Chapter Text
The sound of a tape recorder running is as easy as a heartbeat nowadays, so familiar that it doesn’t even register as worthy of noticing, even when it very much should not be happening. Everyone else seems to notice, which is good, because it means that when Jon is around people, it’s easier to catch them. Everyone also seems to think Jon’s doing it on purpose somehow, which is. Less good.
Jon records a lot of things himself, so it's a fair assumption; he likes to keep a tape recorder around, and he likes to keep it on as much as possible. Then there are the recorders that come at useful times, on the occasions when he doesn't have his own with him, tokens of Beholding that he finds he's quite grateful for, watching and listening and soaking in knowledge. Those recorders stay after they're done recording, so Jon can keep the tapes for posterity.
And then there are the other ones. The other ones appear seemingly at random and disappear just as quickly. When there are people around, these recorders never last more than a few seconds. As soon as someone sees or hears one, it's gone. When there aren't people around, Jon generally doesn't notice them at all, and that's a bit of a problem, maybe.
The real problem is that he doesn’t really spend that much time around people these days. He tries to avoid being near Georgie too much. He loves her, but – no, not but. He loves her, and that’s why he needs to keep his distance. A few times, she’s been around when it happens, but mostly she’s not.
It’s a bit unnerving the first time Jon hears it himself. Possibly because it’s also the first time it’s happened when truly nothing is happening. Usually when they pop up of their own accord, it’s because something important is going on, but this time there’s nothing. It should be more than a bit unnerving, but he doesn’t think too hard about it, really. The Admiral is curled up against his thigh and Jon is fiddling with a loose thread in his sock, not watching or reading or doing anything at all.
He’s tired. Resting. Letting himself breathe, letting himself feel like a human, letting himself be still and bask in the quiet for a little bit. It’s almost working. Almost, not quite, because he can still feel his thoughts like rushing rapids tucked away in the corner of his mind where he tries to put them, to keep them from overwhelming him.
Jon has always been good at compartmentalizing, but there are too many compartments to keep track of, these days. Too many different kinds of weird to keep locked up inside of him.
“Why do things have to be so difficult?” he says aloud – to himself, to the Admiral, to the empty room. The sound of his voice is stark against the silence, so when he stops talking and the silence is less silent than before, he notices immediately. “I swear to – can’t have a minute to myself,” he mutters irritably, searching the room with his eyes to find the tape recorder. “Where do these things keep coming from?”
The recorder doesn’t answer. Of course. He almost expects it to, which is indicative more of his deteriorating mental state than anything else. Further evidence: he keeps talking, for some inexplicable reason.
“Are you just curious?” he asks, voice high and a bit fond, enough like talking to a pet that it makes the Admiral’s head perk up. “You just want to listen?”
After a moment, he spots it, atop a stack of books on the entertainment center, as if it belongs there. It whirs and spins and Jon smiles at it, shifting to reach for it.
“Things are very interesting here in the Barker household,” he says directly to the tape recorder, like he’s making a statement. “I’ve been wearing the same sweatpants for four days. The Admiral knocked over a glass of water this morning and I cleaned it up. I haven’t been in contact with any friends lately, if I can even be said to have friends – it’s just Georgie. She’s putting up with me like a champ.”
The Admiral pipes up a soft chirp at the mention of Georgie’s name. “I know,” Jon replies, “she is the best. You love her, don’t you, Admiral? Yeah. Me too.”
He gets self conscious about that almost immediately, eyes going wide, hands tensing on his thighs. “I mean – she’s a good friend. A very good friend, and I’m very grateful for her help and – and her trust. And companionship. I love her like a friend. Don’t worry.”
Who does he think is worrying? Who does he think is listening?
“If you’re listening to this, I hope you’re enjoying it,” he says wearily, running a hand through his hair. “Not exactly prime entertainment.”
The tape stops abruptly, conspicuously, and Jon turns his head to look at the recorder only to find that it isn’t there anymore. Maybe he was imagining it the whole time. He can’t really be sure of anything.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he announces, and the Admiral remains aloof as ever.
He doesn’t think about the tape again for a while. It’s one of those things that just happens now, and that’s fine. Or, it’s not fine, but he can’t stop it and he can’t explain it, so he doesn’t see the point in dwelling on how fucking weird it is.
Jon talks to himself almost incessantly, day and night, and the tapes pop up here and there. He tries to turn them off, he tries to throw them out the window, he tries removing the tape, removing the batteries – none of it works. They keep coming back, and they only go away when they decide they’re satisfied.
It’s unclear exactly when, but at some point Jon makes the assumption that Elias is behind them, whether he’s actually making them appear or just getting a hold of the tapes after the fact to listen to Jon’s musings. There’s no doubt in his mind that Elias has that ability, and even less doubt that he would use it like this.
Jon knows he has some modicum of freaky Beholding talent himself, but he can’t for the life of him figure out how to hone them into something he can control, not the way Elias can, not the way the Eye does. He decides he’s alright with it, all things considered. Elias could be doing much worse, and if he wants to hear the conversations Jon has with inanimate objects, then more power to him.
Not actually more power, though, Heaven forbid.
Depending on his mood, Jon deals with the appearance of a new tape recorder in one of two ways. If he’s feeling good, he’ll have some fun with it. If he’s not, then… he won’t.
One day, Georgie makes French toast and leaves a plate on the counter for him, aluminum foil covering it and a green sticky note beside it reading Breakfast! ❤︎
Jon has had a shower and a change of clothes and he's hanging out with the Admiral and enjoying his breakfast when he hears the telltale whirring sound. He grins like a snake, takes a sip of his tea, and starts to ham it up a bit. If he's going to have these things listening in on him, he may as well be a good source of entertainment.
“Admiral, sir, have you ever wondered about French toast? There’s not a lot of common knowledge about it, because usually people are too busy enjoying it to ask questions.” He makes his point by popping a bite into his mouth, letting out a rapturous moan, making like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.
“The one thing people do often wonder,” he continues matter-of-factly, “is whether or not French toast is actually French. In fact, the earliest known mention of a dish that we would call French toast is in a Roman book of cookery known as the Apicius, which can be dated as far back as the first century.”
The Admiral is lying on the kitchen counter, looking utterly at peace and thoroughly bored, but that doesn’t faze Jon. “The interesting thing about the Apicius is that it was compiled using a mixture of Classical and Vulgar Latin,” he explains in a stuffy, studious voice, one that comes extremely naturally to him. “Recipes were added over centuries, with new versions of the text being produced through the Middle Ages. The original text dictates that the bread should be soaked in milk and eggs, fried in oil, and covered in honey.
“I like that way, myself,” Jon continues, more conversational than before, sounding as if he thinks he’s saying the most interesting thing in the world. “It’s much more palatable than eating it with syrup, if you ask me. Real maple syrup, that can be good in some circumstances, but I prefer it on pancakes, and that other – substance – that they call syrup, table syrup or breakfast syrup, I believe – it’s disgusting. Like they’re trying to put as much sugar as possible into one bottle of sticky horror.”
Jon pauses to shoot a quick grin in the direction of the tape recorder, sees it still spooling away and shrugs, raises his eyebrows. If it wants to hear all this, then who is he to deny it?
“French toast, though,” he says, shaking his head and getting back on track, “does have a rich history. It’s known across the world and in many different languages by a variety of names, including golden bread, lost bread, German toast, furry bread, eggy bread, and poor knights.
“Now, I will admit I don’t know the origins of all these alternative names, though some are self explanatory. I would be interested in an exploration of the traditions regarding French toast, how some variation of it appears in almost every human civilization, sometimes independently and sometimes through cultural diffusion.
“Personally, I’m fond of pain perdu, lost bread. They call it that because it’s a good use for old bread, saves you from having to throw it out, you know? And it takes the egg mixture better, soaks up more without falling apart.”
He stops again, takes another bite of his French toast and another sip of his tea, scratches the Admiral right between his ears the way he likes it. He starts purring loudly and Jon smiles at him, scrunching his nose. “Our Georgie,” he continues in a tone dripping with fondness, “likes to make French toast with whatever’s left of last week’s challah, before she starts a new batch. Three loaves every Sunday, because she’s just so diligent and nurturing, isn’t she, Admiral?”
Jon snaps his mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth, looking surreptitiously at the recorder. He’s not so caught up in his little show that he can’t recognize the profoundly embarrassing nature of what he’s just said. Apparently, he has a problem with oversharing, just – only with tape recorders, not real people. What a revelation to have on a Friday morning.
Well, he reassures himself, at least there’s a very slim chance that Georgie will ever hear this tape. Jon can only hope that none of his other friends get a hold of it, either. A brief image flashes across his mind of Tim listening to him wax poetic about Georgie’s domestic habits – even if Tim hates him now, even if their relationship is unsalvageable, he’s positive he would never live it down.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. He misses being mocked relentlessly for any display of emotion, he misses the snide comments and the unsubtle eye-rolls.
“I miss Tim,” he mumbles rather pathetically, laying his cheek against the counter to bring himself level with the Admiral’s face. “I miss Martin. I miss Sasha. Fuck, I think I miss Melanie,” he sighs, pushing back up on his elbows and burying his face in his hands.
It takes another moment for Jon to realize he’s just embarrassed himself terribly, again. He drags his fingers down his cheeks and blows out a deep, exhausted breath, looks up again only to see that the tape recorder is gone.
Hm. That’s a relief.
When Jon comes back to Georgie’s flat after a rare day spent in the Archives, all he wants – literally, the only thing he wants in the entire world – is to go to sleep. There is absolutely nothing appealing about consciousness. He’s nursing a nasty migraine – the effect of overworking himself, seven different flavors of guilt, and an inevitable row with Tim – and now he can’t bring himself to eat or drink anything, hardly even bothers toeing his shoes off before falling face down on the bed.
So the sound of the tape recorder spinning is absolutely not a welcome intrusion. He can’t ignore it, the noise so grating that it feels like it’s coming from inside his skull, and when he tries covering his ears with a pillow, he finds that his knowledge of its presence is just as bad.
“What do you want from me?” he snaps, rolling over to face the ceiling, refusing to look for or at the tape. “Haven’t I done enough for you today? I recorded statements, I did research, I – I don’t know why you’re so interested in me, but I’m not doing anything! I’m not doing a single fucking thing right now, and I won’t start for your sake!”
The tape keeps spinning.
“Fine. Fine,” Jon grunts, feeling angrier than he’s felt in a long time. “You want to hear about the bullshit I endured today? Because that’s all I’ve got, and it’s the only thing I’m giving you.”
He tries not to believe that he hears the recorder laugh at him, but it’s difficult when the whirring is so damned smug. “I went to the Institute this morning because I wanted to be helpful, you know? I wanted to get something done, alright? But – it’s impossible to get anything done around there, with how… tense everyone is.”
He hesitates, rolls his eyes at himself, his readiness to vent to a tape recorder, as well as his euphemistic phrasing. Tense apparently is the term for all of his friends and coworkers hating, distrusting, and resenting him to the point of rage, silence, or hurt.
“Elias left a statement on my desk, because of course he knew I would be coming in, and of course he had work prepared for me to do, and of course he couldn’t just bloody tell me anything about it, that would make too much sense.” Jon squeezes his eyes shut against a fresh wave of nausea, a feeling like seasickness. “So I – I sat down to record the statement, it was another one about the Stranger, nothing too out of the ordinary.”
How fucked is Jon’s life that a statement about Halloween masks sticking to people’s faces and turning them into the depicted subject is something he doesn’t find too out of the ordinary? He lets out a loud groan, shakes his head, then thinks better of that when it makes his entire being hurt.
“Then I did research for six fucking hours straight, looking for anything to shed any light on any of this, and I found nothing, of course. Strained my eyes and didn’t eat or drink or move for the better part of the day, gave myself a migraine from hell, and not a single thing to show for it.
“I talked to Basira for a little bit, nothing new there. We’re all struggling, but there’s no – there’s no new useful information since the last time we spoke,” he says tiredly. It’s been the same story for far too long and he’s sick of it. “Then, erm. Martin stopped in to talk, and he… he doesn’t seem to be doing so well. He was more nervous than usual, and that’s saying a lot. Told me he wished I were around more, which… I mean, me too, but I’m trying my best, I’m trying to fix all of this. It just – it hurts me to know that he’s hurting because of me.”
Well, that’s a bit new. Jon frowns, bites his lip, thinks deeply on it for a long minute. It’s the truth, but he’s never really thought it in so many words, and he’s certainly never said it aloud. Saying it to himself is one thing, but the fact that the tape recorder is listening makes him so uncomfortable that he can’t breathe for a moment.
He presses forward, unwilling to dwell on it for longer than necessary. “And then I was – I was leaving, you know, I was on my way out, and I ran into Tim, because… well, because I can’t just have a hard day, apparently, it has to be catastrophic.” He’s being dramatic, whining about a series of petty frustrations, and it makes him feel ridiculous, but it also makes him feel better, just a bit.
“Tim said… I mean, he didn’t say a lot. But he was angry, of course, and I… I got defensive. Unfortunately.” That’s rich, he thinks, to frame it like something he couldn’t control, rather than the product of a bad personality, a bad attitude, and a lot of bad decisions on his part.
“He took the time to stop me to talk to me, though, and he usually just avoids me, so – I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign.” Jon pauses as the argument with Tim comes up fresh in his mind.
(“I’m sorry,” he said, before anything else, before Tim could start in on him. If he was going to yell, that was fine, Jon deserved it, but he needed to apologize, and he needed to know that Tim heard him. “Tim, I’m really, really sorry.”
“Are you?” Tim’s voice was bitter and sharp. “What for?”
“I mean – for, for everything?” Jon stammered. “Sorry for not trusting you, not listening to you, not being there for you. Sorry for leaving you to deal with this mess. You deserve better.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Just… is there any way I can make this easier for you? I want to help. I want to be better.”
Tim narrowed his eyes shrewdly and stayed silent for far too long. “No,” he said at last. “No, there’s nothing you can do. You’re already gone.”
“Tim…”
“All I want you to do is stop making things worse.”
Jon swallowed hard, nodding his head, reminding himself he deserved every bit of Tim’s anger and more. “I am trying,” he said, a broken whisper. “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on around here, so that I can –,”
“What, fix it?” Tim snapped, his eyes boring down to Jon’s soul. “You can’t. You can’t fix any of it, and the more you try, the more you get sucked into it. You’re doing exactly what it wants, Jon, don’t you see that?”
“Yes, I – I know,” said Jon, distressed. “But I think it’s worth it, to a certain extent, in exchange for some real knowledge about all of this.”
“It’s not.”
“Something big is happening, Tim. Something scary.”
“Yeah,” Tim laughed without a trace of mirth. “It’s you.”
Jon bit his lip, giving Tim a wounded look. “If my humanity is what it costs to stop whatever this is, then so be it.”
“Oh, don’t be a fucking martyr.”
“Are you saying you disagree?” Jon ground out, his gaze hardening. It wasn’t a fair question, not at all, and he regretted it as soon as he asked, but he still pressed on. “Do you think me getting free of this mess is more important than trying to save people?”
Tim set his jaw, his eyes ablaze. “That’s not the question, Jon.”
“Then what’s the question?”
“The question is, do you even want to be free of this mess? Because it seems to me that you’re pretty happy jumping into it.”
Taking a deep breath, Jon struggled to sort out his thoughts, a jumble of guilt and anger and hurt and loss. “Tim,” he said as steadily as he could manage, “when I tried to stay out of it, Jane Prentiss attacked the Institute. When I tried to jump into it, Elias killed a man and sent me on the run for murder for two months. At this point, I really don’t know what else I could be doing.”
“I’ve got some ideas,” Tim mumbled, then his voice rose as he continued, despairing but still with his trademark confidence. “I listened to Martin’s statement about his ordeal with Prentiss. None of it would have happened if you weren’t such a dick about his work ethic. And Leitner wouldn’t have happened if you’d been fucking honest with us instead of trying to keep us out of it.”
“I… yes. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
It was at that point that Jon’s fingers twitched toward the record button on his tape recorder. He didn’t consciously think of it, but something about the trajectory of the conversation made him think Tim might have said something that would be useful later. He was a smart guy, and he was always one to speak his mind, and Jon didn’t doubt that he could offer some genuinely good advice, even if it came in the form of resentful admonishment.
“Don’t,” Tim commanded firmly. “Don’t turn that fucking thing on, don’t you dare.”
Jon sighed, his finger freezing on the button. “I just think –”
“I don’t care what you think,” said Tim. “If you want to talk to me, the tape recorder is off. Full stop.”
“I need the tapes for my own reference –”
“I said I don’t care.” Tim’s voice was thick, snarling and explosive. “It. Stays. Off.”
Even with all the guilt and shame he was buried under, Jon felt a little indignant at Tim’s attitude. “Fine. Fine, then. You clearly have no interest in helping, so I’ll be on my way.”
He turned on his heel and stormed off without waiting for an answer, but he could have sworn he heard Tim mutter “Good fucking riddance” under his breath.)
Thinking about it now, he’s almost positive Elias was watching the whole conversation as it happened. The realization sparks something hot and angry in his gut, but he continues to vent to the tape recorder, curious and distressed, growing more so by the second.
“It’s just… the part that really gets me is how – how – how hopeless it all is,” he laments. “We don’t know what’s going on, we don’t know how to stop it, we don’t know how to find out what’s going on or how to stop it. And even if, by some miracle or other, we manage to figure it out and we all make it through… Tim will never forgive me. He’ll never trust me again, and we’ll never be able to – to be friends again, the way we used to be.”
Jon pauses to bite back tears, tells himself it’s more from the migraine than the emotion, and continues in a choked voice. “I haven’t had many real friends in my life. Tim was… he was a good friend, and I – I wasn’t, and now I have to live with that. If I live at all, that is.”
Christ, but he’s pathetic. He lifts his hands to his face and rubs his eyes, exacerbating the throbbing pain that pulses through his veins. That’s enough for tonight, he thinks, and none too soon, because he also notices the distinct lack of the tape recorder noise, and releases a deep, bitter sigh.
“Fuck you,” he mutters, and rolls back over and goes to sleep.
The next time he notices one of the tape recorders, it pops up when he’s already in the middle of recording a statement. That’s funny. He’s not in a particularly good mood, but he’s not in a particularly bad mood, either. He laughs quietly, a soft little huff of breath, and shakes his hair out of his eyes, making an on-the-spot decision to have fun with this one rather than ignore it.
He pauses in reading the statement, thinks very hard on it for a short moment. If Elias is listening to these, then what’s the best way to play with that? Something to make Elias squirm? Jon has an incredibly low threshold for embarrassment himself, but in this moment it’s heavily outweighed by his desire to fuck with Elias, even if only to make him slightly uncomfortable for a minute.
It’s not hard to swerve from the statement he was recording into a yarn that will undoubtedly turn Elias’s face red. It’s a Hunt statement, something about being stalked through the streets of London, an experience that Jon knows intimately, though under different circumstances. Easy enough to turn into something a bit weirder.
Maybe it’s a bit concerning, how easy it is, but Jon doesn’t have the wherewithal to worry about that. He can hardly claim to be surprised at his own ability to perfectly recreate a fake statement off the top of his head. Hell, maybe he’s actually drawing on a real story that he just hasn’t heard yet.
In any case, the yarn that he spins is something he’s quite proud of, in the context. The sexual overtones are palpable, the parallels between being Watched and being Hunted are clear without being too on-the-nose, and the personal jabs at Elias are witty and subtle. It does sound like a real statement, but one that’s been crafted to make Elias feel even a fraction of the confusion and vulnerability that he inflicts upon everyone else, all the time.
The tape recorder disappears toward the end of the fabricated statement, before Jon has to worry about making up post-statement notes. He giggles to himself, takes out his tape that has been recording the whole time, and starts recording over it with the actual statement.
When he’s done recording, Georgie knocks on the door politely and comes in with her brow furrowed deeply from some mixture of confusion, concern, and amusement. “Sorry, I really try not to eavesdrop on your – your things,” she says, “but did I hear you talking about a stalker?”
Jon can’t help a laugh, even as he thinks how callous it is to get enjoyment from his fake story, considering it is based loosely on what was a real traumatic experience for… Ellen Donovan, her name was.
“Don’t worry about it,” he assures Georgie. “Nothing to do with me, not really. Just a statement I was reading.”
“That’s the kind of stuff you read? For work?”
“Yeah. It’s – I know it’s strange. It’s not always like that.”
Georgie gives him a wary look that says she only half believes him. “If you say so,” she says slowly, cautiously. “Just… if anyone tries stalking you, I don’t really care if you bring them here, but you can’t have sex with them on my furniture.”
“That’s not – that wasn’t what happened,” Jon protests, struggling not to get defensive, “in the – the story, that is. She didn’t have sex with the stalker. That would be massively weird and not okay at all. She just likened the experience of being stalked to the feeling of being pursued by a persistent man at a club, or something like that.”
“Well,” Georgie declares, her attitude unchanged, “if you’re being pursued by a persistent man at a club, you can’t have sex with him on my furniture, either.”
“You have nothing to worry about. Really.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s fair,” Jon concedes, then amends: “What I mean is, you know you don’t have to worry about me having sex with anybody on your furniture.”
“Yeah, I do know that,” says Georgie. She shakes her head, blows her hair out of her eyes, and looks Jon right in the eyes before adding, very earnestly, “Be careful, yeah?”
“I will,” Jon promises.
As soon as Georgie leaves, he breaks into a fit of laughter that leaves him breathless. He will miss her when he inevitably has to move out of her flat. He's missed her for the past few years, to be honest. Some part of him hopes that maybe he'll be able to keep in touch and maintain their friendship after all of this, but it's a flight of fancy. He could never forgive himself if something happened to her, and there's no way to guarantee her safety if she becomes a constant in his life, the way she once was, the way he wants her to be.
Georgie knows, of course, and she's been touched by the End, and even if she didn't and she hadn't, Jon would never be able to protect her. The world is a dangerous place, even without the Institute and all of its associated nonsense. But Jon can't pretend to believe that his presence in her life isn't considerably increasing that danger. He can't pretend to think that his existence isn't putting everyone he loves in danger all the time, and he can't pretend that he's doing anything substantial or productive to mitigate the problem. How can he, when the problem is him?
Well. Partially him, anyway. At least Elias is sticking to eavesdropping on him and staying away from Georgie, but Jon has no way of knowing if that will continue. He needs to get out of here, and soon.