loficharm | It's polite to knock.

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It's polite to knock.

Martin has no idea what, exactly, they're hoping to find at the Oddities and Antiques Show, but whatever it is, it had better be good. John's dwindling supply of Statements has been a building source of unease for him even before it ever came up in conversation. The box he so blessedly received ages ago is kept in John's office, not something he ever really roots through, but he has kept a sort of automatic mental tally of the number of times he's been aware of John rationing from it. They both knew it would run out eventually, with no guarantee of a replacement. It's not like this is a nice three year subscription Darrow will just replenish for them. In his darkest moments, he's found ways to blame himself for it. The gift had appeared in his flat at the time; a gift he wanted, needed, to help John. He'd let himself believe, wishfully or no, that it was his own desire to keep John safe and well that prompted its arrival. Has he become too complacent? If he just needed it more, would another come?

It's ridiculous to think that way, and he knows it. He hasn't let John in on those thoughts, chasing them away as best he can. This is a problem they will both find a way to resolve, somehow or other. And in the meantime, they can still hope some solution presents itself.

John's split off from him now, now that he seems a little less likely to just go after the first Statement he can feel. Martin wishes he'd stuck close, would have liked to keep John's hand in his, for his own comfort if nothing else. He trusts John to maintain his own discipline. But searching alone through all the wares, more efficient though it might be, is not very relaxing or very fun. And he really doesn't know what he's looking for.

He's gravitated toward the books; there are a lot of them, and there's a non-zero chance of finding some sort of personal account among the published works. And it might be nice to pick up something for himself, if he finds something. If he can allow himself to even think of recreation at a time like this.

It's very sudden and very subtle when it happens. He's brushing his fingers over the disorganized heap on this particular table, feeling the spines, both because he likes the tactile experience of it and because he's hoping to feel out anything unusual or unique. Not expecting 'unusual or unique' to find him first.

It starts with an itch, though he doesn't even notice that at first. No, first he notices the book itself. Thin, simple cardboard, bright, stark white. A children's book, here among all the dusty old novels and dry non-fiction.

He fishes it out and his heart drops into his stomach. Lunch was a while ago but he feels for a perilous moment like he's about to throw up. Staring back at him is a friendly smile drawn onto a bulbous black body. Eight legs extending at sharp, nauseating angles. He knows the title before he even flips to the front cover to see it, drawn as if with a knife: A Guest for Mr Spider.

Open it, he thinks immediately. He ought to be sure. There's every possibility this is a real and ordinary picture book in some universe, or just one of Darrow's many copycats. Just the inside cover. Just to check for the label. To be absolutely certain it's a Leitner before he panics.

It's only then he notices the itch, as of something crawling across the back of his hand. His free hand twitches out to scratch or to shoo away whatever's on him, but there is nothing there. He stays like that, frozen, one hand clasped around the other clutching the book. Mr Spider smiles at him, broad and inviting. Open up, he seems to say. A quick peek won't hurt you. You know the danger. And you know better than anyone: spiders aren't really so scary, are they?

He almost throws the book back down on the table, but he can't quite — doesn't want to. Shouldn't. No one else should find this.

Well, of course no one should. This is for him.

It's for him.

Jesus, that was the very day he learned, wasn't it? It hits him like a sudden breath of cold air on the back of his neck. The box of tapes, Darrow's first and only gift to him. John hugging him like it was normal and not an act of desperation. Shared breakfast. Shared stories. The first real story he heard about John's childhood.

Is this Darrow's idea of a fucking joke?

"How much?" he blurts out at the woman behind the table. She glances at the book in his hand, barely seeming to notice it, and tells him Two dollars as if she just decided on the spot. He pays her. He steps away, hurried and unsteady, knocking into a few people and drawing a few annoyed looks as he tries to make himself small within the crowd.

Of all the days to not have his bag on him. Too hot for a coat or even a jumper. Nowhere to hide the bloody thing. But he has to — he has to keep it hidden. John can't see it. John must not be allowed to see it. This is his problem. His.

He crams it under his arm, hugging himself like he's fevered, and scans the warehouse for any sign of John. Easy enough to spot, tall as he is, isolated among the crowd. As if his hunger is a visible thing, or an odor: no one wants to be near him. Thoughts flicker through Martin's head like flashes of lightning against a dark sky: leave. Leave without him. He doesn't have to know. He doesn't have to see. He won't miss you. No one ever misses you.

"Christ," he hisses under his breath. The itch is worse now, crawling up both his arms, seeming to wind paths around him. There is something else too, a faint tickling sensation round the back of his neck and fluttering against his cheek, like he's just walked through cobwebs. He rubs at his face hard enough to redden it but there is nothing there. Imagining it. Can't trust himself right now. He has to get out of here — no, they both have to get out of here.

"John," he whispers, much too far away to be heard, but it doesn't matter. It requires astounding effort to force himself to walk, and he keeps himself moving by muttering John's name under his breath, scarcely aware he's doing it, as if the moment he lets his destination slip he'll lose focus. Can't let John see it but can't leave alone, either. They'll get to the Archive. He'll be able to think more clearly, get this scratchy thing out of his head. If he can just—

"John," he finally says, breathless with relief that he made it. He grabs loosely at John's arm, his palm sweaty, barely making contact before instantly returning it to wrap round himself again. "John, I found — We have to leave. We have to leave now."

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There is movement out of the corner of John's eye, and a shuddering sense of wrongness grips him before hands close around his wrist. No no no — it isn't supposed to happen like this, he was never supposed to be interrupted. What lies beyond this door is for him and no one else. The violation is worse than anything, worse than letting things take what has become their natural course, and John lets out a protesting grunt, pivoting a little from the pressure on his arm, but his other hand still holding the book firmly in place.

"No!" he grits out, his tongue curling around the word as if it's a foreign object he's expelling from his mouth, his gaze still fixed on the little paper door.

In direct opposition to Martin's earlier convictions about his relative strength, John resists him with startling fervor, as though drawing from a previously untapped reservoir of physical capacity. If he'd had a moment to think about it, Martin might wonder if it has less to do with hidden strength and far more to do with John never before having had a reason to fight him. Because it isn't the physical resistance that frightens him, really. It's that he is still bound in the Web's trap, determined to see it through. It's that Martin has not yet broken the spell, and is only now realizing he's not certain he can.

"John—!" He grimaces as he struggles to pull John bodily away from the book, but even succeeding at that will not stop the threat. John will keep trying to knock on that little door. As long as the book is within his reach and sightline, and as long as John is not himself, the danger persists.

Martin cannot bring himself to touch the book directly. He fears the part of him that wants to. Instead he takes the only avenue that seems open to him: he thrusts himself entirely between John and the book, covering it with his body, his back now pressed against it as he grapples with his partner with both hands.

Even now he can feel it, the unbearable itch spreading across his shoulders, the outline of the open book seeming to dig into him as if intending to leave a mark. He can feel, horrifyingly, a tiny localized point of juddering movement, as of something behind that little paper door, clawing and scrabbling to get out. He can sense it for what it is: a furious, snarling threat to devour them both.

He tries to push those awful sensations from his mind, to focus only on John, on trying to fight him, trying to keep him still. He catches John's raised arm in one hand, and he can feel the webs spun around him; with his other hand he grips tighter than he normally would around the back of John's neck, trying to keep him in place, to force their eyes to meet. "John," he says, sharp and almost stern, betrayed by his own terror, by the tears he cannot hold back. He has no idea how to get through to him, and he latches, desperate, onto a trick John once used on him. He has no power to compel or give the words any extra authority beyond his own need, but maybe need is enough. He prays it will be enough, as whatever sits behind that little door scratches incessantly at his back. "John, look at me. Look at me."

This is all wrong. Something intrudes, a solid impediment forcing its way between John and the inevitability of the door. He still Knows its there, the crude rectangular shape of it burned into his mind. He can still See it, its dimensions juddering as something on the other side protests the delay. Mr. Spider is right to be impatient. This has all taken far too long. John tries to reach for where the door should be, fingers snarling around the empty air as something allays his progress. His other hand, forced away from the corner of the book, presses back towards it, fisting tightly around an obstruction that gives, but not enough.

Why is this so hard? Why would anyone want to stop this?

It is not the sound of his own name that slips between the strands of web tugging him insistently onward, but the imperative to look. Look at me, someone says, recasting the impediment as a someone. John blinks, his stomach swooping as his focus shifts, as he remembers how to look at and not through. He registers the pressure around his neck, and his body jerks in objection, his grip loosening as he wavers between warring instincts to push forward and pull away.

What is he doing?

He lifts his gaze, and meets a pair of eyes he knows better than his own.

It's Martin, Martin who has put his body between John and the book, Martin who is pinned against Mr. Spider's door. John stares, poleaxed by the revelation, his lips silently shaping the first syllable of Martin's name.

What is he doing?

The Web still twists around him, refusing to relinquish its hold without a fight. But John doesn't need the Mother of Puppets to convince him that he doesn't want Martin — Martin! — anywhere near that bloody door. His grip on Martin's shoulder tightens, and he pulls, staggering backwards, trying to draw him away.

The little door rattles on impossibly tiny hinges between his shoulder blades, feeling less and less like paper and more and more like hard, splintering wood. Martin grits his teeth, fighting dueling instincts — the part of him screaming to get away, get away, and the deep, coiling desire to turn around and let the door open. John pushes back against him, pressing him harder to the door, fingers curling tight as though he doesn't understand what he's touching. "John—" Martin gasps, his breath hitching as the little door jolts into his spine, threatening to scrape open beneath him.

It's difficult to parse the shift that comes over John, nothing so pedestrian as blinking or turning his gaze, and yet Martin can see it, some minute flicker in his eyes as they come into partial focus. John sees him, but he isn't quite there, his hand still clenched around Martin's shirt, his lips moving wordlessly.

That half-measure of clarity comes with a new complication as John changes tacks, trying instead to pull Martin away, to throw himself to the very fate Martin is trying to avert. The unexpected change in tension and direction throws Martin off balance, and he tips forward, losing his tenuous hold on the book. It does not fall as fast as it should; rather than simply slide down to the floor, it seems to slither out from under him, landing just beside them with an impossibly weighty thump. Landing open. And out of the corner of his eye Martin could swear he sees movement: a sickening array of needle-like points pouring out from that little paper door, so thin they could almost be invisible but Martin sees them, long and black and sharp, jabbing up into the empty air with tangible frustration.

Martin doesn't think. There isn't time. He uses John's momentum against him, surging forward to knock him off balance, throwing both arms around him to hold him fast. With an intense burst of effort and a deep groan that tears at his throat, Martin twists just enough to give the book a good hard kick, and it slams shut with a furious snap.

The danger is not gone. John is still tethered to it. Martin can feel the threads wrapped around John's arms, can feel them ghosting across his own hands as they tug inexorably toward the book. He keeps his grip tight and plants his weight, dragging until he brings John down with him. With one hand and all the strength he can muster, Martin holds him down; with the other he starts frantically scraping at those horrid silky strands, trying to wipe them away. It is not so tidy and simple as when John clears the Lonely's fog from him. The Web sticks; it tries, spiteful, to clutch onto Martin's fingers even as he pulls it from John. But its grasp is waning. It cannot recover its advantage. Martin persists, all fury and desperation, until he swipes the last visible shreds of it from John's arms; then, acting on an impulse he can only trust for an instant, he seizes the book and hurls it across the room with an angry shout. It smacks into the opposite wall and lands hard, impossibly heavy, but inert.

"John," he whispers, breathless. He's kept his awareness of John relegated to the back of his mind; only now does he really look, equal parts frightened and hopeful over what he might see, keeping his grip tight.

Edited 2024-01-21 22:11 (UTC)

The book falls, but not with the clean downward motion that gravity alone would prescribe. John sees it jerk in midair, as if it's tethered to him with something more robust than spider silk — or as if some force has struck it from behind (or within) even as it drops to the floor. It lands with its pages stubbornly spread, the door still calling to him. The wooden surface bows upwards with a faint, straining creak. One terribly thin leg pierces the air. Another.

Mr. Spider must be furious. The delay is inexcusable. They will be punished — the certainty prickling over his skin like tarsal claws beyond counting — and they will deserve it.

And then Martin's foot collides with the book, the cover slamming shut, and the room turns sideways. John lands hard on the carpet, the breath driven from his lungs as Martin pins him down. Too-close-I-cannot-breathe. His body thrashes in objection, the mindless animal terror of being restrained looming large even as the Web's traces are brutally scraped away. The desire for the book is wrested from him as surely as the book itself, but he cannot feel relief as it strikes the opposite wall and succumbs to gravity, defeated, because every muscle aches and his lungs cannot draw in enough air and the carpet's low pile abrades his palms as he scrabbles uselessly against Martin's hold. Too-close-too-close-too-close-too-close.

"Let me go," he gasps. He doesn't know what he sounds like, can't hear himself over the blood pounding in his ears. "Let me go!"

Whatever faint hope he might've held for stillness in the wake of averted disaster promptly evaporates as John begins struggling violently beneath him, demanding in a strained, panicked voice to be released. Martin holds him as steady as he can, fighting a rising panic of his own. He can't tell if John is himself or not — he can't be sure of anything with that book still a presence in the room, himself only barely having crawled out from under its influence, and John perhaps still in its thrall. He's cleared away the webs, and John had seemed to see him, but...?

But he can't imagine John would fight him like this of his own accord.

"John," he answers, speaking rapidly over him, as if he can just talk him down from this. "John, stop. I've got you. It's me. It's me." There is a tremor in his voice that now has less to do with the fear of what they've barely (and only ostensibly) escaped, and far more with the uniquely unbearable sensation of John fighting him. He's never had cause to hold John down like this before, and it is decidedly unpleasant, feeling him thrash, hearing that frantic rasp in his voice.

The fear of what might happen grapples uncomfortably with a consuming desire to give John what he asks. He compromises, awkwardly, by loosening his grip but trying to draw John messily into what might be more of an embrace. This will all be all right if they can just — if they can just take a moment to breathe, surely. "I'm here," he promises, wishing he didn't sound so damn plaintive about it.

John hears Martin's words — I've got you; it's me — but panic has flooded all the well-worn routes between the sentiment and the comfort it should inspire, and all John can do is struggle against the current and try not to choke on it. He can't bear to be held, can't parse what Martin's doing as anything but being grappled, trapped, something that can never end well, and even as his stamina begins to give out, he wedges a trembling, rigid arm between them, protesting the closeness with all the strength that remains to him.

"Stop, stop!" he cries, halfway to sobbing. It is, perversely, the Eye's lucidity that saves him: his frantic desperation to know why this is happening prompting an immediate answer that he will eventually come to appreciate as obvious. "It's not the book," he blurts with sudden clarity but no less desperation, forcing the words out between frantic pulls for air. "It's the c-coffin, N-Nikola, please—!"

None of his words seem to penetrate. John's strength is ebbing, not from any growing calm but a rather more worrisome sense that he's tiring himself out. Martin doesn't know what to do, feeling himself near to tears as John's distress only builds; and then when John finally sputters out the beginnings of some raw explanation, Martin's caught up in a moment of terrible bewilderment, his thoughts taking an unforgivably long time to drag themselves round, before he finally begins to understand.

"Oh—!" he yelps as though he's been stung, his hands snapping open and his arms pulling up. He recoils, all but throwing himself back, staring in wide-eyed, open-mouthed horror as cold comprehension starts to seep in, drowning out the heat of adrenaline with sickening finality.

The moment Martin releases him, John sprawls back onto the floor like a puppet whose strings have been cut, his heaving chest the only part of him that's moving. The relief is fleeting and fractional; he is no longer being restrained, but even the passive pressure of the ground against the full length of his body feels like a horrid imposition. He rolls away from Martin and onto his side, drawing his limbs in, managing by slow and unsteady degrees to crumple upward until he fetches up against the closet door in something resembling a sit.

Okay... he's okay. There is no smell of earth or lanolin, no restrictions to his movements that aren't courtesy of his own weakness and exhaustion. He squeezes his eyes shut and forces his breathing to slow, an imperfect in for two and out for two because his rabbiting heart is certain that if he takes longer than two seconds to inhale, he will die (the part of him that knows this to be nonsense is still too distant to argue the point). He flexes his ankles and his fingers, the only two muscle groups that are still inclined to cooperate, and nothing impedes him. His heart rate gradually slows. The panic subsides.

And reason, horribly, begins to reassert itself. Christ. Christ. The Web had nearly ensnared them both; he almost allowed it to finish the work it started over twenty years ago; he'd forced Martin to— and then he'd—

For a moment, he's so certain he's about to be sick that he throws out a hand to blindly grab the nearby rubbish bin, a small receptacle that usually holds nothing more exciting than crumpled tissues and the occasional crisps packet. But no, no, he's made enough of a fucking spectacle of himself. He pushes the urge back down, breathing through it, keeping his eyes shut because he can't bear to see whatever expression is on poor Martin's face. Then he releases his grip on the bin and slowly covers his face with his hands.

"Sorry," he finally manages in a cracked whisper.

Martin doesn't move for what feels like a terribly long time. He stays on his knees, his hands still raised as if to show he means no harm, not entirely aware of himself. All he can do is watch. John goes immediately limp, and then starts to push himself up, an agonizing, mechanical sort of process that finally puts his back against the closet door. His eyes are distant before he squeezes them shut; his breath rapid and shallow before he slows it by seemingly intentional force.

Silence rings in Martin's ears. The book is still a heavy blot in the corner of his eye, but he doesn't look at it, can scarcely even think about it. It's the too-near echo of John's cries that have his attention now, the too-close memory of panicked tension in his limbs as he'd fought to get free, not of the book but of him, frantic, gasping, pleading. Martin hadn't listened; hadn't trusted him. He hadn't understood.

Nikola — there's a name he hasn't heard in a long time, an event he hasn't had any reason to recall. An old, long-gone incident he'd just assumed John was happy to put behind him, as if one can just forget that sort of thing. As if he doesn't still wake up sweating from the memory of what Jacob Riggs did to him.

The coffin, though. That bloody coffin. John had climbed in to save Daisy, both of them trapped and choking in the crushing weight of the Buried. Martin had helped them escape it; Martin had his own little trip through, brief, impersonal, and more than enough to add it to his roster of nightmares. That, he thinks, he should've anticipated.

A sudden lurch of movement and noise snaps his attention back to the present, to John reaching for the bin as if he might be sick. He seems to pull himself together in the next moment, which is just as well, because Martin doesn't think he'd be able to stomach just sitting here and watching, and still isn't sure he can move.

Finally, John speaks, muffled through his hands, and Martin feels something give, a little tremor moving through him.

"N—" he starts, flinching toward him involuntarily. He gives a distant little shake of his head, though it doesn't matter; John still isn't looking. "No, I... I'm sorry."

I should've— dies on his tongue. He couldn't have known, not really, and the idea of forcing John to reassure him in this moment does not appeal. What's done is done and he simply must bear it.

"Are you okay?" he says after a moment. "Is there anything—"

He can feel the bloody book across the room, between them and the door, as if it's trying to trap them in here. A thought he tries not to indulge too clearly. In a moment. They can deal with that in a moment. He swallows thickly and rephrases his question: "What do you need?"

It is all too predictable that Martin should apologize immediately in turn, though he had every reason to do what he did and no cause to anticipate John's reaction. Martin had never restrained him before today; not in any context. John had never made it the necessity that it was here (and he is shamefully aware of what a bloody necessity he made of it). And while he had understood the therapeutic properties of what they do with rope, he had privately shuddered away from the prospect of attempting such a thing for his own sake. There was no sense of comfort in physical constraint that he had longed to reclaim for himself, no pressing need to commit himself to the idea that there was anything about his latent aversion that needed to be fixed.

And perhaps there still isn't. Martin would probably be insistent upon that point. But that hardly makes him feel less wretched over how bloody eager some mindless animal part of him was to recast Martin as a threat. The panic was so swift and all-encompassing that he almost wants to imagine it was another of the Web's machinations, but he knows better. He didn't spend what little strength remained to him dragging himself towards the spot where the book now lies. He'd been too busy dragging himself away from his partner.

A partner he is still too ashamed to want to face, though the alternative gnaws at him the longer he sits here, shivering in his own flop sweat, letting Martin and his gentle, salient questions go unanswered. John grimaces into his own hands, then lets them slide down, wiping the expression away as they go.

Martin hasn't moved. The book hasn't moved either. A distant part of him wonders if this is some faint glimmer of a silver lining: that his own meltdown was sufficiently dramatic to break the book's hold on them both, at least to a point. It still itches at the edge of his awareness, refusing to be forgotten or ignored, and John is under no illusions; he can't imagine allowing Martin to fuss over him when the book is still there, still... uncontained. But he doesn't want it, and for the moment, it seems Martin does not want it, either.

It's an opportunity that he can't allow to be wasted on his own feelings. "We have to..." he gestures wearily towards the book. He's not sure what, exactly, ought to be done. Jurgen Leitner had managed some kind of coexistence without falling prey to it. But Christ, they can't just pop it on a shelf. Maybe putting it in a box, having it out of sight, would be an improvement.

That's not an answer, and Martin presses his lips into a thin disapproving line for a moment. It's true, of course; they have to deal with that. And maybe his notion that they could simply shove it aside for a few moments, to let John be his sole focus, was naive.

He still doesn't like it. The book is an intrusion in every sense, an unwelcome visitation from the past, a finely sharpened spear point puncturing their lives here. It wormed its vile way into the peace they've established, the life they've built, into each of their minds and now their bedroom, leaving such wreckage in its wake. It feels, suddenly, like an insult he can't bear. He realizes at some distance he is angry.

He pulls his gaze from John, not quite willing to let it shift to the book, and so it lands neatly between the two: on the lighter, that same old lighter John still carries with him, apparently having slipped from his pocket, now lying idle on the floor.

He doesn't think. He moves first, reaching out to grab the thing. "All right," he says, curt and clipped as he rises sharply to his feet. "Let's have it done, then." He strides across the room and snatches the book up off the floor, stubbornly ignoring the jolt in his gut as he does so, as he feels it scratching at him with opportunistic malevolence. Without waiting for a response and without turning back, he leaves the room, marching with vicious determination to the bathroom. Set fire to the damn thing and watch it wither away in the tub. It has to happen, now, before anyone changes their mind.

For a beat, John barely recognizes the lighter as his own, orphaned on the carpet, out of the familiar context of his pocket or the nightstand. And he barely has the time to wonder what it's doing there before Martin closes his hand around it with grim, unmistakable purpose.

"M-Martin," John sits up sharply, eyes widening as Martin turns to grab the book. He lurches to his feet, one hand braced against the closet door, head spinning. "Martin, wait!" He can't afford to linger until his head clears; he staggers after Martin, arms outstretched to catch himself against frame and plaster as he lurches through the door and down the hall.

It occurs to him to interrogate his own alarm, to ask himself why the thought of Martin lighting the book on fire terrifies him, to make sure the answer isn't merely 'because the book wants to survive and has convinced me to agree with it'. But he doesn't know what the bloody book wants. And, more to the point, he has no idea what burning it will accomplish, and he's pretty sure Martin doesn't, either.

So he makes himself stop in the bathroom doorway, his breath coming fast, one hand clinging to the jamb and the other lifted in warning, but not reaching, not yet. "Martin," he says again, low and urgent, "I-I-I don't think that's wise."

Martin grits his teeth as John starts to protest, stumbling after him in audible disarray. "Done enough waiting," he says acidly, and he'll regret that in a moment, but right now he can't afford the distraction. He pushes into the bathroom and thrusts the book over the lip of the tub, ready to drop it as soon as it goes up. With his other hand he holds out the lighter. He's never smoked a day in his life, has never owned a lighter and has never been good at using them on the rare occasions he's had to try, and it's only that — the lack of muscle memory and the uncomfortable bite of the spark wheel against his thumb — that makes him pause a moment. Not the faint itch crawling back up his wrists, nor the low dread pooling in his gut.

And there's John in the threshold, holding back as though he doesn't dare enter.

"Why?" Martin snaps, looking back angrily, his eyes not quite meeting John's. "What else should we do with it? Put it on a shelf? Keep it in the Archive? Toss it out for someone else to find? It almost killed you, John. Twice. It almost—" His throat thickens around the words took you from me, and he turns back. Beneath his anger is a thread of fear that the book will try to stop him somehow, that he can't trust John's protests, that he can't even trust himself. The only way past that is action.

"Fuck this," he says, and he swipes hard at the wheel. Never did have the knack: there's a spark against the grindstone, but the flame doesn't ignite, and he tries again impatiently.

Edited 2025-02-15 10:14 (UTC)

He is too exhausted for full animation, but there's a faint wince around John's eyes in response to Martin's arguments. They both know the suggestions are absurd; the book needs to be contained, if not outright destroyed. But they can't have a bloody brainstorming session under the current circumstances.

For a fraction of a moment, he allows himself to remember Joshua Gillespie — long enough to imagine the satisfaction of shutting the damn book in the freezer — but then the scrape of the lighter draws him back into the moment.

There is no flame: Martin's lack of experience, or a more elemental refusal to succumb to something as pedestrian as a simple flame, one that doesn't even have the Desolation's wrath behind it? His palms sting: the Web's proprietary tug, or the inevitable side effect of scrabbling at the carpet?

"Martin." John tries to reach for Martin's arm, to land there gently, and he is distantly surprised when he succeeds. Dread still roils in his gut, but it doesn't resolve itself into a mindless demand to stop this at any cost — not yet. He pulls in a ragged breath and pulls his gaze away from the book, trying to meet Martin's eyes, instead. Trying to put words to his misgivings without voicing the Mother of Puppets protestations for her.

"If you burn a door," he finally says, "what happens to the doorway? Does it collapse? Does it stand open?" Christ, he's tired. He entertains the idea that perhaps he's too tired to do anything stupid. "Do you know?"

John's touch is gentle enough that Martin stills rather than wrenching away, his thumb still pressed hard into the spark wheel. It's the gentility that stays him; John isn't desperate, isn't fighting him, isn't even pushing or pleading. He just sounds tired, and on hearing that, Martin begins to realize how tired he is, too.

And the questions are frustratingly pertinent. Martin doesn't know the answers, and the uncertainty is frightening. His eyes dart down to the book, glancing nervously as if a direct gaze might capture too much of his attention. It's landed on its front, and the awful illustration seems to be staring balefully up at him.

"I-" His breath shudders and he closes his eyes. "I don't know."

His thumb hurts from his ineffectual attempts to work the lighter. He loosens his grip slowly, then lowers his arm, his shoulders slumping in sudden exhaustion.

"Then what do we do?" he asks, faintly plaintive.

"We do what Gillespie did," John replies with more audible surety than he feels. "Make it hard to access quickly. Make it take time, a-and effort." Anything beyond that can wait until they both feel like the book has been safely contained, but containment ought to be the priority.

He bends to open the cabinet beneath the sink, where they keep a few crumpled plastic bags to line the room's little rubbish bin. He shakes one open and then holds it out. "Pop it in here to start with," he says. "And then..." he sucks on his teeth for a beat, then ventures, "do we have duct tape?"

Gillespie — there's a name he hasn't thought about in a while, and yet he understands immediately. Even so many years later, he's never forgotten that Statement, and Joshua Gillespie's unique ability to simply sidestep the doom that would have befallen just about anyone else.

It's enough that he smiles, barely, an uneasy little twitch of his lips. "Yeah," he agrees. "Yeah, okay. There should be duct tape in the hall closet, same shelf as the lightbulbs and all."

He's stalling. John has the bag open for him. All he has to do is pick the book up. Just once more, quick and perfunctory, just like he did to get it here in the first place. And then he's done. And then, ideally, neither of them will ever make direct contact with it ever again.

Granted, this feels like a temporary measure. He doesn't like the notion of leaving it in their freezer; he thinks if the Web really wanted to, it could compel them to retrieve the damn thing, no matter how much trouble it was.

But it'll do for now. It'll have to.

"Sorry." He shakes his head as if rousing himself, and absently sets the lighter on the edge of the sink. "Okay."

He bends down and pinches the book gingerly by one corner. He's not sure if the itch in his palms is down to his own nervous sweat, a psychosomatic response, or something else. He's not interested in decoding it. He turns around and drops the book sharply into the open bag, releasing his held breath in an audible gust. "Okay," he says again, staring at the bag as if the book might somehow jump back out.

John nods, both agreement and encouragement. Duct tape will only go so far — no matter how many layers they wrap around it, it probably won't be more than a pocketknife could handle — but it'll be a start. They can work out something more convoluted later. Maybe buy a few lock boxes, one to contain the book and another one to make retrieving the key a chore. For now, he thinks just having the book out of their immediate sight will be an improvement.

The plastic bag isn't quite opaque enough to be of too much use in that regard. Martin drops in the book, and it lists immediately towards John, the the back cover's illustration bleeding through the milky plastic like a figure emerging suddenly out of a fog. John winces, but dutifully twists the bag shut. Flimsy as one layer of plastic may be, it's still better than feeling the cover against his fingertips.

"Tape," he says, absently slipping his lighter back into his pocket before bending to retrieve another bag. Another layer of plastic couldn't hurt. "Let's mummify the damn thing."

It takes Martin over a minute to find the duct tape, by which time he's barely staving off a panic attack. They don't use it very often. John got some when he first arrived in vague deference to the idea of possibly doing home repair, and Martin's not sure they've ever used it. That, and his hands are shaking, he's sweating uncomfortably, and he feels sick to his stomach with an awful mix of hunger and the settling horror of what they've just been through. And all the while John's just stuck waiting, the bloody book that almost killed him twice just hanging there in its flimsy little bag, no doubt eating at his willpower the entire time.

When he finally finds the roll at the back of a mess of underused supplies in their closet, he's near to furious, and he'd only just managed to stop himself asking John why he can't simply Know where the tape is, as if they haven't both been through enough already. He pulls off a massive length, grimacing at the sharp sound of tearing adhesive, and helps John get started wrapping it round the thing before he goes to fetch the kitchen scissors. There's a moment where he's not sure they'll even need the scissors. Neither of them seem to want to stop taping, as if they'll only feel secure when they've used the entire roll on it.

They don't get that far, but the package is still far heftier than such a thin book would suggest by the them they're done. Martin opens the freezer, shoves aside half-empty ice trays and some ready meals they probably ought to dispense with, and John tosses the thing in, and Martin shuts the door with a heavy thunk.

They both stand in the kitchen for a few moment. Martin's hands are still shaking. He sets the scissors on the counter and takes a few breaths.

"Okay," he says, and he draws a little sobbing breath, his voice breaking a bit: "Okay." His fingers twitch. He wants to reach out, to pull John close, but he's not sure he would be welcome. Not sure what either of them even needs. He tries to imagine offering tea, and the idea of something so normal would make him laugh if he didn't feel so completely hollowed out.

John takes the double-bagged book and inches out into the kitchen with it, holding it away from his body as if it might spontaneously grow a limb and swipe at him with it. It helps, he thinks, to not be touching it directly. But an extra layer of plastic doesn't add much opacity when all is said and done, and he can feel the garish cover illustration tugging at his gaze even as he forces himself look elsewhere. Jaw clenched, limbs stiff, he stubbornly counts the tiles on the kitchen backsplash until Martin returns with the duct tape in hand.

It isn't until the work is already in progress that John appreciates the ghastly aesthetic of it all: four limbs working in concert to swaddle the book in a steady rope of dull grey tape as efficiently as a spider might entomb a fly. Not to render it inaccessible, not really, but simply to put it away for later. A meal deferred, not a meal denied.

He shoves the thought aside. This is the first step, not the last one. They'll secure it more effectively. They just need some goddamn breathing room, that's all. And as the layers of tape accumulate, obstructing both the sight of the book and even the shape of it thanks to the bunched plastic bag and the occasional twisted bit of tape, the itching beneath his skin begins to fade a little. He's still breathing in quick, shallow, hiccups, still desperate for this to be over, but the threat feels a little more distant, the monster somewhere around the corner instead of breathing down his neck.

Martin makes room in the freezer, John lobs the parcel inside, and the freezer door slams shut. John stares at it, distantly aware of his thundering heart and the persistent tremor in his limbs. Is that it? Can they presume to rest? If he hears the damn thing knock, he thinks, a little hysterically, he's going to piss himself.

Instead, after two beats of breathless silence, the refrigerator's condenser fan cycles on. John startles as if it was a gunshot. "Fucking Christ!" he gasps, staggering back a pace and then sitting down heavily on the kitchen floor and burying his head in his hands. "Jesus," he adds in a fractured whisper before bursting into exhausted tears.

Martin jolts a bit when the refrigerator fan kicks on, impossibly loud in the weighted silence that led up to it, but his reaction is nowhere near as violent as John's, who seems almost to jump out of his skin before sinking down onto the floor and crumpling there. Martin stares at him, utterly stricken, for less than a second before setting caution hurriedly aside and crouching down, putting his hands gingerly on John's back, his shoulder, tentative and half-expecting John to cringe away from him.

"John," he says, the syllable coming out pathetic and desolate. "C-can I," he interrupts himself with a frantic pull of breath, barely holding off the threat of a sob, "can I hold you?"

The necessity of the question does nothing for how absolutely wretched John feels — Martin shouldn't need to beg for permission to comfort him, and he hates that his earlier performance made this caution warranted — but he's too desperate to deny himself, to deny either of them. The question has hardly left Martin's mouth before John interjects with some wordless, pathetic noise that he hopes to god no tape recorders are around to pick up and all but pitches himself into Martin's arms.

God, he's so tired. As the supernatural threat recedes, a litany of animal complaints crowd in to take its place: he's exhausted and thirsty and he needs a shower and a change of clothes and to sleep for an uninterrupted week and Martin probably needs all of those things, too, but he's not the one falling to pieces on the bloody floor about it. "I'm s-sorry," John manages to gasp out between sobs against Martin's neck, arms clinging tight around him.

As terrible as it is, as miserable as they both feel, Martin can't help an enormous swell of relief when John pitches into him. He accepts the weight gratefully, wrapping his arms close around John's quaking body, tucking his chin over one bony shoulder. He feels more put together in the wake of John's more immediate distress, and while his own panicked fallout may still be to come, for now, it's so much easier to just hold John together.

"It's okay," he says quietly, which sounds laughably inadequate, and the fact that it's true — that they are literally as okay as they can be right now — might almost make it worse. But he tries to believe it, rubbing John's back slowly. "We're okay. We made it through." His hand reaches up to the back of John's neck, the base of his skull, applying gentle pressure before he flexes his fingers up, scrubbing through John's hair. "I've got you."

His weeping takes a turn for the bitter at Martin's gentle reassurances — we're okay and we made it through both appended with an unspoken no thanks to you, though, was it? Martin would never say such a thing; it might not even occur to him to think it. But it certainly occurs to John. He's only enjoying the privilege of falling apart on the kitchen floor because Martin saved him, saved both of them, while he was busy doing his level best to help the Web finish what it started decades ago. He was so abominably, unforgivably foolish.

"'s all my fault," John insists, leaning harder into Martin's embrace even though he ought to be pulling away. "I was so, s-so fucking stupid, I don't know what I—" he cuts himself off to pull in a ragged breath.

Martin manages not to let an audibly exasperated sigh slip through over that. He shuts his eyes and tsks softly, continuing to stroke John's hair. "Hush," he says, quietly stern. "I'm the one who found the bloody thing. And the whole point of it is that it gets into your head. You know that, John." He grips tighter, as though he might compress all of that guilt and needless self-blame right out of him. That would be nice. He's so tired. Things still feel frighteningly unresolved, but they can't deal with it until they're at least somewhat restored.

"What it did to you, what it convinced you to do and what it tried to do, is not your fault," he says, his voice trembling a little, distantly furious at the mere implication. "Now let's get you up. It's time for a lie down." No arguments. He starts to shift around, trying to coax John up, to get them both on their feet.

John immediately falls quiet, shocked to an absurd degree by the stern talking-to Martin gives him. He'd been feeling wretched enough to believe he deserved just about anything, but he still wasn't braced for Martin to actually tell him to pull his head out (albeit gently). And he can't even argue with it, because if he really deserved worse, then this is him getting off lightly — and more to the point, he knows Martin's right. Self-recrimination is an old habit, but not a helpful one. Especially if it just means asking Martin to scrape him up off the floor when they've both just had a miserable fucking time.

The floor that his backside and knees are both suggesting was a stupid place to collapse to begin with. "Okay," he says, damp and abashed. He draws back a little, avoiding Martin's gaze and grabbing the counter with one hand to pull himself upright. Whether he wants to prioritize a lie-down over the rest of his dully clamoring needs feels like a moot point once he's on his feet; he doesn't have the energy for anything else. Nor, for that matter, does he like the idea of either of them being left unsupervised in the flat while the other has a shower. And while the thought of bathing together isn't as conceptually mortifying as it might have been early in their relationship, it's a level of novel intimacy he's far too embarrassed to suggest at the moment. Lie-down it is.

They make their way into the bedroom, where John's gaze immediately alights on the bin he'd dragged out of place. A small detail, perhaps, but indicative enough to make the place feel like a bloody crime scene. He shuffles over to put it back, a small, tight frown on his face, before allowing himself to sit down on the mattress.

Martin feels immediately guilty, even though he's right and he wouldn't take any of it back — it still feels like maybe he could've found a gentler way to say it. But he tries to brush that aside. It's been a hellish afternoon, and it's a little absurd to hope either of them can handle anything with any particular delicacy just now. Whatever gets it done; and John's not going to pieces anymore, he's getting up and allowing Martin to guide him. It doesn't feel great, but it's what needs doing.

Returning to the bedroom feels heavier than it ought to. It feels a bit like their private space has been violated by it all. Martin tries to turn that aside as well, but he can tell John feels it too, his focus locked on the displaced bin. Martin watches helplessly as he goes to fix it, then finally sits, looking rather numb.

He lets out a slow breath, then eases out of his jeans, leaving them in an unceremonious heap on the floor before joining John on the bed, sitting close without touching.

"Hey," he says softly, reaching out. "Come here."

His shoes are still on. He looks down at his own feet, unable to summon either surprise or consternation that he didn't... what, think to take them off when he first passed through the entryway? He doesn't even remember that moment; the last leg of the journey home was measured in pages, not places. But they shouldn't have made it into the bedroom, and he certainly can't have them on the bed. He leans over with a faint, weary huff to untie the laces, and manages to kick them off by the time Martin joins him on the bed.

The soft coaxing feels like an olive branch — one that shouldn't be warranted for a whole host of reasons. None of this is Martin's fault. At this point, he suspects the most immediate problem is just that he's so miserable and exhausted that any kind of graceful recovery feels impossible: there's nothing he can do that won't land wrong, or make him feel like a bigger prick than he does already. His eyes burn with the threat of fresh tears — frustration, this time — as he pulls his legs up onto the bed and lies back, his blurring gaze fixed on the ceiling and his lips pressed together tightly.

Christ, he wishes he could just disappear.

John doesn't quite accept his invitation, lying down rather stiffly as if in deference to the idea of resting together while still trying to isolate himself. Martin frowns, pulling his hand back. He doesn't take it personally. John's in survival mode — too tired, too miserable, and too accustomed to self-blame for anything else. He's only functioning moderately better by dint of having freed himself of the book's bloody influence a little earlier on. Honestly, he feels like he has John's compulsion to thank for that, but he can't imagine trying to bring that up as a positive.

So he just sits there for a moment. Then he gets up again. "You stay put," he murmurs, walking around to John's side of the bed and bending over to remove his socks. John doesn't object, and Martin throws his socks in the hamper and then starts unbuttoning John's shirt, helping him out of it as gently as possible. Maybe this feels infantilizing. He can't bring himself to care.

Once this is done, and John's a little more acceptably dressed for a dire, exhausted nap, Martin climbs back into bed and lays himself close along John's body, curling an arm around him and tentatively nuzzling his forehead against John's cheek. "It's okay," he says softly, not sure what else he has to offer. "We'll be okay."

He absolutely deserves to be told to pull his head out (again, and less gently, even). Instead, Martin manages to access the grace that John can't imagine grasping himself, and it's both a relief and sort of awful. He couldn't bear it if things actually spiraled into a row; he's pretty sure one firm word would send him straight into the bloody ocean at this point. But it's hard to feel less miserable when his own persistent wretchedness has to compete with all this heroically tender care. Why the fuck can't he just pull himself together? Why should Martin have to undress him like a child? Jesus Christ.

It's all he can do to just silently cooperate as Martin helps him out of his shirt, too pathetic to enjoy the attention but unwilling to throw Martin's kindness back in his face. A growing portion of his meager reserves are going towards not simply bursting into tears again, but when Martin curls up along side him and nestles close, it dislodges a shuddering gasp out of him. Before he quite realizes what he's doing, he lifts a hand to clutch at Martin's arm, as if terrified he might (sensibly) pull away.

"Sorry," he says, his voice a pitiful croak he hardly recognizes as his own, tears flowing once more. "I just..." he abandons that line almost immediately; he can't account for himself. He's just so fucking tired.

"I know," Martin says softly, and holds him a little tighter in answer to John's clear desperation. "I know, love. Me too."

Sorry for finding the damn thing; sorry it all happened. It doesn't matter. All that matters is holding John close to him, keeping him safe and comfortable until he can just rest. Martin adjusts his position a little, arranging it so he can better stroke John's hair, which he intends to keep doing as long as he remains conscious. "Just rest now," he murmurs. "It's okay."

John finally allows himself to turn into Martin's embrace, hunching enough to bury his face against Martin's chest. A small part of him balks at the idea that there is anything okay about the situation — even the imperative of a nap feels like tempting fate with the book still in their flat — but he's too exhausted to nitpick, let alone strive for any alternative to what they're doing now. He doesn't even have the energy to sob outright, the tears flowing but his breathing only a little uneven.

And despite everything, the gentle passage of Martin's hand through his hair is having its usual effect. Opening his eyes would take titanic effort.

But there's still enough lingering paranoia shivering through his system for him to tighten his grip on Martin's sleeve, the fabric bunching between his fingers. "Don't leave," he pleads, urgent despite his exhaustion.

John shudders in his arms, his grip tightening as if from out of a bad dream, and he utters a soft plea that could just break Martin's heart.

"Not going anywhere," he murmurs, and presses a kiss to John's forehead. "I'm here with you."

"Okay," John replies with an unsteady exhalation, willing himself to believe it. It ought to be reflexive by now, but the book has thrown him badly enough that the muscle memory eludes him, and he maintains his grip on Martin's sleeve as if it constitutes a form of insurance: even if he must sleep, he doesn't have to let Martin go.

He takes one slow breath, and then another, his body finally relaxing in spite of himself. But even as his arm loses its tension, his fingers remain curled around that patch of fabric as if both their lives depend on it. "Okay," he says again, more sigh than word.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's polite to knock.

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