Chapter Text
It was stupid of Jon to underestimate Elias. After the last few months of hell he should've know better than to assume Elias would keep his meddling fingers out of anything that involved his precious Archivist.
Either way, between kidnappings and office drama Jon just... forgets that Elias is just as much a monster as Nikola. He lets Melanie and Daisy plot Elias's demise without a second thought, lets Tim and Basira spit insults and threats, lets Martin glare and seethe and make snide comments under his breath. The fate of the world is at stake. Elias can handle himself and surely the man must have bigger problems to address than whatever pathetic attempts at insult or injury the archive staff can throw at him.
So, when Elias catches his arm before he can slip into the relative safety of the archives and tells him to meet him in his office after hours with a thin smile, Jon assumes it's going to be more of Elias's frustratingly useless hints along with some patronizing advice.
It was stupid and naive and Jon should have known better.
----
"What do you want?"
The rough question makes Elias sigh, eyes still trained on the paperwork strewn across his desk--a pointlessly elegant wooden construction that's probably worth more money than Jon sees in a year.
"Hello, Jon," Elias starts in a low, tired voice, "Has it occurred to you that it may be in your best interests to maintain at least the pretense of respect between us?"
"Somehow I doubt any of your suggestions have my best interests in mind," Jon says.
"A fair assumption, but wholly incorrect, I'm afraid," Elias raises his eyes to meet Jon's, and all at once Jon remembers who, exactly, he's talking to.
Pinned in place by the steady eyes of the Watcher, Jon finds himself holding his breath until Elias smiles softly and breaks the eye contact to stand from his desk and walk slowly to the other side, stopping a foot or two away from Jon.
"Believe me when I say, everything I have done since the moment you stepped foot in this Institute has been in your best interest," He says, "Everything."
He sighs again, scrubbing a hand over his face and leaning back against his desk. This time when he looks at Jon it's almost... fond.
"But I suppose it was hubris to think you would understand when you're still so... unfinished."
The hungry look that bleeds into Elias's eyes makes Jonathan's stomach lurch. It's a look he recognizes. It's the look of Jane Prentis, declaring the home she had found in the hive. It's the look of Jude Perry when she talked about Agnes, her savior. It's the look on Nikola's twisted plastic expression as she trailed her hands across his skin and spoke of the Dance. It's a look that makes Jon want to run yet fills his gut with the certainty that he wouldn't get very far.
He swallows around a dry throat and forces himself to respond, "You're right. I don't understand it, and, frankly, I don't care to. What do you want, Elias?"
The smile on Elias's face dims, and he inspects Jon quietly. It's as unsettling as it always is, but ever since he got back to the institute he's discovered with no small amount of nausea that a small part of him yearns for the attention. The Eye has instilled in him an unnatural craving to be Seen as he Sees others. Unfortunately, Elias fills that emptiness perfectly.
"Fine," Elias says eventually, "If you will not accept my kindness for what it is then perhaps you and your assistants will thrive under a firmer hand."
Before Jon can ask what the hell a firmer hand is supposed to mean, Elias takes a small step back, folds his arms, and continues.
"The behavior of the archive staff has been beyond unacceptable for far too long," He says firmly, "At first I assumed it was due to the lack of an Archivist while you were away, and when the situation did not improve upon your return I gave you the benefit of the doubt--you had been through quite the ordeal over the last few months, after all. But you've done nothing to correct the disrespect that's rampant in your subordinates. I even gave Melanie a taste of my particular brand of disciplinary action in hopes it may deter the others and had no success. Enough is enough, Jon. You clearly cannot handle the situation, so I am going to handle it for you."
The onslaught of quickly spoken words tangles up in Jon's mind as he tries to make sense of its implications. Even before he's worked out exactly what Elias's discipline might look like for his assistants a wave of protective defiance has already surged through his mind.
"No," He says before he can stop himself.
Elias stills before tilting his head ever so slightly, "No?"
"Archival assistants are my responsibility. You can't--"
"I assure you I can," Elias says.
Jon feels a nervous panic start to build under his skin, "You'll only make it worse," He says sharply, to which Elias's lip twitches in the ghost of a smile.
"That is rather the point of it all. That's why it's called a punishment."
"You can't possibly think traumatizing all of my archival assistants could possibly be helpful in our investigation--"
"That's just it, Jon," Elias cuts in again, sharp enough to have Jon's throat closing up tightly, strangling any other protests he had left, "This isn't about the investigation. This is about respect. Somehow, you all seem to have forgotten exactly where you stand in my institution."
The room begins to buzz with oppressive power that roots Jon to the spot. Elias's lips curl into a sneer, and for a moment Jon could have sworn the man's eyes glowed a sickly, inhuman green.
"You are mine ." Elias's hand darts out to catch Jon's jaw between deceptively strong fingers, leaning close as he says the next words, "Each and every one of you lives and breathes because I allow it, and I'm starting to think some of your assistants aren't worth the trouble."
The grip on his jaw softens and Elias's smile returns, twisted into a cruel mockery.
"Who should I start with first?" Elias asks, thumb brushing across Jon's cheekbones, "Daisy? No, Basira--two birds with one stone and all that. Or perhaps Tim. Now that would be a satisfying session, seeing the man who always has an insult in his back pocket broken and speechless in front of me," Jon inhales sharply, and Elias's smile grows, "And of course, your favorite... Martin is such a soft man, isn't he?"
Jon's stomach drops.
"Have you ever seen him cry?" Elias says, " Really cry, none of those crocodile tears, but gut deep sobs that leave him struggling to even breath--"
"Enough," Jon forces out, somehow breathless when all he's done is stand and listen.
"Ask nicely," Elias says, voice soft and melodic but laced with the steel of a demand.
"Please, Elias," Jon says, too caught up in images of his friends at Elias's mercy to feel embarrassed at the plea.
Then, just like that, with one last lingering brush of his fingers across Jon's cheek and jaw, Elias steps back, his shark-like smile softened into a more familiar curl. Jon's heart is pounding in his chest and he's flush with fear.
"Have I made my point, Archivist?"
Jon closes his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the way he can still feel Elias's gaze burrowing straight through his chest to the erratic beating of his heart. When he opens his eyes again, Elias has returned to the seat behind his desk.
"Yes," Jon says quietly, "Loud and clear."
"Good," Elias says, "Well, I'm sure you have work to do, and I've given you more than enough to think about. Come to my office in a week, same time, and we'll discuss the particulars."
With that Elias returns to the paperwork on his desk in clear dismissal.
Jon stands there for a few more minutes, not sure what else to do, until he’s gathered enough of his scattered thoughts to turn quietly on his heel and stumble out of the office.
Fuck.
----
The week passes in a blur.
The threat of the Unknowing along with all the rest of the interoffice conflict that had already been wearing Jon down compounds with the threat Elias had left hanging over his head like an executioner's ax and leaves Jon scattered and useless most of the days. Every spare moment between research and flicking through statements, Jon's mind desperately searches for an alternative he could present to Elias that the man would actually accept, and every time he manages a half-decent idea he slams against the barrier of Elias's cold resolve.
Elias wants punishment, he demands it, and what Elias wants, really truly wants, he gets. Jon Knows it. Jon has Seen it.
But one thing keeps his hope alive.
We'll discuss the particulars. That's what Elias had said. We'll discuss.
It's not an accident that Elias left the particulars ambiguous. Jonathan is expected to bargain here--bargain with what he can't even begin to guess.
By the time the day has arrived Jon has shot down every idea he's managed except one, if you can even call it an idea at all.
He'll have to ask.
There's no way to know what Elias wants from him unless Jon bites the bullet and asks the man himself.
It puts him in an awful negotiating position, but frankly, Jon isn't naive enough to think there was any winning in this situation to begin with. He'll have to accept Elias's terms or let his friends suffer for it.
Jon is nauseous the entire day before the meeting, and his hands won't stop shaking as he fumbles his way through recording a statement. His miserable anxiety must be even more obvious than usual, because Martin brings him tea four times, and even Tim sends him a few vaguely concerned glances.
It’s telling that despite obviously noticing something is wrong, neither of them ask Jon about it.
----
"I'm glad you've decided to speak with me today, Jon."
Jon isn't. In fact, he's regretting stepping into this office more and more with each moment.
"I really do think there's a compromise that will benefit all of us," Elias continues, "And I would hate to have to resort to… less refined tactics."
"What do you want?" Jon tries to say it steadily, but it comes out in a tired whisper instead.
Elias hums, fiddling with a pen in his left hand as he pretends to think it over.
"Compensation," He settles on eventually, "Your employees have caused me a lot of stress, Jon. I want something to make me feel better. To help me relax," His eyes bore into Jon's, overwhelming yet impossible to turn away from, "Do you think you can help me with that? Or should I ask someone else?"
"What-" Jon's voice gets stuck in his throat. He clears it and starts again, "What would this… compensation entail?"
"Oh, nothing awful," Elias says with a smile, "In fact, it can be quite pleasurable if both parties behave. You can behave, can't you, Jon?"
There's an idea forming in the back of Jon's mind, some distant part of him putting together the pieces of what Elias is implying.
"If it's so pleasurable," Jon hates how awkward the word is in his mouth, "Then why use it as a punishment? Wouldn't that be ineffective?"
Jon doesn't really care about the answer. At this point he's just stalling for time, pushing off what's happening to give his brain a chance to make sense of it all.
"Not at all," Elias replies, "In my experience, pleasure is far more adept than pain at correcting behavior, and its effects tend to last longer," He stands from his office chair and walks around his desk to stand in front of Jon, "Let me demonstrate."
Jon pitches back instinctively when Elias reaches out, but his jerky reaction isn’t enough to stop the long spindly fingers from locking around his jaw and yanking him back forward. He shoves at the grip on his face and arm, words falling out his lips in disjointed pieces–
And then it stops.
He can still feel Elias’s hands on him, he can still hear the steady crooning of his voice in his ear, but his sight has been replaced by a dizzying third person vision of himself, backed against Elias’s desk.
“Do you know what it feels like Jon? To be touched?” Elias smiles, reaching up to drag his fingers across the arch of Jon’s cheek, fondly, “No?”
“Elias–”
He shushes Jon, his other hand rising to trail down his arm, and Jon twitches, something confused and hungry in his eyes.
“You tell people you don’t like it,” Elias continues, still absently touching him, “But that’s not true, is it? It’s just easier that way. After all, your grandmother never touched you. Why would she? You were a nuisance. A parasite. Touching you would mean admitting that you were her responsibility. Would mean admitting that her daughter was really, truly gone.”
Jon’s head swims. That isn’t real. What he’s seeing isn’t real, it wouldn’t make sense. He can feel where he’s standing. He isn’t backed against a desk, Elias isn’t trailing his hands down his arm. It doesn’t– he doesn’t–
“And you never had friends. Certainly never friends who were interested in touching you. Even in university when you finally broke out of that awful, awful loneliness you had already built up that prickly exterior, told everyone you hated the lot of it, but oh, Jon… you ached didn’t you?”
He tries to speak, to move, to fight back, but he can’t see.
“Even Georgie… sweet, lovely Georgie… she tried so hard, and you shoved her away. You spat at her affection, bit the hand that fed you, and eventually, like everyone else in your miserable life, she stopped trying. You convinced everyone that you hated being touched.”
The touch of Elias’s hands turns firm, almost bruising. It makes part of Jonathan burn.
And it makes part of Jonathan sing.
Elias leans closer, close enough that Jon can feel his lips brush the shell of his ear.
“Everyone except me.”
----
Jon’s eyes snap open, woken by a sharp breath hissing through his clenched teeth. The weight of the blankets he has piled on his cot suddenly feels oppressive, but he can’t bring himself to throw them off. Not when he can still feel Elias’s breath hot against his face and feel his hands digging into his jaw and waist. Not when the images he’d had shoved into his mind yesterday evening in Elias’s office feel just as real as the sweat drenched pillow beneath his head.
Maybe they are real.
Isn’t that something people’s brains do when they’re being attacked? Send them to a safe little mental box so they can forget what’s happening to their body? Maybe that’s what’s happening to Jon.
He can’t tell, he can’t Know.
It’s that thought more than any other that makes his fingers twitch, then his arm, then shoulder, until he can finally pull himself up, throwing a hand out to find the water bottle he always sets on the floor next to the cot.
It isn’t there.
After a few minutes of pawing around in the dark, he remembers why.
When he’d stumbled out of Elias’s office last night, he’d tried to calmly return to the lower levels, but the second he was within the archive walls, his fear came spilling out of him—literally.
He was lucky he’d managed to aim most of the vomit into a trashcan.
The water bottle had been used to wash the taste out of his mouth. In a moment of poor foresight, he’d left it at the bathroom sink, too eager to get to the (relative) safety of his makeshift room.
Looking back, he’s not quite sure why he was so… affected.
Elias barely touched him. Even the mental projection he had shoved into Jon’s mind had been relatively tame compared to what Jon had been expecting. Hell, he’d forced Melanie to live through her father’s painful death. Compared to that, wandering hands and a few words whispered in Jon’s ear hardly even counts as punishment.
The old adage “if it seems too good to be true” echoes in the back of his mind.
Jon swallows, trying to banish the lingering taste of sickness in his mouth. Yes , he thinks, I know better.
Elias isn’t known for going easy . It would be best for Jon to be prepared for some kind of future assault on his mind or person, just to be safe.
As he slips out of bed to fetch his abandoned water bottle, his mind slowly fills with possibilities.
Jon’s never been good at reading these sorts of things, but it would be stupid of him not to consider the sexual implications in his encounter with Elias. If that was really what Elias was intended to threaten him with—and that’s a big if considering Elias has a habit of making anything from a threat to a McDonalds menu sound like a double entendre—then Jon needs to prepare himself.
He tries not to think too hard about the specifics of what Elias said. The man is a manipulative bastard. Dwelling on his jabs is asking for trouble, and trouble is the last thing Jon needs more of at the moment.
…but he also knows that Elias weaponizes truth as often as he does lies.
You convinced everyone that you hated being touched… Everyone except me.
The assumption makes Jon itch to snap back with a rebuttal. In the office, Elias hadn’t given him any time to explain, to defend himself.
He doesn’t convince people he hates being touched. He does hate being touched—and he’s allowed that! It isn’t his fault the rest of the world has decided to enjoy constantly draping themselves over each other, shoving their hands in faces or arms around shoulders. Jon never wanted any of that. He never needed any of that.
It’s one of the things that’s kept him so alone.
Absently, he wonders if Tim would have turned on him quite so quickly if he had let the man hug, lean, and shove—and kiss if Tim’s reputation is anything to go by.
The man had always seemed colder after Jon ducked under a reaching arm or stepped back from a potential embrace.
He wonders if that is why the rest of the archive finds it so easy to believe him a monster.
Elias was right about one thing. His insistence that he not be touched unless completely necessary had driven Georgie crazy. She would go on and on about social needs, the benefits of physical touch, psychology , but, just like Elias had said, even she couldn’t try to fix him forever. It was, perhaps, the principal reason why they had parted ways all those years ago.
He stares into the depths of his steel water bottle, the recently filled water creating the illusion of an infinite darkness just beyond the lid.
“...Jon?”
He curses, flinching violently and sending the water bottle crashing to the ground, spilling all over the dingy bathroom tile. When he whirls around he’s met with a wide eyed Martin, already starting to stammer out apologies.
“God, sorry, I didn’t mean to—well, I did mean to, but not like that, and I really should have made some kind of sound or something—”
“It’s fine, Martin,” Jon bites out with a sigh, “Just… help me clean this up. Please.”
Martin falls silent, searching eyes landing on Jon as he starts pulling sheets of paper towels from the dispenser and mopping up the mess.
A few seconds later Martin has joined him in the effort, and the pair make quick work of the spill before Jon fills up his water bottle again, eager to be back to his cot.
"Jon, are you–well, I know you're not okay. None of us are okay," Martin says with a sigh, "But something's been off with you for weeks now. What's going on? Is it something about the Unknowing?"
"No, no it's not that."
"Then what?"
Jon hums noncommittally, knowing he can't tell Martin what he's seen, what he's been shown, but perhaps it would be best to warn him somehow. He doesn't want any of his assistants giving Elias more ammo to use against him.
"It's nothing, really," He starts, "Just… stay away from Elias. He's dangerous."
Martin looks at him in confusion.
"Um, yeah. I mean, I kinda figured since he, y'know, killed Gertrude and all."
"Yes, well," Jon huffs, "Leave him alone, alright? No snide comments or whatever it is you people do in your free time. We have enough to deal with without people antagonizing him."
"I guess."
Martin doesn't sound convinced, but at this point Jon figures he's done his part. Either Martin listens or he doesn't. Nothing Jon can do about that.
"Jon, did Elias do something to you?"
"What? No, no Elias didn't--why would you think that he-that he did something?"
The words tumble out immediately and not for the first time Jon wants to wither away in the face of how absolutely awful a liar he is.
Martin stares at him.
"You know you can tell me, ri—"
"Shouldn't you be working?" Jon snaps.
"It's, like, 4 am Jon."
"Sleeping then. Anything other than bothering me with pointless questions."
"I–" Martin starts before stopping to sigh, "Okay. Alright, Jon. I'm leaving. But just for the record–"
"I really don't–"
"Just for the record," Martin insists, "If, for some reason, Elias had done something to you, it would be best if we handled it as a team. Elias is a manipulator, Jon. He's at his strongest when you're alone."
"Good thing he hasn't done anything to me then."
Jon meets Martin's tired eyes defiantly, and the man just stares at him for a few moments before nodding.
"I hope you get some rest," Martin says eventually.
Jon nods stiffly, "You as well."
With one last tired, worried glance, Martin walks out the door, leaving Jon to grip his water bottle tightly until the footsteps have faded and the only sound is the eerie, faint rushing of water through plumbing