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It’s late at night. Jon fell asleep in his office, and went out to go splash water on his face, and when he comes back, he groggily lets himself back into the office without checking, like an idiot.
There is a massive figure inside. Jon jumps so hard he literally hits the ceiling. “Oh my god,” he yelps, flattening against the wall. “...Michael?”
“Not exactly,” says the visitor.
Jon immediately knows the voice. The shape hanging from the ceiling struts is Helen.
“Helen?” Jon gapes. “What – what happened to you?”
The last Jon saw her was weeks ago. When he came into the office at the break of day, she was waiting outside the building, and she gave a statement about the odd behavior of one of her roostmates. Over time it became clear that said roostmate could only have been Michael.
After the statement, Jon was unusually moved, and decided to be gallant and see a drowsy Helen to the door. As she stepped outside the building, the same familiarly strange bat with the yellow fur seemed to drop out of the sky and lunge for her, dripping fangs wide. Helen screamed at a pitch that temporarily deafened everyone in the lobby. She leapt into flight, and the force of her takeoff left Michael holding a flap of her wing in his mouth. It fell out of his bloody teeth as he reoriented and took off after her with clumsy, mechanical wingstrokes, but as soon as he was outside of the doorway, he seemed to vanish into the daylight.
Obviously, Jon phoned the police immediately. When they showed up, they made it clear that their chase was elsewhere and quickly took to the wing. Which left Jon, Sasha, Tim, and Martin standing around staring at the piece of loose, bloody flesh on the floor. Until Martin (unexpectedly showing the strongest stomach) went and got a plastic bag and put it in the bin.
Among other things, it struck Jon as weird that Michael hadn’t gone ahead and eaten it. Like, what else could he possibly be after?
Later calls reported that Helen was alive and at home. No further information was conveyed, and she never answered her phone. The status of Michael was not disclosed, but Jon assumed they hadn’t caught him.
The last Jon saw of Michael, he was walking Jon out of the Circus's headquarters through a long series of impossible dark tunnels. He was whispering about the life of a man who didn’t exist anymore into his ear. Then they took a turn and the tunnel suddenly stopped, unexpectedly, and started to fray at the seams, and Jon saw Michael look afraid for the first time ever.
I thought he must have killed you, Jon thinks, but he doesn't say it.
“Michael tried to attack me,” Helen explains. Her voice grates and it’s inexplicably wet. “I was asleep and he cuddled up next to me one day in the roost. And it seemed so normal, but then he got closer. I realized who it was and, you know, I tried.”
She gestures with her wings when she talks – she did back when she gave her statement too, a little, restrained. Jon hasn’t spent much time with bats; it’s always odd but it wasn’t anything to write home about. But now she does it all the time. It’s these big gestures and her wings are so opaque and they have so many joints, inside them, it’s like her whole shape is expanding and contracting. Her fur is rougher and maybe different colors, so it’s hard to judge the depth. Like she is a living panel of inconsistent size.
Right now, she spreads her wings all the way. Jon thinks she’s just shuffling at first, like usual. He sees the patch missing from the lower bit of one. Then he spots the little bite marks all along the bottom of her wings. Little red divots of half-moon pinpricks, like swollen lacework.
“Does that hurt?” Jon asks, stupidly. He knows wing membranes are sensitive, like the rest of a bat.
But Helen just smiles and says, “No.”
“What else did he do to you?” Jon asks.
“Aren’t you caring,” Helen coos. “Don’t you want to know out of the goodness of your heart. The sun was up for a long time. What else do you think he did?”
“I’m sorry,” says Jon, honestly. “How is your wing?”
“My wing is nothing,” says Helen. “And I am everything.”
She stares. Jon has no idea what she means by that. His head is racing.
“...Where is Michael now?”
“Michael is dead.”
Somehow, that answer both does and doesn’t surprise Jon.
“They found him fallen to the floor of the roost one evening,” Helen goes on. “He was in a coma. I don’t think he even lasted to the hospital. The poor paramedics. Hands full of tools and they couldn’t do a thing for what was wrong with him.”
“Did you kill him?” Jon asks.
Then he regrets it, because Helen smiles. Slowly, like a true dawning joy. Her wide and wet mouth widens and wettens, and shows her many, white, insect-grinding teeth.
“Yes,” she says.
“Ah,” says Jon, pressing back into the wall. He can’t think of what else to say.
“Or rather, I didn’t then. But I did now. I wasn’t me yet back then. Not all of me.”
Despite himself, Jon feels bad for her. The woman who came to his office before was bright and with-it. Whatever was happening to her, it was clearly destabilizing her mind.
Helen notices his demeanor. “Don’t pity me, Archivist. No, really. Don’t. Michael gave me a gift. I can’t give it to you as well, as much as I’d love to, but at least I can enjoy it."
Duty, and the still-inexplicable fact that she’s here at all, force Jon to ask: “Do you want to give a statement?”
“That’s a generous offer, but I don’t think I have much to tell you.”
“About what happened? You seem surprisingly… positive about your gift.”
“Archivist, why do you need a statement? He gave me the gift right here. Don’t you remember? It happened in your doorway.”
“…” Jon stares at her. “… Are you here to kill me?”
“No,” says Helen, folding and unfolding. “Like I said, it wouldn’t take. …And anyhow, I’m not hungry.”
Helen leaves the Archives without incident, thank god. But the visit is one more in a pile of factors that are not doing anything for Jon’s mental stability.
By the end of the next day, the – the problem in him is simmering, so large in the surface of his mind that it’s nearly overwhelming. Unlike last time, rather then spending two and a half hours trying and failing to process statements without making any progress, he wastes only about twenty minutes on tortuous chains of thought before he gives up. He checks to make sure his assistants aren’t looking, and slips out of the Archives.
He knocks on Elias’s door. Elias says, “Come in.”
Jon does and shuts it behind him and Elias looks at him, appraising, attentive, like he always does. He lifts a wing. Jon nearly flies under it.
Then the anxiety loosens its grip. Turns to putty, clay, something manageable. Pressed against Elias, it’s like being thrown into a stupor for a moment, that’s how hard the relief hits. A bit of a rush. All his limbs slacken. He could drown in it.
After a minute, Elias turns and starts grooming him, gently, without breaking contact. Jon shudders and feels embarrassed at how good it feels. Didn’t you only start really dreaming about grooming after Prentiss, after a major infection? He thinks, Isn’t that just a little clichéd?
Clichéd or not, it really is nice, the hands brushing around the edges of each plate. And it’s nothing invasive – just a little attention, something sweet for Elias to do on top of this insane tolerance for the thing wrong with Jon. Like Elias is going out of his way to demonstrate no, of course I’m not just humoring you, I WANT you to be well. Which is again so kind of him that it’s hard to look at. Jon leans his head further into the darkness of Elias’s side.
“Do you think it’s getting stronger?” Elias asks. His voice is soft and kind. “You really needed this.”
That's the worst part, is that he knows Elias isn't like this. Most of the time, at least. He'd seen what remained of Jurgen Leitner's corpse. No wonder the others were terrified of Jon when they thought he might have eaten him. Jon isn't even sure Elias waited til he was dead, first.
“I’m fine,” says Jon, automatically. He has to talk with just one leg.
“Mm,” says Elias. “You’ve been hard at work.”
“Yes,” Jon allows. He’s quiet for a few minutes. “...Helen came by. From the Michael statement. The one we called the police for?”
“Yes, I remember. What did she want?”
“She has what Michael had. She says he’s dead. She’s like him now.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Yes,” says Jon.
“Mm.”
“But,” Jon adds, fighting a sudden wave of tiredness. “she didn’t seem hostile. Like she just… wanted us to know.”
“She didn’t attack you, did she?” Elias asks. He sounds mildly annoyed by the possibility, like Helen is some ill-behaved youth. Wasn’t causing any mischief, did she?
“No.”
“That’s good.”
Elias’s hands still on Jon’s back. “I ought to get back to work. I suppose you’d like to stay here a bit longer?”
“Yes, please,” says Jon, sheepishly.
The next time she shows up unannounced, Jon realizes why Helen’s voice is wet. She's drooling constantly. She might have been last time, but now it's so much so that now it’s dripping from her head.
Jon shudders. Michael was the same way.
“Why are you here?” he asks her.
“I’m not entirely sure,” says Helen. “To talk? I’m having trouble, figuring out how to be. And maybe I want to talk with someone who gets it.”
“What could I get about you?” asks Jon, genuinely baffled.
“Well, Archivist,” says Helen, “Neither of us are like our kind. Not any more.”
How could she know that, thinks Jon, but he feels like he ought to know already, or that asking what she means will reveal even more. He stays silent.
“It makes one so isolated.” Helen sighs.
Almost involuntarily, Jon imagines huddling up to Helen. Her too-warm skin in folds, enveloping, closing around him. Her wild eyes and her drooling, wet mouth. Her fur, certainly, would be wet. The way her words come out misshapen because her jaw snaps shut.
“I think you should leave,” he tells her. He's aware he doesn’t sound convinced.
“What got on the floor?” Tim asks, about the drops of white saliva. Still thick with bubbles.
Jon grimaces. “Don’t bother about it.”
Elias isn’t very helpful with all the Unknowing business, which is infuriating, but he does like Jon, and he is gentle with Jon. Which makes the whole predicament much less awful than it might be. Until one day, Elias is alone with him, indulging him, and then Elias’s hands suddenly tighten around the bend of his leg. He can’t move it. The rest of him spasms, when he realizes what's happening, and Elias wiggles that leg silently. “Jon. Relax.”
He leans more of his weight on Jon, and lifts one of Jon’s wings. Jon really and truly understands, for the first time, how much the contact makes him calmer than he otherwise would be, because he knows he'd be leaping out of his skin otherwise. He tries to relax.
Elias’s other hand finds where his leg meets his body, and runs it from the inner corner – just under his tympanum – up the side of his exposed abdomen, skirting below his spiracles.
“Elias,” Jon tries. This has never happened before.
“Shh.” He does it again, the same way. From tympanum up his abdomen far as Elias’s hand can reach. Jon feels Elias’s antennae prodding two discrete spots on his thorax. “You need help.”
“I’m, I’m flattered, Elias, but – ”
“Shh. Let me help you.” Elias starts to shift. Jon’s fear spikes, suddenly sharp, and he squirms, but Elias has hooked a leg over him now, leaning on him, and the full contact and pressure is very nice except that Jon’s free leg is restricted to a very narrow angle of speech. “Do you not know what to do? It’s alright. You’ll see.”
It should, Jon thinks, feel more like an emergency than it does. He's seen Elias eat people. Even worse, he now has plenty of reach. He strokes Jon’s abdomen in long swathes, up to where the hard plates give way at the end.
Jon whimpers. That much noise is easy. One of Elias’s hands pets his back with the grooming motion he was doing before, calming – but the other feels at the soft parts at the end of his abdomen. Stroking, probing. He reaches in and does something that makes Jon’s feet stomp and his whole abdomen curl.
“Relax,” says Elias.
When Elias eventually climbs off him, even once Jon’s legs are free, he can’t bring himself to speak. He still feels calm and accepting, somehow, like it hurts in his heart but it’s fundamentally solvable and addressable. Something is still wrong, but not inordinately so. He just needs some time to think. Elias kisses him (!) and sends him on his wordless way. Outside the office door, the anxiety starts in around the edges.
Nobody touches him on the bus, even brushes into him. He tries to remember the way an old song went. He tries very hard to focus on it.
When Jon finally gets home and locks the door behind him, he flops onto his bed and allows himself to reflect on the events of the day.
Then he goes to the bathroom and throws up.
Jon avoids Elias for as long as he can. But eventually he can’t be anywhere else anymore so he goes back to Elias’s office.
Elias lifts a forewing for him. “Jon,” he says, “I haven’t seen you in some time. Are you well?
“I – ” Jon gulps. He was planning to get this out first, but he gives in and bolts to the offered spot at Elias’s side, where it is, almost immediately, better. Easier to think, and calmer. Less dire. He has this.
“I appreciate this,” he says, quietly, and Elias hmms and rubs his leg on Jon’s, affectionately. In the close stillness, Jon re-finds his voice: “You’re very generous and I appreciate it. But I don’t enjoy sex, um, generally speaking. I thought you ought to know.”
The leg slows but doesn’t stop. Elias doesn’t answer right away and that’s fine, Jon’s just glad he said it and relatively coherently too. The ridges on their femura knock together, bubububump.
“Jon,” says Elias, slowly, softly. “What about what I need?”
– and Jon feels ashamed, soul-sick, for his behavior. He looks away.
“Don’t misunderstand. I’m glad you told me. But don’t you think this is affecting me too?” He runs his hand along the lower edge of Jon’s thorax, by the soft joint studded with parasite scars. Jon shudders. “I’m willing to help but there’s a natural response to having a pretty young thing so… close by.”
Oh. Oh, that’s how it is.
“...Well, natural for most of us, anyway,” Elias adds, and now Jon just feels bad. “Look, you have needs. Urges. I understand. I have needs too. I can’t just give everything I have freely. It wouldn’t be sustainable for either of us.”
“I… I’m not asking you for that,” says Jon, unsteadily.
“That’s good. Well, you know what I’m offering, then. …But again, I do appreciate knowing. I’ll be tactful. I won’t take advantage.”
“Right,” says Jon, hollow with anxiety. “...Right. Thank you.”
Worse yet, he thinks he might mean it.
In the dark, winding tunnels of Michael’s domain, Michael had tackled Jon and pinned him to the ground, and hung over him, making wet mouth sounds right by Jon’s head. He was catching his breath from the chase and gloating over his last victory in the moment before the kill.
In that moment of being pinned flat, Jon had felt free. He wasn’t alone and there was nothing left for him to do. He could have sung for Michael, if he’d been allowed, that’s how much of a relief it felt.
Then, suddenly, Michael wrenched back, seizing and crying out in pain, and he’d stumbled and lain paralyzed for a moment. And Jon had hopped away, into a corner where the black membrane surrounding it was starting to tear, and he’d tumbled out into London, free for real.
He’d thought it was nerves. He thought it was the imminence of escape, that the past month had been hell and at least it would be over in a second. Even once Elias showed him how the Circus had changed him – had given him this dreadful problem, this need, and how it could be sated – he hadn’t quite revisited it. Hadn’t wanted to touch the sharp pieces.
Helen sends Jon a text asking if he knows how to get to the roof of the Institute. Jon has no idea how she got his number. He asked who it was, since it wasn't signed, and she'd sent a bat emoji and a hotel emoji, so, uh, yeah, sure. The Institute leaves a lot of doors unlocked when it’s Jon who’s trying them, and one of the weird ones on the top floor does let him up to the roof.
It turns out she’s just making social calls now. Jon decides he does not object to taking a break. He’s miserable and sore today, but you wouldn’t tell anything particular by looking at him. He sits down beside her.
Helen sits crouched on fours like a mouse. She’s thinner these days, bones protruding, hollows around her joints. If she feels bad, it’s impossible to tell. Jon rather suspects she’s beyond such things. The swirls in her fur look more and more like an invitation.
Jon says, companionably: “It’s the middle of the day, shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“I think I like the daylight,” says Helen. “I never got to appreciate it before. How many shadows there are. All that blue.” She waves an arm. “Isn’t it weird that there’s a thing in the sky that you’re not allowed to look at? I mean, doesn’t that bother you?”
“What, the sun?” Jon is incredulous, then cracks a grin. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it like that.”
“I figured you’d find it especially annoying. As a watching thing.”
“I mean,” says Jon, “It’s not as if we don’t know what it is.”
Helen chuckles. So Jon and a deranged starving bat sit around in the sunlight and watch London together.
“Do you have this… tension?” Jon asks. “Between what you want and what you want to want.”
“Give me an example,” says Helen, sensibly.
“Like…” He thinks. “Like you want to be back in your roost, and you want to bite anyone that comes near you.”
Helen laughs. “All I am is contradiction,” she tells him. “But I don’t think you’re built to handle that, Archivist. It’s not so much in your nature. Hanging onto these supposed tos will eat you up.”
“If I don’t have those, I won’t have anyone left,” Jon mutters.
“You could change that.”
“...I really don’t think I can.”
Helen sounds coy. “How do you think Elias did it?”
“I’m not eating anyone, Helen,” Jon says, dryly. Then he thinks about that. “Wait, what?”
“Well, to each their own.”
“Elias didn’t do this to me. It was – ”
“The Circus, I know, I saw,” says Helen. “Don’t you remember? I was there.”
She wasn’t, but whatever.
“The thing that saved you?” Helen asked. “That pulled Michael back? That was me. I liked you. I just couldn’t stand to let Michael rip your wings off.”
That can’t possibly be right. Helen had been at home, asleep in her roost.
But on the other hand, how else would she know?
Jon is in Elias’s office again, with Elias inside him, and he's trying desperately not to notice that. Perhaps he can notice the grain on the flooring instead. It’s real wood, which makes sense since the building is old. Pine? Maple? How would you even tell? He’s hot and cramping, and every time he twitches or squirms, he feels the intrusion like a steel pin, and every few minutes Elias sighs and things shift inside of him. Good lord. The moment he can think again and this is what’s happening to him. What a raw deal.
“There, there,” Elias mutters, loose and happy, from on top of him. He idly squeezes Jon’s abdomen and talks quietly, not expecting a response, almost to himself. “I do wonder if you’ll come to like it eventually. It’s entirely possible.”
Anger is emotion that gets muted when Jon is actively touching someone these days, but for a second, it's a hot spike: Where does he get the fucking nerve?
(Elias chuckles like he just remembered a good joke.)
Anyway, that anger fades too, and what else is Jon going to do, leave? Let the others fight the unknowing without any help at all? Cuddle Helen until he eventually starves in her corridors, or he gets too obnoxious and she literally bites his head off?
No, he thinks. He has resolved to trust the others and he has resolved to take Elias’s help. …Even if it’s more than he expected. Well, it’s hardly more embarrassing than the rest of it. God. Jon really needs to get over himself.
He’s not sure how he long he can keep it a secret, this problem, but he really, really, really doesn’t want to try and explain it. Not before and especially not now. It’s bad enough that Elias knows, enough if anything that Elias helps. He helps a little too much, even. No, Jon doesn’t need any more of that.
But for a couple days now, whenever he’s swung by Elias’s office, Elias has been… out, or something. Not there.
So Jon… just goes back to the Archives. He’s stressed and everything is slightly worse, but he has certainly worked through worse. He eats three graspirin and an adderall for breakfast and gets on with things. There are people down there, sometimes, until the building empties and there’s not, but there are still statements to read and categorize.
Once, Jon gets up from where he'd been sitting in the stacks for quite some time. He'd gotten caught up in reading. And he’s been alone for a long time and his whole body is reminding him of the physical therapy he cut short, although it had faded from memory, until, alas, right now. When he tries to stand, the scar tissue on one joint stretches to its limit and his leg snaps up and he falls, and the falling – god, Jon, what a mess you’ve become – and the falling snaps him right back to the sky, buffeted by the wind, his trajectory and sense of up and down just evaporated, they don’t even make those anymore, haven’t you heard. You haven’t? Oh, dear.
Jon screams. The room spins.
Martin finds him on the floor with his wings sprawled and his sore legs twitching, trying vertiginously to crawl out of a flashback.
Martin helps him up, and lets out a surprised oh! but doesn’t complain when he tries to stand Jon upright but Jon slumps right back into him. After a minute of tremulous inquiring, he just holds Jon steady and lets him gasp into his arm. The world stops spinning quite so fast.
“I’m sorry,” Jon mumbles, once he can speak. He doesn’t pull away. Martin puts a hand on his shoulder. “Can I just – ”
“Yeah,” says Martin. “Yeah, um, of course. Here, just…” He walks them to a couch so he can sit down. Jon follows, of course, keeping his head close to Martin’s. He doesn’t grab Martin, doesn’t want to touch his legs, doesn’t want to overstep. Martin is awkward and kind and endlessly patient. If Jon felt like he could do anything else than this, he would be.
“Just for a bit,” Jon says.
“’s alright,” murmurs Martin. They’re the last two in the Archives. “Long as you need.”
“Sorry.”
“Shh.” Martin, tentatively, puts a hand on Jon’s shoulder again, grooming lightly, like he’s trying to guess at what Jon wants out of this, or maybe just wondering if he’s allowed to at all. Jon takes it, gladly. Martin doesn’t try to do anything further to him, and Jon… supposes he didn’t actually expect him to, the longer he stays close and the more the part of his brain that actually thinks about other people rises to the surface. Like, even if he got the wrong idea, he’d ask first, or something. He wouldn’t push it. It’s Martin, for god’s sake.
The Unknowing is coming soon.
I hope I survive, Jon realizes, with alien clarity. I hope we both live through this.
Helen is a doorway within the tunnels that didn't exist before. Jon is in a black and pensive mood.
“Do you think he cared about you?” Jon asks, not looking at her.
“Michael?”
“Well, yes. Look, if I have it right, which I’m sure I don’t, part of what he was is you but part of him was just a man who had a life and did taxes. And now he’s not there except for the part of him that’s you but you’re also other things. Is that confusing enough to be right?”
Helen giggles. “I appreciate that you’re trying.”
“Well, back when you were both boring, you said he gave you a gift. Do you think he was giving it to you because he thought it would help you? Did he do it because he thought he was doing you a favor?”
“I don’t know,” says Helen. “Michael wasn’t strategic. I think he knew he had to pass it on and that was about it. And that it would work better if I was scared. I don’t forgive him for the rest. I really tried to fight him off. That was very important to me at the time, so I’ll mention it, but I really can’t mind now. The gift is so extraordinary. It’s a knowledge. A broadening. I am not what I am. I am more than I am. I do not fear the passing of time. I am the passing of time. I see inevitability. Michael had to give me the gift and then Michael had to die. I see why he did that. Now the gift is in me, and what he was, I am.”
The little logic hidden in it catches in Jon’s brain and burns in his thorax. I see why he did that. “Then why attack you? Why hunt you for days and days? Why… take his time? You were already afraid.”
“Oh, you mean the rest. To be honest, I think he did all that because he was a nasty little freak.”
Jon is surprised, and, surprising himself even more, he laughs. Helen laughs with him. Her laughter echoes like it’s coming from inside a much bigger space, but Jon is getting used to it.
Then she asks: “Why, what does yours tell you?”
Jon’s gut goes cold. “That’s - that’s different.”
Helen shrugs. “If you say so.”
“It’s not – he helps me.”
“And I’m sure he doesn’t get anything out of it, personally.”
“How could you – ” Jon tenses so much his voice goes out of pitch – “possibly know about that?”
Helen twists her wet black eyes and her large brown ears toward him. “…What do you think I’m talking about?”
Jon clams up.
“What else is he doing? …Ah.” Jon avoids looking at her. When she next speaks, she sounds distant and amused. “They’re really all reading from the same playbook, aren’t they?”
Jon can’t quite feel his legs all of a sudden. He still doesn’t look at her.
“...Yeah,” he rasps, eventually.
After another few moments, he adds: “...It’s a bit cliché, really.”
Helen chuckles. It echoes.
"I was thinking about a statement I don't remember well," Jon lies. "If someone had a run-in with an entity and came away with a, a pathological need to be physically around other people, what would you make of that? Sort of the Lonely, but opposite."
Frankly, he’s not sure that he can keep this a secret from the other staff forever. He’s more concerned with answers by now, which is why he’s finally raising the idea at all, but for the sake of his ego, he’d really like to avoid disclosure long as possible.
Apparently it’s working so far. Basira and Daisy look at each other.
"Hm," says Basira. "Maybe Corruption?"
"Hunt depending on their intentions," Daisy suggests.
"Didn't seem like it," says Jon.
"Could be some kind of Lonely trauma response, maybe..." Basira considers. "Though it also just sounds like gregarization, to be honest. Are you sure it didn't digitize?"
"... No, now that you mention it. I, I only skimmed it."
"Mm. Do you know where it was from?"
"I think..." Quickly, Jon reasons about which place must generate the most statements, statistically. "China?" Okay, but the Institute don't have many statements from there. "...But I could be misremembering." Nailed it.
"Makes sense, doesn't it?" Daisy jumps in. "Isn't that the thing, overcrowded apartments and third world prisons and all? Places shit's gone tits-up and people get packed in like sardines."
"I don't know if that actually still happens in China, but, I mean, yeah, that's the association," says Basira. "Were there any physical changes?"
"I - I think it had happened to the statement-giver rather recently," says Jon. "But again, I can't remember. I'm sure it's in the stacks somewhere."
"Just check in on them a few months later and that'd tell you for sure," Daisy points out. "Though I think some people never show it. Could rule the spooks out if they had, at least."
"Right," says Jon, distantly. "Right. That's a good point."
Jon’s first thought, thanking them and excusing himself from the conversation, is: I can’t believe I just successfully lied to Basira.
His second thought is: Huh.
"You are tense today, aren't you?" Elias rubs his back and Jon does, indeed, settle. But he stays alert. After a minute, Elias goes back to work, and Jon keeps calm and allows time to pass.
When he's built up his courage, Jon starts the experiment.
He puts a hand casually on Elias's carapace. Elias's mouth quirks a little, and one of his antennae wavers, but he doesn't otherwise react. That is a little unusual, him reaching for Elias, but perhaps he'll just think Jon is especially afflicted today. To support this, Jon affects relief.
After another while, he sighs and casually puts a hand on Elias's broad thigh, and rubs with his thumb.
That effect is pointed. Elias's leg tenses. Air sucks through his mouth sharply and rattles about his spiracles. His other foot suddenly drums in the ground. He turns to look at Jon, and his expression is curious and bemused.
Okay. Shit. No point in Jon pretending he didn't notice. He says a low, tired, desperate prayer: "Please don't misunderstand."
Elias raises just his other leg to speak, like Jon's stroking hand is an interesting butterfly he'd not disturb. "I suppose you're still experimenting?" he asks, amused.
Jon shrugs. Casually, he hopes, as if he's tranced out and exhausted. He doesn't know what Elias means. But he is paying quiet attention to how Elias responds, how Jon suddenly has his whole attention, how he sounds warm and fond.
Elias does not immediately start initiating sex (thank God) but, after contemplating, only puts his hand on Jon's head and grooms satisfyingly at the plates there, in a way Jon just goes weak for. Jon melts, predictably, on the outside.
You're like me, Jon thinks, with alien clarity. You're like me. You're like me. You're like me. The newfound knowledge is like curious nectar in his mouth. Another sharp shard of the answer. Jon eats it up.