First time in eight months, though for the year preceding that they’d been all but inseparable. Friends wasn’t the word—it was both too big and too small. A friend was someone you’d go for a drink with; hang out with; share laughs. He’d done those things with Spider, but not because Spider was his first choice for doing them with; more because he’d spent days with Spider doing assault courses on Dartmoor, which had felt like it was going to be the most difficult part of training, until the days spent learning torture resistance techniques somewhere on the Welsh borders. Resistance techniques were taught slowly. Things had to be broken down before being built up again. Breaking down happened best in darkness. When you’d been through that, you wanted to be near others who’d been through it too. Not because you needed to talk about it, but because you needed your need not to talk about it to be shared by those you were with.
— Slow Horses (Mick Herron)