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He doesn’t really notice it at first. Even at the start, when paranoia was rampant and he was barely aware of the way he could always get an answer to the questions he asked, the sound barely registered.
Martin walks into his office and he looks tired, the smile he always gives Jon is so much smaller than it usually is these days, and a part of Jon somehow goes both sharp and soft as he watches Martin put the mug down in its usual place. It is the single surface of his desk he keeps clear of the endless clutter Jon naturally attracts. Some new strange sharp-soft spot in Jon’s throat pushes forward, and there’s a click as Jon finds himself saying, “Martin.”
He says it like he’s reading a nametag aloud, which is stupid and just makes Martin tense even more, going from exhausted to anxious in the space of two syllables Jon didn’t even mean to voice. And Jon is just sitting there, mute, which is clearly making everything worse. He wants something but has no idea what it is other than some primal impulse to make it better and that seems...odd. And inappropriate. So he says a bit too quickly, “Thank you for the tea.”
“Oh. Well. Happy to do it,” Martin says, and smiles again. This one is better. Much better. He still seems tense, but in a more familiar way. “Sorry to interrupt your recording.”
“What rec - ah,” Jon says, and frowns down at the tape recorder he can’t remember turning on. He tries to piece together whatever the past few moments were and fails because he still has an uncomfortable impulse to do something to or at or because of Martin and he just keeps his eyes on the tape recorder because it feels infinitely safer in that moment. “Must’ve bumped it or something, I suppose.”
“They’ve all gotten a bit squirrely recently,” Martin agrees quickly, and excuses himself. He shuts the door fast enough that Jon is impressed it doesn’t slam.
Jon’s head feels more like he’s been trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe rather than having a very weird 20 seconds of interaction with Martin.
The tape recorder just keeps spooling along, and Jon scowls at it. “End recording,” he mutters, almost an accusation, and turns it off with a click.
-
The difference between correlation and causation is nonexistent in Jon’s life at this point, so the fact he keeps finding tape recorders innocuously whirring away every time he gets weird around Martin clearly means something. Are they having some effect on Jon? He almost always records in private, so is there something about being in another person’s presence when one is on? And he was doing a great job of ignoring it, he really was, until there’s a semi-clandestine meeting in a park that Jon sets up for at least the illusion of evading Elias. He arrives first, and he sees Martin wave at him and smile and there’s a clatter- click next to him as a tape recorder frantically manifests near Jon’s shoulder and falls to rest next to him on the bench, already recording.
And that. Well. Even Jon has a limit to his ability to reason away blatantly supernatural events.
Particularly when Martin stops jogging towards him with his scarf the color of his eyes fluttering around his neck and it’s been weeks since Jon saw him and another tape recorder drops into existence, and also drops from about ten feet above the path and then shatters against the cobblestone. It is broken. It is still recording.
Because Martin is in fact rather intelligent, he stops walking forward and instead says so very carefully, “Jon, are you willing tape recorders into existence?”
“Not deliberately,” Jon says, and considers stomping on the remains. Instead, he sighs, and resigns himself to his very strange fate. “This Archivist thing isn’t particularly straightforward, and anything close to an explanation would come from Elias, so I’ll assume the answer is yes.”
“How often does this happen?” Martin asks, and he’s walking over again, tiptoeing curiously over the shattered tape recorder.
Jon tries to think about it, and there are moments he can remember. If an unexpected opportunity to take a statement appears, so does a tape recorder. They show up when he’s in danger and doesn’t already have one, suddenly there in his pocket, like some eldritch horror totem to hold up as protection against the other equally eldritch horrors. But the most common occurrence is when he’s with Martin. They don’t have to be alone, they don’t even have to be doing something, and if anything, the tape recorders seem to pop up the most when they’re doing nothing at all.
He gives Martin an honest answer. “Not often, unless you’re around.”
“Why, are you trying to impress me?” Martin says it in a way that makes Martin immediately go scarlet with horror, makes Jon feel weird again, and also makes yet another tape recorder thunk onto the bench, directly between them. At least the tape recorder keeps things from being a horrifying awkward silence, because as red as Martin’s face is (and the tips of his ears that peek out of his hair, and the bit of neck Jon can see above his scarf), he still looks down at the new tape recorder, and then at Jon.
“That was absolutely not intentional,” Jon says.
“Maybe it’s just really excited for the statements I brought you,” Martin quickly offers, right along with the aforementioned statements, pulling them out of his bag.
It happens over and over again, statements or not. All the tape recorders want is Martin, but it’s not all the time, it’s...hm.
“Are you scared?”
Martin nods. It almost seems to calm him down when he says, “Oh, pretty much constantly at this point.”
“No, I - well, yes, but I mean now. Right now, with me. Are you...” And oh, it’s surprising how much the very reasonable thought hurts. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No. I could never be afraid of you, you’re Jon,” Martin says. “Things make more sense when you’re around. I’m scared you’ll get hurt, and I’m terrified that one day you’ll leave and never come back and I expect you’ll leave some day, of course you’ll leave me, but I want to take care of you and-”
“Stop,” Jon says, trying to break the compulsion because oh god, he didn’t mean to do that either, and the worst part about the watery near-tears way Martin is looking at him is that in all that hurt, there’s not so much as a single glint of surprise. “I’m so sorry, Martin, I am so, so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. I would never do that to you, not deliberately, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Martin says, with a horrifying sweet little smile even as he fights back tears. “Besides, there weren’t many secrets in that. And it’s true. I’m not scared. I’m still not scared.”
Martin turns and walks away from him, fast and hunched, hands clenching at the front of his jacket.
He wants to fix it, turn back the clock, and a part of Jon wonders if he could wipe it from Martin’s mind, no matter how forgiving he is. But there is a satisfaction in the knowledge that Martin really isn’t scared of him. There is a deep ache to hold Martin and let him cry against Jon’s shoulder, hold him tight and whisper apologies and reassurance into his ear, and that. That urge is not new. It’s not new but it’s never felt so urgent before, a panicked yearning impossible to ignore, impossible to treat like some statement too uncomfortable to think about and it’s…
It’s terrifying.
Jon is absolutely terrified.
And when Martin is finally out of earshot, all three tape recorders make one synchronized, deafening click.
-
He does nothing.
There’s not a single moment Jon spends in Martin’s presence that isn’t accompanied by a tape recorder listening to their every word. Even Martin walking past seems to merit a click from a tape recorder Jon didn’t just forget was there. Martin either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, but Jon feels like he’s losing his mind, trying to understand having his second crush ever.
And it’s different than Georgie. Georgie was bright delight and eager curiosity, and Martin is…soft. Martin is an intimate closeness, a gentle push to endure together. Laugh together. Cook together, do crosswords together, own a cat together, wake up together and try to grow a garden on quiet mornings.
Instead of doing any of that, Jon sticks to delicate panic and trying to keep Martin from blowing himself up by fondling plastic explosives.
Turns out he keeps the explosion for himself.
-
When Jon - when The Archivist - wakes up, he’s not afraid anymore. The problem is that Martin won’t give him the necessary 30 seconds to say something about it. Jon doesn’t even bother to notice the tape recorders, because he’s too busy trying to notice Martin, who fades and fades and fades.
Things unfold as they do. And when they walk out of the Lonely, Jon hears the click . Martin is clinging to him and barely responsive, and Jon is exhausted, and a part of him hates the recorder. He sees the way Martin is barely holding himself together, feels himself close to shaking apart for so many reasons, and the tape recorder, The Watcher, greedily listens in.
Nothing is said. There are monsters above them and nightmares within them and Jon simply walks them out of the tunnels and to Martin’s building because he knows the way and that’s where Martin should be. Ideally they could huddle in the archives, where they really belong, but this will do for now. He knows the codes and he knows where the spare key is and he knows Martin’s favorite blanket. His favorite mug. His favorite tea. And Jon knows the cost of that knowing (there is always a cost) is letting that fucking tape recorder keep going.
Martin’s hands hover above Jon almost constantly, and over and over again, Jon has to tell him it’s okay, has to close that distance and shift into Martin’s frozen arms. Jon knows that much of it is the Lonely clawing at Martin’s mind, telling him it’s not real, it can’t be real. Not after all this time. Not after years of being refused. There’s also the natural anxiety of a new...whatever this is. A relationship. Something where Jon wishes his right hand could feel just as much as his left when he gently runs fingers through Martin’s hair.
“I’m here. I’m not letting you go,” Jon tells him, and he’s quiet, forehead pressed against Martin’s temple as Martin finally starts to cry, starts to sob, burying his face against Jon’s shoulder and holding him tight and Jon whispers and touches and keeps him there.
They go to Scotland. There’s one bed and Jon refuses to give Martin even a moment of uncertainty about the arrangement. “Do you prefer the left side or right?” Jon asks when he feels Martin freeze up behind him. They aren’t touching and Jon can’t see him, so Jon doesn’t feel it so much as knows it. That seems to happen more and more often.
And, as expected, Jon spots a tape recorder on the nearby dresser, already recording. Neither of them have even stepped into the room yet.
The only power that seems to not leave Jon with an itch to read a statement or forcibly pull one from an unfortunate bystander is this, here, with Martin. He always knows where Martin is. He knows if Martin’s close to another panic attack, because he can feel Martin’s breath. It’s the one sort of Knowing that is more touch than thought.
Martin prefers the left side of the bed. He doesn’t stay there for very long, instead sleeping with his head against Jon’s chest.
Jon can’t sleep because there’s four tape recorders running in what should be a silent night. They record every tiny sniff and sigh Martin makes, and Jon knows - as a person , not a monster - that they’re the reason he can keep track of Martin, he knows that. This is the cost.
In the morning, Jon is exhausted and Martin is worried.
“You can see them, can’t you?” Jon asks him, and Martin only looks concerned and confused until Jon grabs one of the nearby tape recorders, which are everywhere. There’s at least five in every room. “These. You can see these, hear these, right?”
“Oh! Yes, I’ve just gotten used to it by now. It’s fine, Jon, I’m not bothered or scared. I mean, it’s...weird, but it goes with the territory, you know?” Martin says, and smiles for him. “It’s a strange part of you, but it’s still part of you.”
At which point Jon realizes, “You’ve never been around me without them, have you? You think this is just my constant state of being.” When Martin nods, confused, Jon sighs and puts the tape recorder back down. He gave up on turning them off long ago. “They show up around you, Martin. Just around you. For statements or anything else, there’s just one, but with you it wants...everything. It wants every single second.”
Martin looks appropriately bewildered now, at least. “Why? I’m not exactly interest...hm. Well, they do show up when you aren’t around either, sometimes. You’ve heard the recordings,” Martin says, and Jon nods, but he still can’t follow whatever Martin’s saying. “But they only show up when I’m...well, no shame in saying it now, I suppose. They show up when I’m thinking about you.”
Which leaves an idea in his head. An impossible idea, but, well, who knows what an unknowable entity wants?
“You can come in if you need me, Martin,” Jon says, and gives Martin a small kiss on the cheek (which makes Martin blush furiously, but oh, his smile is so beautiful) before walking into the bedroom and shutting the door.
Jon isn’t quite sure how to do this, so he collects the four tape recorders in the room and puts them on top of the bed. Then, he pulls out the tape recorder in his bag, the one that actually physically existed long before Jon was a lot less human and a lot more Archivist. He sits on the bed and sets the four manifested tape recorders to his sides, and the original one directly in front of him.
He takes a deep breath, and pushes the record button.
“This is...attempted communication from Jonathan Sims, your Archivist, in regards to your persistent interest in myself and Martin Blackwood, my…” And Jon pauses, because that’s not quite been defined. “My-”
Every tape recorder in the room lets out a horrifying nightmarish shrieking static.
“What?” comes Martin’s voice from one of the tape recorders, and Jon nearly jumps out of his skin, narrowly covering his mouth before he can shriek and make Martin worry. “What does that mean?”
Jon can’t remember the exact conversation the clip comes from, but he has no doubt it’s real playback and not some sort of sampling of Martin’s voice. “Is that it? You want to know what’s going on between me and Martin?” Jon asks, incredulous.
A different tape recorder plays back Jon’s voice. It sighs, full of deep exhaustion, and says, “I don’t like this. I don’t like not being sure-” Click.
Jon is silent for a moment, trying to think out how to explain love to a literal fear entity obsessed with knowledge. “Well, I suppose that makes sense, considering the people you've been avataring around with,” Jon muses.
Jon’s voice says, “I suspect my assuming it has a heart might be a clue I’m looking at this the wrong way.” A pause, and then on his other side, a tape recorder clicks and plays out Jon’s voice, clearly from a statement. “I’ve never seen weird like I saw when serving on the Tundra.”
“That’s information I’m fine with not knowing, thank you,” Jon says quickly. “But I assume this is a bit different - again, no need to expand, it’s fine, this is about me and Martin, not...whatever else you’ve seen. With that. Them.” Please god no. When he receives no reply, Jon clears his throat and continues. “So this is new to you. It’s something you don’t know. I can imagine you don't like that much.”
All he gets in reply is a low rumble of static, both roar and grumbling.
“Well. I love him. I’m in love with Martin. That's what’s going on.” And Jon dooms himself the next second by saying, wistful, “I don’t know if I can explain it very well.”
There’s a high pitched squeal, so loud Jon has to put his hands over his ears as every tape recorder starts to play at the same time. It’s Martin and Gertrude and Elias and Jon himself, all letting out a cacophony of questions that pierce directly into Jon’s brain. It feels like The Eye is trying to do some sort of Knowing in reverse, and Jon screams and
He stands in a light so brilliant he’s blinded, with an infinite number of eyes staring at him from every angle. It’s the panopticon but worse, so much worse, with one great eye dwarfing the others. It is green and bloodshot and Jon feels like he’s being ripped apart by the feeling of a thousand scalpels doing exploratory surgery.
Jon's own mouth says, "I am the Watcher I am Beholding I am the Reaper of Secrets I am the Knowing I Know I Know I Know I Do Not Know I Am Betrayed By My Own My Creature My Archivist-”
Things blur.
Things go a bit softer. A bit distant. He can’t see it but he knows (of course he knows) Martin is wrapped tight around him, hugging him, doing his best to block the most dominant eye’s view as he pulls every shred of Lonely out he can. But it’s a different sort of Lonely.
It’s only us.
Everyone else has abandoned them. They’re in a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere, their only company being the occasional grazing cow, nights so silent it’s hard to sleep because they’re so, so alone. All Martin has is Jon. All Jon has is Martin. They’re together, and they’re alone, so alone, empty with only each other, and it is Lonely and they will never part because they have nothing else, nothing nothing nothing .
Jon knows it’s ripping Martin apart. Jon knows the Eye could flay Martin alive and he still wouldn’t let go. He can feel Martin shaking, but he can hear Martin struggling to choke out, “It’s fine, Jon, it’s fine, it’ll be fine.”
It won’t.
There’s no way for Jon to beat the Eye, not here, he knows that, he Knows it. Nobody can. If the Lonely had manifested as something, Jon would have been destroyed in a heartbeat. Martin will die.
But this is also a place where Jon can feel he is ludicrously powerful, and he has enough of a buffer to pull Martin’s face away from Jon’s shoulder, enough strength to gently cradle Martin’s agonized face in his hands and look him in the eye and say, “Martin, I love you, but I’m not there with you in the cottage.” And oh, this is going to hurt Martin, and there are tears in Jon’s eyes for so many reasons when he whispers to him, makes him Know it as a truth, “You’re alone.”
And with a echoing sound of desperate denial, all that remains of Martin is a soft blur of mist.
The pain stops.
Jon can feel the blood dripping from his eyes, his ears, from a thousand tiny incisions, and he has never considered himself a brave man but he stands, and looks The Watcher straight in its biggest eye. He swallows, and waits.
His own mouth opens, and says, “I See. I Will See.”
The pause seems physically painful for The Watcher. Every eye squeezes shut. When it opens, it’s the slightest bit lidded, like the Watcher is squinting at him. It’s confused. But above that, it’s curious.
Jon’s mouth says, “I Will Learn.”
And it’s almost gentle, being sent back to what passes for reality. Jon is still bleeding profusely, sagging on top of the bed and ruining the quilt as he drips drips drips onto the soft homemade pattern.
He sits there, breathing harshly, twitching and incapable of speech. Martin is gone because Jon sent him away, hopefully not all the way into the Lonely but it’s likely. He needs to get Martin back, but he can’t move. He doesn’t even know how he’s still conscious.
And then one of the tape recorders plays back part of a statement it feels like Jon recorded an eternity ago. “I know I’m meant to be telling you what happened. What brought me to this place. This place of-” It skips, slightly. “- of sight and beholding.” Static. “I should. I will.”
“Jane Prentiss,” Jon says. It’s one of the more memorable statements he’s ever recorded, to say the least.
The statement skips forward. “Was that it? Was I swayed and drawn simply by the prospect of being genuinely loved? Not loved as you would understand it. A deeper, more primal love. A need as much as a feeling. Love that consumes you in all ways.”
Jon shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. You’ve been listening. You know it’s not like Jane Prentiss.”
Static, and then another tape lets out a sharp click as it plays Elias’s voice, tired and irritated and...very Elias. “I don’t enjoy having to have these meetings, Jon.” Click. The same tape recorder rewinds and plays Jon’s voice again, a familiar plea he’s voiced a thousand times. “I need to know.”
“I know you do,” Jon says. Every part of him hurts.
The same tape winds back again. The difference is that this time, the static of the playback is very loud beneath Jon’s voice. It’s slowed down just enough to sound deeper, and extremely unnatural. “So what do you plan to do about it?”
He’s tired. He’s so, so tired.
“Not sure. It seems like we’ll be figuring it out together,” Jon says, and squeezes his eyes shut. “If you don’t kill me or leave Martin in the Lonely or-”
In a burst of mist, Martin is just... there . He’s standing on the other side of the bed, pale to the point of near-translucent and wide-eyed and he whispers, “Jon?”
The same tape zips forward, and plays Elias’s voice again. “Oh, good lord, don’t be so dramatic, John. You know how hard it would be to replace you.” The tape goes forward. “And for God’s sake, get some sleep,” recorded-Elias says. Almost immediately afterwards, a second tape recorder calls out a firm, confident, academically minded Jon’s, “Statement ends.”
Click.
The four manifested tape recorders disappear into both audible and visible static, but the original one that Jon brought stays in place, still recording. Jon is fairly certain it will never stop recording. It will never need a new tape, and it will never break, and it is expecting to go anywhere and everywhere with Jon and Martin.
The Watcher disappears the other tape recorders because it expects Jon to do the recording deliberately from now on.
Martin is there before Jon can even touch the tape recorder, and Jon blinks at him, exhausted, and Martin has a towel and water and is trying to scrub the blood off of Jon, not quite babbling, and Jon can see the way he winces when he moves.
“No, it’s fine, Martin. It’ll be healed in a minute or two,” Jon says, because that’s how being a monster works. The exhaustion remains, right along with the pain, but the tiny cuts seal shut. For once, Jon gets an injury that doesn’t leave scars.
Even with things healing up, the blood is still there, and Martin scrubs it away, saying, “Please be okay, I don’t know what just happened so please tell me if you can. God, I thought it was going to kill you, I’ve never heard you scream like that.”
“And hopefully I never will again,” Jon says, and gently pushes Martin away so he can grab the tape recorder and set it safely on the nightstand. He then rips the quilt off the bed, getting the blood out of their way. With that done, he pulls as many pillows as he can find onto the mattress.
“...Jon? What are you - are you okay?” Martin asks, because Jon is now using the bloody quilt as extra filler.
“There. That looks comfortable,” Jon decides. He deliberately doesn’t notice how Martin very clearly eyes the bloodstain still sticking out from beneath one of the chaise pillows. And he trusts Martin to follow along, so Jon climbs onto the bed and settles down as comfortably as possible. Martin looks like he wants to rush Jon to the ER, but he joins, and that’s good. Jon reaches over, grabs the (recording) tape recorder, and puts it securely at the top of the pillow pile before he clears his throat and says, “Martin, I think we should talk about our feelings.”
Martin is quiet for a long moment. Then he asks, slow and careful, “Jon, you do remember you were just sliced up by your extradimensional fear entity patron, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you threw me back into the Lonely so it wouldn’t murder me for getting in the way of its anti-avatar rampage. You remember that?”
“That too, yes.”
“So don’t we have some other things we should discuss right now?” Martin asks.
“Absolutely, but my extradimensional fear entity patron did all of that because it’s confused about me having nice loving feelings instead of being the equivalent of Gertrude or Jonah Magnus, and I really don’t want any of that to happen again. So. Here we are.”
“It’s been following us around nonstop, though, doesn’t it have as much information as we do?” Martin asks.
It’s a reasonable question, even though Jon would really rather move forward. Still, he takes a deep breath. “The Ceaseless Watcher wants to understand what it’s seeing. It wants to Know what this is. What we are. Love is completely antithetical to its entire being, so I think it’s...well. Fascinated.” To the point of nearly killing them when Jon suggested there would be no forthcoming explanation. But they can make it work. At least Jon Knows Martin isn’t scared of this, because of the two of them, Martin is the one who seems to actually accept how much of Jon is an avatar of the Eye. He gives Martin an undeniably awkward smile. “I think it likes us, at least? As much as it can like something.”
Martin looks at him for a while. And then says, “Okay then.” Then Martin sighs, and pulls Jon close. “Well. Where do you begin with that sort of thing?” He looks a bit helpless, but he gives Jon that one smile. The trusting smile. The one that usually has 40 tape recorders dropping out of the sky on them. “Can you...you know. Start me?”
It’s easy enough, and there’s just the slightest squeal of eager static as Jon presses a soft kiss against Martin’s temple. “Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding…?”
“Being head over heels in love with you,” Martin says. And his statement begins.
-
A package arrives for Elias Bouchard. Technically, the package is addressed to Elias Bouchard, James Wright, Jonah Magnus, etc. It’s a small but hefty package in a brown box with completely unnecessary twine tied around it. He doesn’t exactly need to Behold the package to know there’s a tape recorder inside.
When he listens, he expects Jon. No need to Behold anything there, either.
What he does not expect is for the tape to begin with Jon’s voice reading Elias’s ritual letter.
“The freedom,” the tape says, and skips just the slightest bit. “The freedom of - these Dread Powers.” A deliberate pause that shouldn’t be there. And the words are so, so slow and deep now, when it says, “All for my own gain.”
And the voice switches to Martin Blackwood, of all people, rushed and upset and indignant, saying, “You think I’m what - I’m, I’m, I’m, um, blind?” Brief static. “You see - The thing is - I’m still not all that keen on being a part of any ritual you set up. - In fact , if I were to be blunt, I’d say that it would be suicidally stupid.”
Barely a heartbeat’s length of static.
And then it is Elias’s voice. Calm. Collected. Smug. “My relationship to the apocalypse is more…complicated.”
A pause, and then Elias is lecturing himself. “Things are - coming, things that will require Jon to be far stronger and more willing to use his connection to his patron.” - “I rather feel the real shame would be letting the entire world fall - because of a single person’s - pride. - The stakes are far too high for that kind of… indulgence.” - “It would be a shame to lose them.”
The recording goes quiet, until there’s a familiar clearing of the throat.
“Statement of Jonathan Blackwood-Sims, The Archivist, regarding Jonah Magnus’s complete and utter failure at turning me into a ritual because our patron likes me and Martin more than your apocalypse,” Jon’s satisfied voice begins, damn him, damn him, and Elias turns it off.
Jon’s statement stops. The tape recorder does not.
There is incessant useless lovey-dovey banter between Jon and Martin. Beneath it, Jonah Magnus’s ritual can be heard, as if he’s hearing a recording of a recording. The entire thing plays, and it sounds like it worked. It sounds like it should’ve worked, there’s the shattering of glass and a chaotic storm in the background as the final words are roared out, I open the door , and it must have worked, so why? Why?
There is a pinch on the top of the hand Elias has resting over the tape recorder.
The tape is dead silent when he looks down at the small poisonous spider waiting there, making sure that Elias sees it. Making sure it adds insult to injury by biting him yet again.
“It is polite," Jon’s voice says, so very softly,“to knock.”
The spider bites him again, damn it, and Elias swats it off, hissing, “Yes, I see you. I understand, you’ve both proved your point, I’ll leave them alone until they come to me.”
Gertrude’s voice says, clear and horrible, “Good.”
“Fuck you too,” Elias mutters, and leaves. He needs to find a new body before the poison spreads.