Chapter Text
He’s busy stirring his tea with a mournful expression that is definitely not a pout when he hears the tell-tale click of a tape recorder turning itself on, somewhere around the mess on his desk. A year ago or two that would have been enough to make him alert, to make him stand up to attention and face whatever had triggered the apparently omnipresent recorders enough to make them decide something worth Knowing was about to happen, but now, wary, tired, with a cup of tea he pointedly tries not to think too much about, Jon simply sighs, keeping his focus on the task at hand.
“You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?” he hums, the same way one would do with a particularly stubborn cat who has been told time and time again to behave. He takes a sip, spitefully loudly just in case the recording somehow makes it back to either Lukas or Elias, and tries not to think about how much he misses Martin’s tea, “I’ve been here all morning but it’s only when I go and grab myself a cuppa that you decide it’s showtime? Bit inconsiderate, don’t you think?”
The recorder, little bastard that it is, does not dignify him with an answer. He takes another sip.
Despite himself, he waits in anticipation for whatever is about to happen. Of course he does. He might try to not wallow too much in it, but there’s no denying who he is now, what he is, and the nagging need to Know and Seek has only grown stronger lately. So he just sits, cradling a sadly subpar cup of tea, and waits. Hopefully, it’s not going to be another pair of murderous Hunt avatars, though knowing his luck he doubts it’s going to be anything too pleasant.
After what feels like years but that he knows are just barely thirty seconds, familiar footsteps approach from the corridor, soft and naturally stealthy, and he relaxes, leaning back in his chair with a little breath of relief. Sure enough, the door opens without a knock, and Daisy’s blonde head pops in from behind it.
“Basira and I are going out for lunch later, are you coming?” she asks without preambles, leaning against the doorframe in a way that is meant to be casual, but that Jon can clearly see is done out of tiredness. Her eyes, shining slightly in the dark office, immediately find the tape recorder humming away on the desk, and she smiles a little sardonic grin.
He doesn’t even pretend to ponder it, and simply nods behind his mug, “You’re missing a third wheel now that Melanie resigned?” he almost regrets saying it, trying to make light of something as traumatic as that, but thankfully Daisy only rolls her eyes. Neither of them mentions the fact that even with Jon there one person would still be missing, burrowed in his office away from everyone and everything, and Jon silently thanks her for not bringing it up, “Sure. I’ll see you later.”
Daisy nods once, and then she’s gone, closing the door behind her and walking off towards whatever it is she does to keep herself busy these days. Curiously enough, the tape recorder doesn’t click off with her retreat, and Jon does look at it now, frowning. If that wasn’t what it had turned itself on for, then…
Something catches his eyes on his left, right next to his desk, and the hairs on the back of his arms stand up before he even has a chance to properly take in what he’s seeing.
There’s a door where until a second ago there had only been a bare wall. It's old, looks like it's made of oak, and he quietly settles his cup on the desk as he keeps his eyes on it like he would with a potentially dangerous animal. His first instinct is to relax back into the chair, knowing that that is probably just Helen making some questionable interior design choices, for whatever reason, but this door has nothing of the psychedelic features that would suggest it belongs to the Spiral. He has just enough time to ponder where exactly his life has gone wrong for him to be more unsettled by the door’s colour rather than its actual unexplained appearance in his office before the damned thing suddenly swings open, strong enough to slap against the wall, and a figure stumbles out of it in a confusing blur.
Jon, now on his feet, his tea sloshed over his desk in his surprise and his hands reaching for something, anything that might serve as a weapon, can’t do anything but watch as the figure wrestles with the door for a moment, trying to close it against the strong wind that is blowing out of it, spreading sand- is that sand?- all over the floor, until they finally manage to with a huff, leaning back on it as if trying to keep it closed with their weight. With only a desk between them, Jon can clearly see that it’s man, wearing what appears to be a lab coat, though it looks worn out at the hems, as if ruined by some properly terrible weather, and his dark hair is in disarray over his face. Nonsensically, the knowledge that that hair is one of his most defining features settles itself over Jon with a confused frown, and he shifts, enough to attract the man’s attention. With his chest heaving with laboured breaths, he smiles a fairly beautiful smile, despite his current predicament, and pushes himself off the door.
“Hey, um, sorry about the intrusion,” he stumbles over his words, slurring them, evidently unaware of Jon’s firm grip on his make-shift weapon- a stapler, for the matter, because his self-preservation died the moment he was born, apparently- or his look of horrified concern. He shifts on his feet, spreading the sand even further into the office, and tries to take a step forward, “Are you- would you- do you know if- oh dear.”
And without as much as a warning, the man falls on the floor, face-first in the pile of sand he has brought in with him, none of his limbs even pretending to try and catch him, leaving Jon with a stapler in his hand, an office with enough sand to make a castle, and a passed out stranger in the middle of it.
The door flickers in and out of existence for a moment, before it completely disappears into thin air, leaving just an average wall in its wake, and the tape recorder clicks off, apparently happy with itself.
What the fuck just happened?