Chapter Text
Jon is sat in his office, staring mindlessly at a stack of research files following up on statements he'd assigned to his staff months ago, trying to decide if he's more likely to get any work done if he stays here or sleep if he goes home - both seem unlikely - when Elias knocks on the door with a suit and an instruction that Jon will be accompanying him to a Lukas family event. It's just the sort of thing he ought to expect, he thinks tiredly. In the past ten days he's taken statements from two avatars, three if you counted Elias's confession to the murders of Gertrude Robinson and Jurgen Leitner, and from Georgie of all people. He's moved out of Georgie's flat over her objections. His right hand is still bandaged and he hasn't slept properly in weeks. He says as much, and Elias is launching into his usual lecture about keeping Institute donors happy when Jon takes the suit from him and slams the door in his face. It's a petty, temporary victory, but he'll take what he can get at this point.
The party is taking place in a club not far from the Institute, likely a gathering spot for the more upscale sort of monsters since Jonah Magnus's time. Jon's never been to a cocktail party before, but he's fairly certain this one is even more horrible than most, given that it's populated almost entirely by Lukases. It makes his skin crawl. There's nothing there, despite the crowd of appallingly well-dressed people gossiping quietly amongst themselves. The conversation doesn't cease, exactly, when they enter the room, but there is a notable dip in volume, followed by an almost imperceptible turning away. It feels like nothing so much as being snubbed by the entire universe.
"Friendly lot," Jon mutters, and Elias does not quite smile.
Even if they were not being ignored, it's very obvious that the two of them don't belong there. The Lukases have a peculiarly uniform look, tall and pale, although surely some of them must be Lukases only by marriage. Elias's warning about the Lukases and their patron were not enough to prepare Jon for the feeling of loss that washes through him, sharp and aching. Then Elias looks at him and the feeling recedes. It ought to be terrible, this reminder that they too serve something horrible, but instead it's a reassurance. Elias hands him a glass of champagne and Jon swallows half of it, far too quickly. He feels he deserves it.
Elias does not quite jump when someone calls his name from across the room, but his shoulders tense in a way that draws Jon's attention. He's watching Elias, then, when one of the tall, pale men approaches them with a geniality that's frankly unsettling in the chill of the party.
"Peter," Elias says evenly. Peter Lukas, then - and he's nothing like what Jon might have expected based on Carlita Sloane's statement. Tall and pale, certainly, but rather than the distant expression carried by the rest of the family he wears a genial smile and a glint in his eye. And he's far from taciturn.
Carlita Sloane was not, in the end, prey for the Lonely. Jon does not like to think about what the difference in Peter Lukas's demeanor might mean for him.
"Decided to show your face at last? How long has it been?" Peter claps Elias on the shoulder with a friendly grin.
Elias bears up under it without a reaction and declines to answer his question. "I thought perhaps I'd see Nathaniel before -"
"No need," Peter cuts him off airily. "After all," he says, letting his eyes slide right past Elias with practiced ease, "I see you've done your part. Jonathan, yes?" He takes Jon's hand and bends as if to kiss it.
Jon wrenches it back, eyes wide with shock, and snaps, "What the hell are you playing at?" He doesn't even think about the compulsion until it's out of his mouth, but Peter only laughs in delight.
"Really, Elias? All your grand talk about knowing, but you haven't bothered to let your Archivist in on the game?"
Jon bristles at being referred to as Elias's anything, but Elias continues as though he isn't there. "It's very important for the Archivist to learn things on his own, as I've told you, Peter," Elias murmurs, hiding a little behind his glass.
But Peter isn't the only one here; Elias is looking at Jon expectantly and Jon feels another flash of the day's earlier anger at his blatantly calculating expression. "What are we here for?" he asks with the full force of the compulsion in his voice.
The flutter of Elias's eyelashes is frankly indecent, and Jon can feel a blush starting to rise that he can only hope will be misattributed to anger when any response Elias might have given (not that he truly expects honesty from Elias Bouchard at this point) is cut off by Peter's cheery, "For my engagement party, of course."
"Engagement party?" Jon says, and the question holds more horror than compulsion. Who on earth would be marrying Peter Lukas? But any further questions are cut off by the appearance of another Lukas.
"Peter," the man says calmly. His eyes slide over the group without meeting anyone else's, giving the impression of having dismissed every one of them as unimportant even while Jon is growing increasingly convinced that his presence at this particular gathering is far from incidental. "I hope you won't find it necessary to make a speech."
"Oh, I don't know," Peter says cheerfully, "we do want to do the thing properly, don't we, Nathaniel?" He slips a hand in his pocket as he sips from his glass - whiskey, it looks like, and where he came by that Jon would dearly like to know - the very picture of conviviality. He winks at Jon flirtatiously. And if he's engaged, then why - Oh god. He can't mean --
Elias is mirroring Peter's posture, although he looks decidedly less at ease. The Lukases are, Jon remembers with a jolt, the primary funding source for the Institute, which means that for Elias this must be a little like being called to account by his boss. The thought ought to be satisfying, but Jon feels an involuntary flash of sympathy.
But more importantly, he's getting a sinking feeling in his stomach, chilled with the certainty that there's only one reason Elias would have dragged him along to this, why Elias is standing next to him so tense and strained, why Peter is slowly making his way into Jon's personal space. Jon glares at him, but is entirely ignored, so he turns it on Peter instead, who simply smiles back at him, all hollow charm.
"And are we going to meet the other party in this engagement?" Jon asks, as dry as he can. There's still a chance, after all, that he's wrong, that he's catastrophizing again, and this is merely Institute politics at work.
Peter makes a shocked face at Elias, transparently false. "You mean you haven't told him? Really, Elias, I know you like to play it close to the chest, but it's only polite to tell a man when you're marrying him off."
"You can't be serious," Jon says flatly. Elias says his name, but he ignores it. "This is - ridiculous, you can't just - this is not the nineteenth century and there are better ways to negotiate than to arrange marriages - " He's nearly shouting, although it doesn't draw the attention of the rest of the party, of course. Even a hysterical outburst isn't enough to break the solitude of the Lukas family isolation, apparently.
"You'd be surprised," Peter says cheerfully. "The oldest rituals are the best ones, sometimes, especially when the circumstances don't allow for experimentation." He toasts Jon with his glass.
Jon grits his teeth and tries to remain calm. It's not working well. "And what if I refuse?"
"Will you?" Peter sounds genuinely curious.
"He will not," Elias cuts in smoothly. "Jon understands what the stakes are, don't you, Jon?" He's still looking at Peter, though, as he says it.
Anger is struggling with exhaustion and alcohol, and Jon feels entirely out of his depth. Which should be a familiar feeling by now, really, but it's no less upsetting for it. "I am not a - a bargaining chip," he says. Nathaniel Lukas makes a noncommittal noise. "What," Jon snaps, and though there's no tape recorder running he'd almost swear he can feel the static in his teeth.
Nathaniel meets his eyes and Jon feels his blood go cold. It isn't the terror of Mr Spider, or even Jude Perry, but an icy sense of abandonment, the growing feeling not only that he is stood alone with an utterly inhuman monster, the fear that soon the monster too will disappear and leave him to whatever fate befalls the only person, human or otherwise, left alive. He can't be sure, suddenly, if Elias is still there next to him, if the rest of the party is still going on around them, and yet he can't tear his gaze away from Nathaniel Lukas to see.
A tug on his arm brings him back to himself and Jon tears his eyes away from Nathaniel Lukas's to land on Elias's hand wrapped firmly around his wrist, manicured nails digging slightly into his skin with a grounding pain. After that glimpse of isolation, even the chill of a Lukas family gathering seems warm and almost welcoming.
Peter is rambling on, Jon realizes, although Nathaniel has already turned away. "--and really, for all that we do, the very least the Beholding can offer in return is the loan of one of its own."
"I will not be leaving the Archives," Jon says, and Elias's grip tightens for a moment before he releases Jon's wrist. Jon wonders immediately if that was the right thing to say - this may be the only chance he has to get out of whatever Elias has obligated him to - but he hadn't been able to run when the field had been left wide open and besides, it feels true. He very much suspects that the Archives are a part of him now, for better or for worse. Probably worse.
"Of course not," Peter says. "And you'll still serve the Beholding alone, of course. Wouldn't dream of interfering in that. But to have the Archivist marry into the family will smooth a great many troubled passages for the both of us." He raises his glass in a cheerful toast in Jon and Elias's direction.
Jon is beginning to wonder if that supernatural chill has really left him after all. "Wonderful," he mutters.
"So glad you agree," Peter says cheerfully. Jon sneaks another glance at Elias, who is maintaining both a couple of feet of distance and a carefully neutral expression, the arsehole.
This would all be more tolerable, Jon thinks, if Peter didn't sound so damned pleased about the situation. He feels a familiar chill in his stomach, one he'd thought he'd done away with when he'd given up on dating.
"And what do you get out of this?" Jon snarls. "I'm certainly not going to help you carry on the family line."
"That's not really my department," Peter says blandly, and Jon almost asks if there's some kind of assigned division of labor or if he just means he's gay before he remembers that he really does not want to know. "It gets Nathaniel off my back, if you must know," he adds with a conspiratorial frown. "Very big on tradition, is Nathaniel, and well, an arranged and loveless marriage is very isolating, we so often find."
Jon thinks of Naomi Hearne and Evan Lukas's congenital heart condition. "Quite," he murmurs. Elias makes a noise that might almost be the beginning of a laugh.
More drinks arrive at last, and Jon chokes down a toast that at least no one else acknowledges. "What - I'd like to know how much of this was your idea," he says to Elias when he gets a chance.
"None," Elias answers, and his jaw is tight enough that he might just be telling the truth. "But I hope you can understand that we're in a delicate position just now, with - everything that's going on, and we cannot afford to lose any amount of support, financial or otherwise. Have another drink," he suggests.
Peter does insist on making a speech, in the end. It isn't long but it is dreadfully uncomfortable, full of romantic clichés that seem very out of place under the circumstances. None of the other Lukases pay him any attention, but after the fact a great many of them pass by Jon to welcome him to the family. His stomach churns with every handshake but it would be more horrible, he thinks, if any of them sounded sincere. There are too many names to remember but they all seem the same anyway, pale and remote and disinterested.
By the time they leave - before midnight, astonishingly, though it feels as though they've been here for hours - Jon is beginning to feel that this might not be as terrible as he'd first feared. An arranged and loveless marriage, Peter had said. At least that means Jon might be left well enough alone.
Jon's wearing a ring. Martin noticed it - well, honestly Martin noticed it first thing this morning, it's huge, a heavy gold thing with a polished sapphire stone. It glints in the light whenever Jon runs a hand through his hair, which is. A lot more often than Martin had been prepared for, actually. Not that he thinks about what Jon does with his hands more than, oh, about fifteen times a day. It's distracting, is what it is, the way the light catches on the stone. He keeps seeing it out of the corner of his eye. He can't be blamed for that.
Martin also can't help but notice that Jon is wearing it on the ring finger of his left hand. Which might mean nothing at all, of course. Jon is a little weird about social cues at the best of times, it's entirely possible it just didn't occur to him what that would look like. If, of course, Jon were inclined to wear jewelry at all, never mind something quite so...ostentatious.
(If he'd thought of what kind of a ring Jon would wear he would have expected something simple and understated, probably not even gold or silver, maybe one of those fidget rings in stainless steel and nope, Martin is not picking out jewelry for Jonathan Sims in his head.)
And of course Tim's picked today to actually come into the office for once. Not that he's doing any work, or even paying any attention to anyone else, but he's still there, his simmering anger a palpable presence in the assistants' office. Melanie is off following something up in Artifact Storage, and if Tim wasn't here Martin thinks he might actually go talk to Jon, who's wholly oblivious to anyone else as he sorts through shelves of file boxes, but he can't bear the thought of Tim's mockery right now. Or even worse, the thought that Tim might just continue to ignore him as though they'd never been friends at all.
So Martin fidgets and tries to work, and Tim scrolls through Facebook, and Jon fidgets and every time Jon fidgets the light catches on his sapphire ring that is definitely not an engagement ring and Martin's train of thought is completely derailed. It's a good thing the world isn't ending, he thinks to himself, or we'd all be in real trouble. Oh wait.
By the time Melanie comes back after lunch, Jon has retreated to his office and closed the door, which at least spares Martin that much distraction. She drops a notebook bulging with sticky notes and pen scribbles onto her desk - the one Martin still thinks of as Sasha's desk, and he tries not to resent her for it, tries not to think about what Elias said about him not being able to recognize the real Sasha even if he could see her - and sighs in a way that means she wants to be noticed. "Find anything good?" he asks politely.
She drums her fingers on the notebook. "I don't know that there's anything good in there," she says. "But I did find a few things Jon was looking for. I think." She fans the pages and catches a sheaf of loose papers. "Some of it seems to have disappeared? Which cannot be good, I don't want to know how things disappear from there and I don't want to think about it."
"Yeah, it's. Not great." Martin eyes the papers she's gesturing with. "Did you want me to bring those in to Jon, I've got some stuff for him anyway..."
Melanie gives him a knowing look and Martin can feel the blush rising up his neck but she just says, "Sure, go for it," and hands him her notes.
He waits outside the door long enough to be sure Jon isn't recording a statement before he knocks and heads right in. They'd all learned some time ago that waiting for Jon to both notice and acknowledge a knock was an exercise in frustration. Jon looks up from what looks like the contents of an entire archival storage box strewn across his desk. He looks mildly annoyed, which isn't all that unusual, but Martin brandishes the papers in defense anyway. "Melanie came back with this lot from Artifact Storage, and she thinks some stuff is missing? Which isn't good, obviously, but at least the records are still there. And I found Mr. Mori's grandmother, she's in, um, Devon..." And of course he doesn't have his own notes and can't remember exactly what it was he was writing down not twenty minutes ago, of course.
At least Jon seems more interested in Melanie's research than in Martin's own just now, which in any other circumstances would be deeply annoying. He reaches for the pages with a muttered thanks, but as he does his hand knocks sharply against the tape recorder sat on the edge of his desk with a sound much louder than knuckles on plastic. Martin has to stop his reflexive move forward to help somehow as Jon shakes out his hand with a bitten-off noise. "This damned thing," Jon mutters, twisting the ring around on his finger to inspect the stone.
"Heavy rings throw off your whole balance," Martin says sympathetically, and Jon gives him an odd look. Martin can feel a betraying blush creeping up the back of his neck and suddenly he has to defend his possession of this particular knowledge. "I, er, my cousin was a goth, when I was about twelve? He used to let me try on his stuff sometimes. I thought he looked very cool, but I don't know how he managed it all day every day."
Jon almost smiles at that. "Quite."
"Although that looks more like an antique than my cousin's costume jewelry," Martin continues, and oh god now he's talking and he can't seem to shut up. Why is he like this? He can hear himself say, with a small laugh, "If I didn't know better I'd say it looked like an engagement ring."
Jon's face does something complicated and he sits down very slowly. "Ah," he says, then sighs. "Well." Martin stops breathing.
A flash of irritation crosses Jon's face as he settles on a response. "Apparently Elias and the - the Institute have no respect for personal privacy. The Lukas family have requested - well, demanded, really," he stops, swallows, starts again. "The Lukases serve something called the Lonely, which is a more powerful, or at least more influential, ally of the Beholding, and since they're also funding the Institute..." his hands are twisting together, which just draws Martin's attention back to the star sapphire glinting on his finger.
"So what, they want you to marry one of their daughters?" Martin blurts out. His voice comes out much too high, but given that his boss, who he has a crush on, seems to be living out the plot of a cheap romance novel, that doesn't seem too unreasonable.
Jon makes a face. "Peter Lukas, actually." He sounds almost apologetic, which is deeply wrong, because while someone should definitely be apologizing for this situation that person is absolutely not Jon.
The name's familiar, though. "The terrifying sea captain?" Martin is starting to feel like he's having a stroke. He sits down heavily in the chair in front of Jon's desk. He can't stop looking at his ring. Now that he thinks about it, it looks like a family heirloom from a terrifying multigenerational cult that worships a god of loneliness and has enough money to force innocent unqualified archivists to do absurd things like marry a man at least twice his age for the sake of -- what, his job? The Institute? The end of the world?
"How long do we have?" Martin asks. He's still a little numb, but anger is beginning to seep in around the edges.
Jon blinks at him. "I'm sorry?"
"How long do we have to get you out of this?" The panic is subsiding, replaced with indignation on Jon's behalf and a kind of transcendent calmness that offers the possibility of planning. Sure, none of them can actually quit working at the Magnus Institute - Tim has been testing that very thoroughly - but this is a step beyond. He meets Jon's eyes, and Jon looks surprised, and sorry.
"Martin," he says gently, "I really don't think that's a good idea. The Lukases --"
"Bullshit," Martin says emphatically. He can feel the color rising in his cheeks, as much anger as it is embarrassment. "This is - Jon, marriage, really? It's absurd."
Jon grimaces and rubs his temples. "I'm well aware," he says dryly. "But Elias made it very clear that the consequences for defying the Lukases now, when we're faced with the threat of the Unknowing, would be --" He pauses, glances back up at Martin's face, and apparently doesn't like what he sees. "Very bad," he finishes lamely.
Martin is aware he has his arms folded across his chest and is glaring at Jon like a teacher with a recalcitrant schoolchild, but he can't seem to make himself stop. Jon is willing to just go along with this, after the threat of a murder investigation, his increasingly supernatural abilities, that creepy cop apparently kidnapping him, whatever it was that happened to his hand, and Martin is not prepared to just sit back and let him. They have no right to ask this of him.
Then Jon glances up at the closed door to his office and sighs. He raises his voice and calls out, "You might as well come in."
The door opens and there's Tim, leaning against the frame with something resembling his old teasing grin on his face, and Melanie beside him, looking very much as if she'd been listening to their conversation with her ear pressed against the door. Neither of them seem even slightly sorry.
"Congratulations, boss," Tim says, "you've managed to find a whole new way for this place to fuck up your life. I didn't think it could get much worse, but," he spreads his arms in a broad shrug, "guess I was wrong."
"It was hardly my idea," Jon mutters. He runs a hand through his hair again, then straightens his shoulders in a way that Martin recognizes from particularly draining statements. All at once his anger is replaced with pained sympathy. Of all the people to be faced with this... "Well," he continues, "now at least you all known, although it shouldn't make much difference for now. As he's an avatar of a power of loneliness, I can't imagine we'll be seeing much of Captain Lukas. The -" he pauses very briefly. "The date is set for June."
"Oh, June weddings are lovely," Tim says, dripping sarcasm.
"With any luck the Unknowing will be before then and maybe we'll be in a better position to negotiate," Jon continues as if Tim hadn't spoken.
There's a long silence. "Okay," Melanie says when no one else has a response. "That's -" She looks around at them, a little helplessly. "This is really weird, right? Even for here? I mean this is a lot."
"That's what I said!" Martin agrees, nearly at a squeak. Tim just shrugs.
Jon sighs, but he nods a little, too. "Be that as it may," he says in his best "I am your boss and I've made a decision" voice, "this is my problem to deal with, not yours. I need all of you focused on the Unknowing. With any luck the rest of this," he gestures, then grimaces when he realizes he's used his left hand, "will all take care of itself."