Chapter Text
It was a new and exciting thrill, having spare income.
Martin had been living paycheck to paycheck for so long he'd come to think of grabbing a kabab for dinner to be a monthly luxury. Even after working at the institute Martin had needed to take night shifts three days out of the week. He'd assumed that going from being a library assistant to an archival assistant would be no different, and had nearly fallen out of his chair when he saw the new contract.
"This new position has a research element," Mr. Bouchard had explained, "You'll be asked to follow up on cases alongside regular archiving duties, which means longer hours and less flexibility for other responsibilities."
Coming down from the shock, Martin gulped nervously. It wasn't written anywhere that he shouldn't have another job, but the fact that Mr. Bouchard already knew he did was just embarrassing.
"You'll be compensated for your time and any expenses outside the institute, of course." Mr. Bouchard continued, either not noticing Martin's discomfort or choosing to ignore it. "And, unlike the library, the archives aren't available during the weekends. I believe that would be amiable to you?"
Martin had to pick his jaw up from the floor. Twice as much pay for a five day work week? Martin would gladly trek up and down London every single day if that's what the 'head archivist' wanted from him.
So he'd signed the new agreement, watched in awe as the bonus appeared in his bank statements, and quietly sorted out the maths that night.
Outside of Mum's care, Martin didn't have a lot of expenses. He bought his groceries in bulk, got his clothes from the charity shop, and drank tea instead of coffee. If he kept things the way they were he could afford to put a little away each month, maybe even have some to spend.
Sitting back on his sofa, Martin let go of deep breath. No more waking up with an anxious hole burning in his stomach. No more staying up all night to 'slingshot' his sleep schedule between night and day shifts. No more weighing the cost of the train to Mum's care home against replacing whatever piece of shitty ikea furniture had fallen apart.
And the time . A whole weekend where he didn't have to work. He could start seeing friends again. He could actually take his notebook to the park to write some poetry like he always told himself he would do. Maybe he could start training on sundays, try to lose some weight. Join a hobby group. Meet people.
The fantasies lasted through to Friday, all during his last shift, and as he stayed up late that night searching local meetups on his phone. It persisted through Saturday when he did none of the above, and even when his shower stopped working on Sunday, and he'd been stuck on the phone with the landlord all day.
What finally destroyed it was coming in to work on Monday. Martin had started off admittedly poor with the worst possible first impression he could have had with his new boss, and things only got worse from there. There were only four of them in the new archival department, and as they all had experience in research and Martin's 'credentials' sufficed, the head archivist saw no reason to give them any further training. Or properly ease into their new positions, the state of the archives were dire enough that they'd all hit the ground running.
Martin had been a bit vague on what his job even was before Elias explained it. Now all he knew was that he was doing it wrong. Talking about running up and down London every single day was a lot easier than actually doing it, and just as Mr. Bouchard had said, there was still archival work waiting for him once he was done with his follow ups. By the time Friday rolled around again Martin was too knackered for anything but scrolling his phone all weekend, and by the next he'd given up on any actual changes to his personal life.
But in lieu of time and energy, Martin at least still had the money. Quite a bit of it piling up month by month, and while not nearly enough had gone into the new savings account for Martin to start spending recklessly, he figured he owed himself a little present for his hard work.
"Ha!" Tim laughed. "Great idea, Martin. I've been thinking of getting one myself!"
Martin's head snapped up, his heart quickening. "Really? What kind?"
The smile twitched on Tim's face as he stared at Martin, then fell completely.
"Wait. You're serious." He said. "You're actually getting a pet tarantula?"
The quick flush of excitement at having something in common with Tim dropped from Martin's chest like a stone. For a brief moment he'd seen an avenue for the two of them to actually become friends, but it was clear by the horror on Tim's face that bonding over exotic pets wasn't going to happen.
"Well, I've always wanted one." Martin said, rubbing his neck.
"Why?" Asked Tim, drawing the word out like an ominous wind.
Martin's blush deepened and he closed the window of terrarium listings on his browser.
"I dunno. I just think they're cute. A-and low maintenance. The hours here aren't great for a dog."
"Cats, Martin." Tim said. "Cats exist."
"Y-yeah, I suppose." Martin stammered. "But I always worry that a cat might not… like me."
Tim stared at him incredulously. "And a spider would?"
"Oh, no!" Martin said quickly. "Tarantulas don't differentiate between strangers and their owners. They're very old animals, evolutionarily speaking. Not much in their brains but sight and bite instincts. For all they're called 'exotic pets,' keeping one is only a bit more effort than a houseplant. You just need to refill their water dish and feed them once a week."
It took a while for Martin to realize he was rambling. He flushed and trailed off, embarrassed that he wasn't embarrassed any time he could provide spider facts.
"...So what's the point then?" Tim asked.
There probably wasn't meant to be an accusation in his voice, but Martin flinched all the same.
The real reason was that it was companionship without pressure. Tarantulas were blessedly neutral, they didn't care what you looked like or what you ate or how long it's been since you've had a date or a friend who you didn't meet at work. Maybe they'd get hissy and attack the tongs when you tried to fill their water dish, but it wasn't because of you. That was just spiders being spiders.
People got so hung up on the biological drawbacks, though. It was the same thing you heard with fish and reptiles. Martin had even had this same argument with his mother as a teenager. She'd said: 'It won't even love you!' and Martin barely managed to resist saying: 'Neither do you.' out loud.
"They're pretty." Martin went with, trying to sound nonchalant. "They're pretty and interesting."
The expression on Tim's face softened. He leaned back in his chair, drumming his pen against the edge of his desk.
"I suppose it is kind of cool." He admitted at last.
Martin beamed. "Spiders are really cool!"
"And they're not that much different to a cat, with the hissing and fur." Tim joked.
"And the purring." Martin nodded.
The accepting smile dropped from Tim's face. "The what."
"Well, not tarantulas, that's just a myth." Martin admitted. "But Wolf Spiders, yeah! They're the ones with the big eyes that carry their babies around on their backs–"
And then Tim's face drained of color, just as it had when Martin had sent him that photo from national geographic. Tim clapped his hands and smiled at Martin so brightly he might go blind from it.
"Alright, Marto!" Tim said. "How about we never talk about this again!"
It was a fair compromise. Martin had forgotten that he'd already told Tim about the piggy back thing, and that not everyone found the image of hundreds of jelly-like 'puppies' clinging to their mother's back as endearing as he did.
So Martin decided to take pity on his coworkers and keep his anticipation to himself. If Tim couldn't stomach Martin's enthusiasm, Sasha certainly wouldn't. To say nothing of Jon, who was grumpy enough already because a statement-giver had come in with an un-covered Leitner and plopped it on his desk during the statement.
Tuning out Jon's outraged yelling, Elias's attempts to placate him, and the bustle of artifact storage workers all around them, Martin searched his options online. There were plenty of exotic pet sites that could deliver locally to London, and he even found a decent second-hand terrarium. Martin wouldn't even need to wait until his next payday, the one he wanted was only going for 60 quid.
The app said that this species was particularly aggressive. Martin was certainly new to this, but he liked to think he'd seen enough feeding and watering videos not to mind a spider that was skittish. It's not like he'd have a lot of time to bother her with his exhausting schedule, she'd only need tending on one of his two days off anyway.
Martin had made an offer and was told he could expect his new pet in the mail by the end of the week. Jon had been hurriedly placated by Elias and was sent home, meaning Martin had plenty of time to scroll through feeding and watering videos for the rest of the workday.
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Jon woke up to the smothering darkness of his blanket over his face.
Ugh.
Groaning, Jon tried to push the covers away, but his arm didn't feel like moving properly. He must have slept on it wrong again, it still had a habit of popping out of the socket when he lay on it for too long. There was no feeling in it at all, which always came with a sleepy panic that there was any serious damage to it. There never was, Jon just needed to shift his weight to bring back circulation.
But when Jon tried to roll with his legs, he found he couldn't feel them either. Like his arm they didn't respond to the squeezing of his muscles, and instead found that he could only draw them closer to himself.
He felt his arm, or something like an arm, and instead of the pins and needles that usually came after shaking life back into his limbs, there was just a dull, empty feeling in them.
Squelch.
No sooner had Jon registered the strange, hollowness in his leg, he felt a strange flushing feeling course through them. It was not unlike removing the rubber band around his arm during a blood draw, but the feeling of his circulation returning was like the roar of a coursing river. It shuddered through his limb, filling it close to swelling, such that Jon couldn't help but extend his foot.
And still, it was numb. He couldn't feel anything save for the blankets chafing against his body hair.
Something was wrong. Obviously something was wrong. Jon tried to tilt his head upwards, only to realize he didn't actually know which way was up.
Again Jon tried to roll, but the thick blanket over his head seemed to have even more blankets piled atop it. He felt more like he was in a sandwich than his bed, and wondered if he'd taken his weighted blanket down from the attic without remembering to. It had been years since he needed it…
THUD.
The sound didn't reach Jon's ears, but rather seemed to crawl up his skin. His entire bed shook, and Jon's fought wildly against his sheets.
But even as he squirmed and struggled with his cold feeling limbs, the blankets seemed to go forever. It was dark, under here. Warm, but dark. And the more he scraped his belly and teeth against them, the more he could… feel them.
Perhaps feeling was the wrong word. Just as the 'thud' had been somewhere between a sound and a touch, smell and taste seemed to be joined as one. Jon's mouth was closed, and when he tried to inhale no air passed through his nose. And yet he could smell the sterile, pulpy scent of paper towels. Not that paper towels had a particularly strong scent, or taste for that matter, but for some reason that familiar scent and taste was as overwhelming as cigarette smoke. It wasn't different, just… more.
And his lungs still filled. He could feel them expanding. How was that possible with his nose clogged and his mouth closed?
This was around when Jon started to panic. What had happened last night? Had Jon gone out drinking? Had he done drugs? Jon had never done drugs but with how much this new job was driving him crazy he–
The job. That was right, the job. Jon had gone home early from his job last night, because some idiot had brought in a Leitner.
'No…' Jon thought in a mad panic, 'No, no, no…'
Jon hadn't read it. Didn't even let the statement giver start their account. The moment they placed it on his desk Jon leapt away as if it could reach out and grab him. Then he'd shouted the man out of the Archives, shouted at Sasha to get someone from artifact storage, and shouted to Elias about someone getting this far into the institute with something so dangerous.
The rest of the day had been spent calming Jon down, then sending him home when that proved impossible. But Jon had believed Elias when he'd told him nothing could have possibly come from his very minimal contact with the Leitner's presence. You had to open the book for it to exhibit supernatural behavior, that was the one thing all Leitner statements had in common.
So that wasn't what happened. It couldn't be.
'So what is happening?' Jon thought madly. 'Calm down, man. Sort this out. There has to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.'
There was no answer to be found in the endless darkness, save for another loud thump that shot across Jon's skin. His prison tilted aggressively, enough to displace Jon if he weren't so tightly packed in by the blankets. He could feel every thump and fumbling noise from outside, but outside of where he didn't know.
Finally the shaking stopped, and Jon was left in silence. It didn't last long, however. Just as Jon was considering trying to try and wriggle around for the barest crack of light, the loudest thrum of all ripped across his senses.
GRRRMMMMMMMMMM
The only thing Jon could feel over the overpowering roar was the rush of blood back into his body. He felt his limbs snap back to himself as he cowered in terror, trying to make out something, anything in the pitch dark.
The world shuddered with the growl, and then jerked into a lurch. Jon could hear the crackle of gravel under tires, and realized he must be in a car. A very large, loud, car. As Jon took stock of his situation, being packed tight in a dark space that had been lifted into a car, there was only one conclusion he could have come to.
Breekon and Hope.
Criminals. That made some sense at least. What it didn't do was make anything better.
Clearly he'd been kidnapped and shoved into a box for some reason. What that reason was? Who knew. The other statements detailing the mysterious delivery men were just as baffled by their antics. For all Jon knew, they were hired thugs for some sort of doomsday cult. Just because the artifacts they delivered weren't supernatural didn't mean dangerous people couldn't be involved.
Statements about them didn't usually end well for the recipients, and Jon couldn't imagine playing the role of 'package' would be any different.
But what else could he do? Wrapped away in this darkness, unsure of where he was going or what horrors awaited him, all he could really do was hope that he was merely the tool for the victim's harassment, and not the intended victim himself. Jon thought of the coffin, one of the first statements he'd ever put to tape, and wondered if this was the secret that lay inside.
Well– if it was, Jon wasn't going to take it laying down. He wasn't going to merely scratch at juice placed on the lid, or limit his vocalizations to singing during rainfall!
If he really was in the custody of the delivery men, Jon shouldn't make a fuss right away. But once he was delivered, hopefully to another innocent bystander, Jon would have no trouble asking to be let out. To belabor the point, Jon drew a breath and prepared a perfectly reasonable speech:
Hello, my name is Jonathan Sims.
"Ssssst…"
Jon blinked, for all the pitch darkness made a difference. He hadn't intended to speak much louder than a whisper, still wary of his captors. Squeezing his throat, Jon tried again:
…Head Archvisit of–
"Sst."
The words, perfectly reasonable in his mind's ear, came out as a series of hissing. Jon tried to speak louder, more properly:
I am an employee of the Magnus institute.
"Ssssst!"
Louder:
As a professional researcher of supernatural phenomenon, I see no reason to believe this is anything other than a common kidnapping!
"Ssst!"
So loud he was trying to scream:
My name is Jonathan Sims and you cannot keep me here!
"Sssst! Sssst! Sssssst!"
Like trying to cry out in a dream, no matter what Jon did the sound came out in a hiss. The more he tried to speak the more terrified he became. What had happened to him? Why couldn't the air in his throat catch on his vocal chords? Jon never thought much about how he'd managed to make sound, but no amount of twisting or tightening his throat would produce the familiar thrum of his voice.
With what was left of his professional skepticism fading, Jon began to thrash. Thrash with limbs he didn't recognize, senses that were strange and powerful, and this goddamned darkness that obscured his understanding as much as his eyesight!
Grrrrrnnn….. crunch.
Jon's prison lurched again, the vehicle having come to a stop. He could hear the click of keys being taken out from the ignition, the unbuckling of a seatbelt, and the whump of a car door closing.
They'd come to their destination, wherever that was.
Jon listened carefully to the sound of boots as they walked around to the back of the vehicle, then flinched at the loud opening of a door. With it open Jon could hear the whistle of wind and distant city noises, and judging by the journey they'd taken, they must not have left London.
'At least there's that…' Jon thought grimly.
His captor seemed to have no trouble picking Jon up and slamming the door behind them. Jon still couldn't tell if he was laying flat or curled into a ball, which could mean he was either in a coffin or a square crate. Even still, wasn't he heavy?
Jon shifted and swung with what he assumed were footsteps, but if those were footsteps he'd imagine them being more labored. Whoever was carrying him did so at an easy gate. How strong were these people?
BRRRRINGGGG!
The sound of a doorbell raked painfully over Jon's skin. He was again taken by how he didn't feel anything in his ears. Like he was merely pressing his hand to a speaker's vibrations, yet could make out the sound just through touch.
Three more agonizing rings, and the darkness fell silent once more. Jon was shifted to the side, and he could hear a frustrated groan from his captor.
'Feel free to pop open the lid and let me go.' He thought.
Again the bell rang, making Jon flinch. Thankfully it was answered right away with a sharp click.
"Hello?" Asked a muffled voice through a cheap speaker.
"Got a package for flat 29, but they aren't answering. Can you let me up?"
It was the first time Jon's captor had spoken, and he was surprised to find it sounding… normal.
Everyone said Breekon and Hope looked normal, but their accents were meant to sound obviously fake. And male– they'd always been described as male, Jon's captor sounded like a woman.
"Oh, uh… Sure! Come on up. That'd be the third floor."
The prison lurched again with the thunderous sound of a buzzer. Jon wished he knew how he was hearing so well, no amount of curling up into himself did anything to block the noise.
Once the door shut behind them, Jon felt the swing of the delivery woman climbing the stairs. Just as easily as she had to the front door, climbing three flights of stairs with a heavy box didn't seem to phase her at all. Jon found himself wondering desperately who she was, how she was able to carry a human-sized crate as if it were nothing.
Knowing anything beyond this suffocating dark and the vague, loud, noises would be a blessing.
Whoever the delivery woman was, it soon became a moot point. Jon felt a thud as his crate was placed on the floor, then the sound of her heavy boots walking away. The world was silent again, which while more comfortable left Jon with even less to tell what was happening.
Instead, Jon had time to make note of the facts. He would need to make his own statement once he was freed, first to the police and then his own archive. If not for how casually she'd carried the box, Jon would assume the courier was an innocent bystander who had no idea what she'd been delivering. It would be good to focus on the memory of her voice, just in case. Other than that, Jon had surmised he must be sitting on the doorstep of a residential building, an inhabited building, unlike that of the coffin statement.
There were confirmed to be neighbors, which meant witnesses. Jon didn't know which flat the courier had called to let her in, but that would be the easy sort of task that not even Martin could mess up.
As for Jon's strange senses and his inability to communicate, that was… unsettling but not necessarily a problem. He could still thrash. Still bump and make a grand fuss once he had an audience. That would have to wait, but considering how casually the neighbors had let them in, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
'Don't panic… don't panic…'
Someone was going to come. Jon was stuck in some sort of… crate or coffin, that sort of thing was bound to catch attention in an ordinary apartment block. Something had been done to his throat, a drug, probably, which was bound to wear off eventually.
Then Jon would be able to scream, the neighbors would see a people-sized box screaming, and then they would call the police. Jon would add his own encounter to these… occultist criminals, and then make a formal request to add Breekon and Hope to the list of ongoing projects in the research department. Obviously Institute personnel were not safe from their antics.
It was all going to be fine. Jon was going to get out of here. Someone had to come.
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No one did, and if they had, Jon sorely wished they hadn't.
He didn't know at what time boredom had phased into sleep, nor the difference between sleeping and wakefulness. All he did know that one minute there was darkness, and in the next he was staring a giant, black spider in the face.
"Ssssyt!" Jon hissed, trying to scramble backwards as the thing before him flailed its sick, hairy legs.
Jon felt blood shoot through his limbs, pulsing and full like a boil. The spider recoiled from him with as much desperation as Jon felt, only to spasm to a stop when it struck something behind it. Jon didn't get a good view, however, as at that moment he'd stepped on something that sent him tumbling backwards.
Launched onto his back, Jon expected to look up at a ceiling. Instead everything went dark, the press of woody grit against Jon's face. He flailed helplessly for a moment, as desperate as he'd been in the dark container, knowing that at any moment the spider would think better of fleeing from him.
Finally Jon managed to writhe enough that he flipped over, and when he did was sickened to find a black, hairy leg right before his eyes. Freezing in terror, Jon could do nothing but wait for the piercing of fang as he stared terrified at the substrate.
In the long moments it took for him to be attacked, Jon came to realize that he wasn't being attacked. It was worse than that, it was so much worse than that.
When Jon finally wriggled himself free, he found himself surrounded by four panels of glass. Each depicted a horrible black spider, though from the faint outline of a room behind them Jon realized they were a reflection.
No amount of spinning or trying to crane his neck produced the source of the reflection, which spurred Jon in to an awful conclusion. Again he studied the leg posed by his face, and how it extended close to him. It was connected to him.
'Good lord.' Jon thought, his mind buzzing with terror.
The desperate breath Jon felt coursing through him matched the sick shuddering of the reflected spiders' thorax. When he shifted his face to try and look away, so too did the spiders.
Again Jon watched the black limbs in front of him. His limbs, who elses could they be? Jon was completely alone in this little glass box. A terrarium, he realized. A place to keep a spider.
'No, no, no…'
This couldn't be happening. It wasn't happening. This was some sort of nightmare. Jon just had to… to pinch himself or something… but…
Staring at the twitching hairs on his disgusting leg, Jon wondered how he'd go about doing that. How he'd go about doing anything in this body that was suddenly his own.
What passed next, Jon wasn't sure. It couldn't be that he moved, as he didn't know how. It couldn't be that he screamed, because spiders didn't have vocal cords. But the white-hot terror must have made Jon do something, as it blanketed over every other sense as he drowned in his panic.
The problem with shock however, was that eventually it wore off.
Over the next few hours, the hideous truth sank in. He went from telling himself he was asleep in his own bed to begging the universe to put him back in the black box again. He'd gladly be hoodwinked to some horrible corner of the world by demons if it meant he could be in a body that didn't make him sick.
As the minutes ticked by agonizingly slow, so too did the last of Jon's reservations. Some part of him was still in denial, knew that if he were to read this statement he would dismiss it outright, but seeing as how he was dealing with this problem now that skepticism would need to be tucked elsewhere.
Jon longed for the part of every paranormal encounter where the victim was back in the real world, allowing their friends and family to gaslight them into thinking it was just a dream.
Walking was a unique horror. Jon could feel the squelch of blood filling his legs, making them extend like a sick balloon. If he wished to retract them, the blood would flush back into his thorax, the elastic tension of his muscle pulling the leg back to his body.
Slowly but surely, taking note of his weight and which legs were supporting it at once, Jon got the hang of where to pump and pull his legs in order to walk at a reliable gate. But even still it was sluggish and confusing, many times his thorax would plant in the substrate and his limbs would scramble helplessly to re-establish his momentum.
The system felt wholly inconvenient. Weren't spiders supposed to be fast? Or was it just tarantulas that had to manually pump their blood like a hydraulic puppet?
At least once he was mobile Jon could explore his enclosure. It was a standard looking glass terrarium filled with substrate and chunks of wood. Thankfully he seemed to be the only presence. Jon didn't know if it was common practice to keep spiders together, but he would very much prefer not to have any company.
There was sparse enough decoration that each wall was visible, which gave Jon an unsettling realization about spider vision.
It was panoptic.
Jon could see right in front of him the clearest, but the corners of his sight extended to his sides and even a little bit behind. It was like looking at a long, thin, mural, his enclosure twisting so as to make sense to his mind's eye.
It was not a blessing. The uncovered walls and 360 vision just meant that there was no corner Jon could crawl to avoid his own reflection. There was always at least one big, black, spider lurking in his peripheral vision, their thoraxes pulsing with his breath, their legs squirming as he tried to master them.
This was when Jon learned that spiders did not appear to have eyelids, so that wasn't an option either.
The only relief came, ironically, in shuffling up close to the glass itself. Once Jon recovered from the image of a spider crawling slowly towards him, he was able to see out past his reflection into the room behind it.
It was a flat, and a shabby one at that. The only light in the room was that which hung over Jon's terrarium, but even then his 'wonderful' spider eyes could pick out the dark shapes in the distance. He saw a grubby looking sofa so overladen with clothes that there was only space for one person to sit. On the floor was the cardboard remains of a package, likely to have been Jon's considering the wadded up paper towel laying next to it.
There was an old looking TV, some sort of sound system attached to it, a door that lead to a cramped looking kitchenette, and another that presumably led to the bedroom despite being closed.
Whoever had taken Jon captive didn't have a lot going on for them, it seemed. He didn't know whether to be annoyed or satisfied that his tormentor must be a deeply pathetic person to live in such a depressing place.
Turning away from the glass and pointedly ignoring the reflections that now faced him, Jon noticed a little water dish sitting beside the chunk of wood. It was only upon shuffling towards it that Jon realized he was thirsty. Presumably he was hungry too, though Jon didn't want to think about how he'd go about remedying that.
Instead Jon tried to tilt his mandibles down to the water, and considered what the hell he was supposed to do there. So far as he knew, Jon didn't have lips. How did you suck up water without lips..?
"Oh!"
A loud, booming voice sent the hairs on Jon's carapiece shuddering. Jon could have jumped a foot in the air, but instead the blood throbbed through his legs and he had whipped around faster than he could have turned his head as a human.
The room around the terrarium had suddenly become bright, illuminating the musty patches on the walls. In the center stood a large figure, his wide, green eyes staring directly at Jon's enclosure.
'Martin..?' Jon thought. 'Martin!'
"Ssyt!" Came the hiss before he could stop it.
It was perhaps the only time Jon had ever been happy to see Martin Blackwood. He forgot all about the waterdish and charged towards the glass of the terrarium, tapping at it desperately with his legs.
Instead of having any reasonable reaction to a spider groping for him, Marin's face broke into an overjoked smile.
"You're alright!" He cried. "Thank goodness!"
'Feh.' Thought Jon.
Alright was perhaps an overstatement, but at least someone recognized him. Jon shifted so as to look up into Martin's face, and felt himself flush with a warmth that had nothing to do with his horrible legs.
For his part, Martin looked too relieved to turn away. He shrugged out of his coat and dropped his messenger bag right onto the floor, coming up close to the terrarium to inspect Jon closely.
Before thinking on it, Jon felt himself shrink back. It was one thing to see him at the other end of the room, quite another to have that face hanging over him. What was worse were Martin's glasses, which while a bit dirty from the day out, Jon could just faintly see his own dark shape in them.
For a while all they did was stare at one another, before Martin started jabbering:
"When you weren't moving, I-I thought the worst. But then I had to go to work, so…"
'Yes, yes, fine.' Jon thought, irritated that he couldn't just cut Martin's rambling off.
Communicating was going to be difficult, especially with Martin's proclivity to go on and on about nothing. All Jon could do was sit and wait as he finished with a final breath of relief
"W-well, you're alright now!" He said.
'Hardly.' Jon thought.
Of all the people to be stuck with, Martin wasn't his first choice. God only knew how he find out what had happened to Jon, let alone have him delivered to his home. Sasha must have helped him, which was promising considering she was far more likely to be of use here. There was still the small problem of changing back, a task Jon didn't trust to Martin alone. He only hoped that they had already alerted Elias, who could get someone from the research department to–
"Wow…" Martin said. "You're so beautiful…."
Jon's rambling stopped short. He managed to look back up at Martin's face through the glass, and saw him staring down at Jon with complete adoration.
Had Jon anything resembling a lip to curl, it would have done.
'I beg your pardon?' He wanted to snap.
"Sssst!" Was what he hissed instead.
For all a hideous creature that was also his direct superior was hissing at him, Martin only laughed and rested his cheek in his palm, gazing down at Jon as if he were a kitten.
"None of that, madam." Said Martin. "You are beautiful, no matter what Tim or Sasha think."
Madam?!
"God- to say nothing of Jon. " Martin continued with a huff. "How about we don't tell him about you, hm?"
The hope fell from wherever Jon's heart was like a frigid stone. He stared up at Martin, the realization coming slow and unwelcome to his mind.
"You're a beautiful species. Chaetopelma olivaceum, or the Furry Black Tarantula."
Martin didn't recognize him. He thought he was a normal spider. That he bought . Who just buys a spider?!
"Not the most flashy, I suppose. No crazy coloring or shimmery hairs. But you're just lovely aren't you?"
Jon felt the heavy thorax behind him shudder with anxiety. The legs he stood on throbbed with blood. He heard Martin's words through the hairs on his carapace, and though he had no nose or human mouth to speak of, Jon's lungs filled with air by means he couldn't comprehend.
"You look like a bigger, cuddlier version of the spiders I used to play with during guides!" Martin said, then widened his eyes. "Oh, you need a name , don't you?"
A name. For a pet.
Jon was trapped in a terrarium by his least competent assistant who wouldn't have known how to help him even if he did know it was him.
"Chaetopelma olivaceum…" Martin repeated. "What do you think about 'Miss Olive?'"
Quite within reason, Jon lost his mind.