a spider in your office, two weeks later the entire place is crawling with them, so much that no one wants to even enter the room?”
“If there’s a nest somewhere-” Jon began, trying to placate him.
“Oh please,” Martin interrupted. “If there was a nest we’d be seeing little- tiny little ones! Haven’t you noticed?” He sounded almost angry that Jon hadn’t. “They’re all the same. All of them. Some are, maybe, a little bigger, but it’s barely noticeable. They’ve all got the same patterning on their backs, all of them have the same bulbous, bloated abdomen…”
“Honestly, I’ve been trying not to look at them too much,” Jon said, feeling slightly sick at the description.
“They’re the same, Jon,” Martin repeated, firm. “It’s not natural.”
There was a shiver of fear tracing its way up Jon’s spine, and it made him aggressive. “You’re the one who wanted to save the damn things when they were in my office!” he snapped, too loud. “Why are you getting worked up about them now, of all times, just because you think they’re in my flat?”
“Maybe,” Martin shot back. “I’m just worried that you’ve landed yourself with some kind of spider curse, and it’s followed you home!”
“Spider curse?” Jon scoffed. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know, okay?” Martin said, glaring at Jon. “All I know is, Carlos Vittery killed a spider and then it kept coming back until it killed him, and you are notorious for killing spiders and now your office is infested with a plague of them that, might I point out, look an awful lot like the spider he described in his statement!”
If Jon never had to think of Carlos Vittery’s fate again, it would be too soon. “Oh, don’t bring that statement into this,” he protested, harsh and dismissive. “As I’ve told you multiple times there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for-”
“Seriously?” Martin burst out, boiling over with frustration.
“What?” Jon snapped, meeting him at the same level.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Push the skeptic thing so hard!” Martin’s voice almost cracked, the words were so forceful. “I mean, it made sense at first, but now? After everything we’ve seen, after everything you’ve read! I hear you recording statements and you just dismiss them.” He shook his head, disappointed. “You tear them to pieces like they’re wasting your time, but half of the ‘rational’ explanations you give are actually more far-fetched than just accepting it was a- a ghost or something. I mean, for god’s sake, Jon, with everything that’s happened - I’m being stalked by some kind of worm- queen- thing, and you’re being haunted by a ghost spider, how could you possibly still not believe?”
It was too much. “Of course I believe!” Jon cut him off, giving in to the admission that he had been holding close to his chest since his first day as Head Archivist. “Of course I do. Have you ever taken a look at the stuff we have in Artefact Storage? That’s enough to convince anyone.” He sighed heavily, all the fight draining out of him as he leaned back against the couch cushions. He propped his head up, staring at the ceiling as he talked. “But even before that… why do you think I started working there?” He huffed a laugh. “It’s not exactly glamorous. I… I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Within reason, I mean. I still think most of the statements we have aren’t real. Of the hundreds I’ve recorded, we’ve had maybe… forty, forty-five that are…” He rolled his eyes. He hated to admit it, but the one similarity between all the statements he believed was… “That go on tape. Now, those, I believe, at least for the most part.”
Martin, it seemed, still had some fight left in him. “Then why do you-”
“Because I’m scared, Martin!” Jon said, and it felt like the final wall falling. He was. He was so, so scared, every day of his life, and he never thought he’d be able to admit that to anyone but somehow, for Martin, he could. “Because when I record a statements it feels… it feels like I’m being watched. I… I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like… like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will… know, somehow.” Even here, now, he could almost feel it. The prickling on the back of his neck of unknown eyes. “The skepticism, feigning ignorance… it just feels safer.”
Martin was silent for a long, long moment. Then he sighed. “I don’t think it is,” he said quietly. “But given that you haven’t been eaten by spiders yet, maybe you’ve got a point.”
The tension burst like a soap bubble, and Jon huffed a laugh. “Now if it could protect my office, too, that would be lovely.”
Martin chuckled. Then he shook his head. “Hey. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you like that, I- I had no idea you felt that way.”
Jon brushed the apology off, smiling softly. “It’s fine. I- I do understand where you’re coming from. I’m aware I’ve pushed it a bit… far, with the skepticism.”
“Still.”
Jon hummed in agreement. After a moment, he leaned forward to snag his wine glass off the table, taking a sip.
Martin watched him quietly for a moment, then said: “If you don’t mind me asking… why do you believe in the supernatural? I- I mean, not now, obviously. Working at the Institute would be enough to convince anyone. But… why before that?”
Jon took another sip to avoid answering. He didn’t have to say anything, he knew. He could just brush it off as a childhood interest in campfire stories, or something. But…
His flat was familiar and warm around them. It felt… safe, just him and Martin there, talking quietly on his couch. Despite how recently they’d been arguing, he… he did trust Martin, as a person and as a friend. He knew Martin would listen to him, and take him seriously. And more than that… he found he wanted Martin to know, as well.
Jon set his wine glass back on the table, and cleared his throat.
“I was eight years old when my grandmother gave me the book…”
~~~~~
“God, this place is creepy as hell.”
Caroline laughed, the sound muffled through the facepiece of her hazmat suit. “A job’s a job. We’ll be done quick enough.”
Josh muttered his agreement, but couldn’t help shooting the towering shelves around them a suspicious look.
The Magnus Institute. Of all the places to be called in to work. Yeah, sure, a job was a job and this one was paying well, but he’d heard stories about the place. It was either haunted or staffed by a bunch of conspiracy theorists, and neither was something he had any interest in messing with.
“Think we’re good in here,” Caroline noted, settling a final can of pesticide down at the junction where two aisles intersected. She flicked the cap, setting it off, and it hissed ominously, spilling its poison out into the air. It joined with the low haze already descending over the rest of the stacks, as canisters they had placed all over the Archives’ stacks released their deadly payload.
Josh checked the seals on his suit out of habit. Still safe.
Caroline raised her voice, calling out to the rest of their team. “We’re done in here! Nikki, Ben, you take the breakroom. Alice and Mary can cover the big office. Me and Josh’ll head to the problem area.”
There were distant confirmations from the depths of the room as the others received their orders. Caroline clapped Josh on the back, a plasticky crinkle from their suits accompanying the gesture.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go see what all the fuss is about.”
The so-called ‘problem area’ was the Archivist’s office - the one where the spider infestation had first been noticed. It was a small space, and shouldn’t take more than a single canister to clear, but from what they’d been told of how severe the infestation was, Josh wasn’t surprised Caroline wanted him along for backup.
The hallways were silent as they made their way from the stacks to the office. The whole building had shut down for the night, aside from the one security guard upstairs who had let them in. Josh hated night work, honestly, but in a poorly-ventilated basement like this they needed to give the space as much of the weekend as possible to air out so the staff could safely return on Monday.
The lights flickered as they approached the doorway, and a shiver crept up Josh’s spine. Caroline just snorted.
“That feels way too on-brand for this place.”
Josh huffed a laugh, and opened the door.
“Christ.”
That was… a lot of spiders. The entire goddamn shelving unit was covered in webs, thick enough that he could barely see the shelves themselves. Dark blotches scuttled over them, barely visible in the light shining in from the hall.
“Shit,” Caroline muttered. She stepped into the room, braver than Josh could ever imagine being, and felt along the wall for the lightswitch.
It clicked on, flooding the office with slightly green-tinted light. Under it’s glow Josh could see that the shelves were the only source of spiders in the room. Everywhere else, even the dark little hidden away corners that spiders normally loved, was clear.
Caroline unclipped a canister of pesticide from her belt, stepping forward to place it on the desk. Josh reached behind him, grabbing the hose of his backpack sprayer and bringing it around into position.
“I think this calls for a little pre-gaming, yeah?”
Caroline snorted, stepping back and waving him forward. “Be my guest.”
He pointed the sprayer at the shelves, and let loose a blast of pesticide at the webs. It was one of the most satisfying parts of the job, honestly. The cans were all well and good, they served as a deep fumigation that would take care of not only the bugs you could see but also their hidden nests and anything living in the walls, but it was when he pulled out the backpack sprayer that Josh really started to feel like he was doing something. It was like a supercharged flyswatter.
The shelves… creaked. Josh frowned, letting up with the spray in case its hiss was playing tricks with his ears. The room was silent for a moment.
And then the entire shelving unit collapsed.
“Fuck!”
Both Josh and Caroline jumped back in alarm as it came tumbling down, bringing a cascade of paper and spiders with it. There was a sound of hurried footsteps in the hallway behind them, and then Alice and Mary showed up to peer over their shoulders, looking alarmed.
“You guys alright?”
“We’re fine,” Caroline said, brushing herself down. She sounded annoyed. “The entire fucking shelving unit just collapsed.”
“Yeesh, cheap job,” Mary muttered, pushing past them into the room to take a look.
“Wait, did the-” Alice looked more alarmed than ever. “Were the webs heavy enough to pull it down?”
“I think so,” Josh said. He was feeling more than a little alarmed himself.
“Uh, guys?” Mary said.
“What?”
“Look at this.” She reached forward, over the remnants of the shelves - headless of all the spiders that had somehow survived the pesticides, fuck what was she thinking - and touched the wall that had been behind them. “I think it put a hole right through.”
“Isn’t this an exterior wall?” Caroline asked, walking over to take a closer look.
“It should be,” Mary agreed. She reached forward, peeling a chunk of wall away from the now-visible hole. “I think it’s just plasterboard.”
Josh became aware of a sound, then. It was a wet, squirming sort of sound, and it was getting louder every second.
“Do you see anything?” Alice asked from beside him, oblivious.
“No,” Mary said, leaning even closer to the hole, grabbing the flashlight from her belt and shining it through. “No, I don’t think so, it…” Her voice trailed off, and her face - what little of it Josh could see through the visor of her suit - went pale. “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh no.”
~~~~~
“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” Martin murmured, several minutes into the silence that had fallen when Jon finished his story. The words were spoken into Jon’s hair. Martin was holding him close, trying to comfort him from the pain of reliving his memories, and - despite the fact that Jon didn’t normally consider himself a hugger - he couldn’t deny it was working.
“I know,” he said softly. “I was eight. There was nothing I could have done. I just…” He trailed off, and heaved a heavy sigh.
“Survivor’s guilt,” Martin finished for him. “It’s understandable. But I need you to know it’s not your fault.”
“Thank you,” Jon whispered, turning his face to hide it in Martin’s shoulder. Martin’s arms tightened around him.
“Of course,” he whispered back.
How had Jon ever disliked him? Martin was one of- no, scratch that, he was the best person Jon had ever known: kind, compassionate, forgiving, brave - Jon couldn’t think of a single other person he would have trusted to share his story with, nor anyone else he would have wanted to hold him after the telling of it. Somehow, over the last few months, his feelings about Martin had turned around completely: what had started as guilt over putting him in danger had blossomed into a true desire to know him, into friendship, into…
Jon peeled himself off of Martin, just far enough so that he could look in his eyes.
“I’m sorry for the way I treated you,” he said. “It was out of line and unfair. I hope I can show you, going forward, that I mean to do better.”
Martin’s eyes softened, going warm and fond. “Jon,” he said quietly. “You already have.”
Jon wasn’t sure which of them moved forward first; but, the next thing he knew, his lips were pressed to Martin’s, gentle and hesitant, and neither of them pulled away.
One kiss turned to two, turned to a dozen or more; when they finally parted, Jon rested his forehead against Martin’s.
“We should probably go to bed,” he murmured, because it was very late by then. “But… can we- can we talk about this, in the morning? What it means for us? I… I would like it to mean something, but I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“I would like that,” Martin said, and kissed him again.
~~~~~
Come Monday morning, they walked into the Archives together, hand in hand. There was a strange, chemical smell hanging in the air from the fumigation, but the building had been declared safe.
They paused outside Jon’s office, and looked at each other.
“Well?” Martin said, waving a hand at the closed door. “You first.”
Jon rolled his eyes. But he also wrapped his hand around the handle, and pushed the door open.
There were no spiders inside. There was a massive hole in the wall where his shelf should be.
“What the hell?”
Elias was ‘too busy with meetings’ to talk to Jon - which Jon interpreted to mean that he was in a foul mood and didn’t want to be disturbed - so they had to get the story from Rosie. Apparently, the exterminators had come in on Friday night as scheduled, they’d laid out cans of pesticide all throughout the Archives, and then… Jon’s shelves had collapsed under the weight of the spiderwebs that had been lain across them.
This shouldn’t have been an issue to anyone except Jon, but when the shelves had come down they had dragged a section of the wall with them. Behind, where there should have just been the stone foundations of the building, there was instead a tunnel. And in that tunnel had been Jane Prentiss.
Both Jon and Martin felt incredibly vindicated by the confirmation that it was, indeed, her, and that they hadn’t been overreacting in their worry about the worms.
Normally coming face to face with Prentiss like that would have been a death sentence - Rosie continued, ignoring them - but, well, they were exterminators, after all, and they were wearing hazmat suits and had dozens of cans of pesticide on them, so in the end it hadn’t been much of a fight.
After Prentiss had collapsed in a pile of dying worms they’d laid a few more canisters in the tunnel and gotten out of there, sealing off the Archives behind them to let the gas do its work. On Saturday they’d brought the ECDC back with them to do a proper clearing of the area, and it had all been declared safe for human habitation again by late Sunday afternoon. The bill that had been laid on Elias’s desk for the fumigation was, apparently, steep.
They had to relay the entire story on again to Tim and Sasha when they arrived - and, after they were all done laughing at the thought of Elias’s face when he saw the bill, it was finally time to get back to work.
Well. What work Jon could get done, with a giant fucking hole in his wall.
At the end of the day he approached Martin’s desk.
“So…” he began. “I suppose you don’t need to live in the Archives anymore.”
“I suppose I don’t,” Martin agreed. “Not sure where I’m going next. I let the lease expire on my old flat.”
“Well,” Jon said. “I have a bed. And I’ve recently learned that it’s big enough for two.”
The corner of Martin’s mouth lifted in a smile. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”
“At least for now,” Jon clarified. “Until you find a place of your own. All your things are already there, after all.”
The smile turned into a full-on grin. “Well, when you put it like that…”
And if he never managed to find a flat of his own? Well, Jon certainly didn’t mind sharing.