Archive of Our Own

He and Tim arrive at the Institute at the same time—not because Tim has suddenly started showing up early, but because Jon's phone died during the night and without his alarm his body decided it needed to sleep until noon. Even if he didn't have an apocalypse to stop it would be irritating. 

"Well hello," says Elias as he walks in. Jon doesn't bother acknowledging him as he tugs his scarf off. There are snowflakes melting on his glasses. "I was starting to wonder if you’d been kidnapped again. And a good afternoon to you too, Tim."

He and Tim make similar displeased noises. 

"What’s all this?” Tim asks. Jon finally looks up and finds that Elias and Rosie, who is also in the hallway, are wearing cone hats.

"Didn't you guys get my email?" Rosie asks, brandishing a cupcake. "Today is Elias's birthday."

"Oh goodie," says Jon, continuing to walk right past them. 

"Do you want a—"

"Would I like to celebrate my boss's birthday instead of figuring out how to avert the apocalypse? No, I would not actually, thank you Rosie. Have a great day."

He hears Rosie make a confused sound as he walks off. "What was that?"

"You know Jon and his sense of humor," Elias says dismissively. There is no chance that she does. "Did you want a cupcake, Tim?"

Before the doors down to the Archive swing shut he hears Tim say, “…yeah, I’ll take a morally dubious cupcake.” 

*

Jon reads through his statement during his lunch hour. It's a standard affair: a woman who finds that every food item she touches rots in her hands and no one seems to notice. It’s disgusting and alarming in turn with no follow up whatsoever. He rubs at his eyes once he's done, blinking some of the strain from them.

He knows he's gotten stronger in the last few months but still the statements drain him. He drums his fingers along the surface of his desk and stares at the coffee he made himself earlier specifically for this purpose. 

Elias will only give him one helpful statement a week and seems to believe that he can't handle any more. It's true enough that it takes time for him to feel fully like himself after a statement but surely that's not the deciding factor in whether or not he should keep working. 

Letting his stubbornness lead, Jon reaches into one of the many, many piles of boxes in his office and withdraws half a dozen statements at random, uncaring of their content. He piles them into one large stack on his desk. And look at that: the tape recorder which he was certain he turned off a few minutes ago is up and running. How convenient. Jon swallows his lukewarm coffee in several bitter swallows and clears his throat. 

*

Sometime later he's awoken by the pressure of warm fingers at his throat. 

"No, he hasn't responded yet," Elias is saying from somewhere nearby with a note of urgency in his voice. "I don't think he's dead if that's what you're asking. He's got a pulse. I think it’s a bit fast—"

Jon lifts his head from the desk."105bpm."

Elias flinches and draws his fingers away in alarm. He's holding his phone in his other hand and leaning over Jon where he's been collapsed over his desk. A piece of paper from the last statement Jon read slides off his cheek to join the rest on the floor. 

"Hold that thought, I think he's coming round. Jon?"

"Jonathan Sims, head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London," Jon intones. He knows Elias is staring at him inquisitively but he can't seem to turn his head. 

"Right....yes, thank you for your help. I won't be needing an ambulance after all. Sorry to waste your time." He pockets his phone. "Jon? Are you dying?"

"No." Jon attempts to sit upright in his chair. "It's severe fatigue brought on by—"

"...Jon?"

"Yes." Jon blinks several times. It seems he passed out mid-sentence and woke up again as his face smacked into the table. His mouth tastes vaguely of blood. "Sims. Magnus Institute, London."

"I remember that bit.” A hand touches the back of his beck. “You’ve done something very foolish, haven’t you?" 

“That is a subjective matter,” Jon says into the wood grain of his desk. 

Elias pushes him upright. Now that he’s looking he can tell Elias is experiencing a genuine kernel of concern beneath his very obvious curiosity about what's happening to Jon. A layer of faked empathy, masking his curiosity, masking a deep, more uncomfortable concern. How difficult it must be to live the way Elias does. 

"Have you fainted with your eyes open or are you just staring at me?"

"The latter." 

"Can’t fault you for that." Elias wipes at his bleeding nose with one of the tissues from his desk. Jon wobbles unsteadily at every touch. "Forget it, come on. Let's get you up." 

Jon's head still hurts badly, and not just from face-planting into his desk. Through the deafening symphony in his skull he observers Elias dragging him upright. He manages to get his feet under him but little else. Elias puts his arm over his shoulder and begins to move the two of them towards the door. 

"I can't imagine a hospital would do you much good," Elias is saying. "Best thing for it may be to let you sleep this off. Jon, if you're not going to walk I'll be forced to bridal carry you out of the Institute which I imagine will be very embarrassing for you once you're in your right mind." 

He remains slumped against Elias's shoulder, face pressed into his throat. "You aren't physically strong enough to do that," he mumbles. 

"I like to think I'd make a decent go at it." 

The hallway, the upstairs, and everything else in existence is far too bright for the headache he's sporting. Elias pats himself down. 

"Left coat pocket." 

"I beg your pardon?" Elias says, a touch incredulous. After another moment he leans Jon against the wall and pulls his keys from the correct pocket. "Oh. Alright. Good to know you can do that now." 

*

In the car, while Jon is melting into the door and barely contained by his seatbelt, Elias explains that he'll be taking Jon home with him as he's concerned about his physical state. He also claims not to know Jon's address, which is a lie. 

At a red light Elias stops to look over at him. His human eyes don't see much beyond Jon's hardly conscious, haggard state. Jon becomes briefly aware of Elias making an attempt to read his thoughts, which he's done many times before. 

"Oh my god," Elias says, drawing back from Jon's mind and physically recoiling. He rubs his temples with a pained noise. "It's like someone’s blasting white noise through your skull. How the hell are you coherent at all?"

Jon slides several inches down the cool glass of the window. "I am the Archivist." He points outside. "Green light." 

*

Jon is unconscious for the duration of the drive and wakes up briefly as Elias is helping him out of his car. He wakes up once more as he's being shoved into Elias's spare room and maneuvered towards the bed. 

"I hate to ask," Elias starts—another lie, he loves to ask, "but are you going to be alright?"

"Yes." 

"I meant are you going to be back to relative normal at some point instead of whatever this is?"

"Yes." 

"That’ll have to be good enough for me." 

Elias dumps him down unceremoniously and then takes the time to remove Jon's shoes, coat and scarf. He lingers when he's done, staring at Jon’s semi-conscious sprawl from his seat on the bed. 

"You've certainly made a mess of yourself," he says, sounding fond. "Sleep well."

"Good night, Jonah," he mumbles. 

Elias has some kind of response to that, something frightened and confused, but the bed is very comfortable. Even with a hand shaking his shoulder he's already asleep. 

*

Instead of waking up in his cluttered studio apartment with his ever growing floordrobe and his packed bookshelves, Jon wakes up in a tidy but completely unfamiliar bedroom that he has no memory of. 

"What the hell," Jon says to the strange room, throwing an arm over his eyes. His head hurts, his throat is incredibly dry, and his entire body is tingly with a soreness that reminds him uncomfortably of his childhood growing pains. Having just woken up he is somehow still exhausted but he doesn't like the idea of falling asleep again in a strange location.

Has he been kidnapped again? God, that would be embarrassing. But at least these accommodations are nicer than his last. 

Jon staggers his way over to the door, cursing under his breath. 

"Ah," says Elias, "good evening, Jon. You look well."

Jon squints dry eyes at him. Elias is dressed down from his usual work wear, not by a significant degree but no coat or tie is more than Jon usually sees from him. His hair is a little less tidy too. More importantly he's sitting on the couch and sliding a bookmark into a book, because he's relaxing in his own home. Which Jon is currently in. 

"Whatever this is," Jon says, gesturing at Elias, the room, and the situation in general, "I don't like it."

"I imagine not, but it was your own doing." 

"No, the statements were my doing. This domestic scenario where I'm in your living room and you're wearing your slippers is your production. Wait, hold whatever snide, incendiary thing you're going to say for a moment. I just realized I really need to..."

"The bathroom is—"

Jon waves him off, heading to the second door on the right. "Yes, I know."

Jon has done his business, washed up, and is in the middle of poking at a bruise on his face that he only vaguely remembers getting, when something very obvious occurs to him. 

Elias has made coffee by the time Jon finishes up and he sets it down on the counter in front of him. Jon accepts it numbly. 

"Why do I know where your bathroom is?” Jon asks, frowning. 

Ever the paragon of helpfulness, Elias says, "I don't know, why do you know where my bathroom is?" 

"I don't know why I bothered asking that aloud. You took me here last night?"

"Actually I took you here Friday night. It's currently Sunday afternoon." 

"Sunday after—you didn't think it was concerning that I slipped into a coma?!"

Elias gives an admittedly sheepish shrug. "It was a very minor coma and you seemed to think you'd be fine. From the look of things you are your lovely self again." 

"No thanks to—"

"Yes, no thanks to me. Would you like to talk about whatever you did to yourself or are you more in the mood to be accusatory? Also would you like breakfast or dinner? I can do either."

"I...no. I'm not hungry." 

Elias raises his eyebrows at that but says nothing. 

"I was...I was trying to read more than one statement in a single day. I assumed that if I read quickly enough I could get further before the fatigue caught up with me. I think it worked for the most part." 

"Interesting," Elias says in a tone that makes the word sound like a severe understatement. "I've never seen an Archivist try that before." 

"I can see why. I feel like someone's kicked a hole through my head."

Elias smirks a little. "I can tell. Do you remember anything that happened after your little feast?”

"I don't remember most of the statements, to be honest. I know I got through at least four. I might have passed out at the end of the last one. I have no idea how I got from my desk to here." He can't say for certain but he thinks Elias looks disappointed at that. "Why, did something happen?"

"We talked but no, nothing of note. What else do you know?" 

"What do you mean?"

"On Friday you knew your heart rate off the top of your head. Today you apparently know where my bathroom is. What else do you know?"

Before he can explain that that's an absurd question he finds himself saying, "your house was built in 1928. It was gifted to you in 1997." 

Jon blinks several times. "What?"

Elias hums. "Excellent. Do you know anything else?" 

Jon steadies himself with both hands on the island. "God, I—I don't know. I think you need to change the light bulb in your closet?"

"Well, yes. What else?"

Jon doesn't even need to think about it. It's like there's useless information lining up neatly in his mind just waiting to burst out of him. It's eerie. "You're out of milk apparently." 

Elias clears his throat in an obvious attempt to suppress his laughter. "Thank you, Jon. I'll need to add that to my growing list of errands. Anything less mundane?"

"I don't know!" Jon throws up his hands. "I apologize for not psychically divining anything of interest to you!"

"I’m only curious if your new found gift has given you knowledge that extends beyond me. Though I am extremely flattered to be on your mind." 

Jon is irritated to feel himself blush. "I wouldn't take it as a compliment. I suspect it's because you're standing right in front of me."

"Alright." Elias is leaning on his elbows, smile indulgent. Everything is too languid, too intimate. Curse Elias for dragging them back to his house. "Tell me about myself." 

"God, okay." Jon sits and holds the cup of coffee between his hands. His head still hurts but he can tell he's different than he was before. Elias is staring at him with amusement but there's something underneath it too, something softer that he suspects Elias doesn't want to be showing at all.

Before he can analyze that, new information falls into the forefront of his thoughts. "Yesterday—or rather Friday—it wasn't really your birthday."  

Elias grins. "That depends on who you ask."

"A clerical error?"

Elias’s brow furrows mockingly. "I don't know, Jon. You tell me."

“Great. Thanks.” Christ, that's what he gets for imagining depth in Elias. He lets out a slow breath that does nothing for his level of annoyance. He considers compelling Elias just so he no longer feels as though he’s on the back foot. "You hate mornings but you still wake up at six every day."

"The early mornings are a deeply ingrained habit from a different life. It doesn't mean I have to enjoy it."

"And what does that mean?" Before Elias can open his mouth Jon continues with, "oh shut up, I know. I have to figure it out myself. You have a...a scar on your right leg. An old faded one. You broke it falling out of a tree when you were nine." 

The smug delight goes stiff on Elias’s face for just a second before relaxing. "How very specific."

"Was I wrong?"

"No, no, that's correct." 

The insistence makes Jon all the more certain that he was wrong, but he can't imagine why Elias wouldn't just mock him or accuse him of throwing out a guess at random. 

*

"This really isn't necessary," Jon says weakly, not convincing himself much less Elias. They've exhausted Jon's attempts to pull order out of the thick miasma of information in his mind for now, and Jon is once again hearing the siren song of deep exhaustion. 

"I don't know that I believe you could make it home all on your own," Elias says, leading him back towards the guest room. It's only around ten which means Jon has barely been up for three hours, which is alarming. He thinks uncharitably of a panda. "Even if you could, your current state is still concerning." 

Jon yawns. There's probably a sensible response to that but it isn't coming to mind. "Fine, but I'm leaving first thing tomorrow morning." 

"If you insist. Anything else you need in the meantime?" 

"Would you consider raising the temperature above absolute zero?" 

Elias smiles as he says, "I'm afraid my hospitality can only go so far."

Elias gives him a small, mostly platonic pat on the back which Jon is too exhausted to squirm away from like he usually might. It's brief but the moment he feels Elias's touch he remembers something, or Knows something, or maybe Elias remembers something. It’s impossible to tell which. 

"Who's that?" Jon asks.

Elias raises his eyebrows. "Who's who?"

The thought, the knowledge is still solid in his mind. He can see it as clearly as he can see Elias. 

He takes a step forward. "Five foot eight, brown hair, an inordinate amount of freckles. He hated the cold, terrible circulation or something like that. What's his name? You were just thinking it."

Panicked recognition flits across Elias's face. "What?"

"No, don't tell me, I'll tell you." Jon is too preoccupied with scouring his own mind for hints to take much satisfaction in Elias's growing alarm. "Not a very common name. Something biblical and alliterative." 

He has it in him to note passively that Elias seems to be having trouble breathing. 

"Barnabas Bennett," Jon says, "that's who you were just thinking of." 

Elias says nothing but the faint tremble in his body speaks for itself. 

"Right. Do you have extra blankets anywhere around here?"

Elias swallows. "There should be some in that closet," he says faintly, gesturing. 

"Thank you." Jon grabs several because really it is freezing in Elias's house. "Good night then, Elias."

Elias mumbles something unintelligible in turn and Jon closes the door on him. 

*

Jon lies in bed, mind awash with half-formed thoughts. There's no added clarity in whatever he accidentally gleaned from Elias beyond the fact that he once knew a man named Barnabas and likely cared for him greatly. He thinks Elias was very young at the time and he doesn't know if Elias as he is now is capable of feeling what he felt in that faint memory. 

He suspects—no he knows Elias has an interest in him, the fact that Jon is currently on day three of an impromptu sleepover with Elias and wearing his spare clothes to his spare bed is proof of that much, but he isn't sure that whatever is happening between them is a good thing. 

He falls asleep muddling through his thoughts about Elias. 

But he dreams of Jonah Magnus. 

*

There’s no reason he should recognize the man he’s seeing is Jonah, he’s never read so much as a description of him, but he knows who the man slumped against a desk in his office in Edinburgh is. He knows those grey eyes and the fall of his hair. It's late at night and, perched on a stack of books that look precariously close to collapsing, is a human skull. 

He watches Jonah stroke a finger along the bottom row of teeth, visible drunk and maudlin. 

"’Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,’" Jonah whispers to himself, head pillowed in his arm. His voice is unfamiliar but something in the ironical tone is etched too deeply into Jon's psyche to be mistaken. “Or so I’d like to say.”

The dream changes and it’s still Jonah but not how he was in 1825. It’s an imagining. Jonah is standing at the top of a prison tower, looking out on an endless row of cells. He’s walking along the windows in a circle, skirting his fingers along the glass as he idly glances at the cells and the nightmares spilling from inside them, endlessly forever, nothing but this torment for every human on earth. Only he's exempt. Only Jonah Magnus is above it all. 

Jon awakens in the dark knowing far more than he should. 

*

He knocks twice on Elias's door and lets himself in before he gets a response. It's probably around two in the morning but Elias sits up quickly, clearly having been unable to sleep.

Elias looks increasingly alarmed as Jon climbs into his bed and actually scoots back as Jon settles cross legged, facing him. Jon isn't nearly as exhausted now and does manage to find that funny. 

"So,” Jon says, straight to the point, “why did you let him die?"

"Fucking hell." He watches Elias rub his tired eyes. "You’re here to interrogate me in the middle of the night about that?”

"You're the one comparing me to your dead lover in your mind."

"I wasn't—god, it was a passing thought!" Watching Elias squirm is a new experience, one that he's eager to replicate ad nauseum. "The two of us weren't even involved." 

Jon blinks. "I'm sorry, you've kept his bones for nearly 200 years, and he didn't even love you back?" 

Elias has his face buried in his hands. "That makes it sound pathetic."

They both sit in silence, Jon absorbing what Elias has admitted to by not answering in the negative. Elias's hands slide from his face as the same realization comes over him. 

"Huh," says Jon absently. "I was right about Friday not being your birthday. You were born on June the 11th, 1790. The Feast day of Saint Barnabas. I'm sure you got something out of that but I wouldn't dare guess."

Elias shrugs numbly. 

"I didn't need the Beholding to get the date. I wrote your Wikipedia page."

"I suppose I'm charmed,” Elias says with obvious trepidation. "I must say you're taking this well. You were more hostile when I asked you about the printer cartridges last week." 

"Last week I didn’t know who you were or what was going on. Obfuscation tends to leave me in a bad mood." 

Elias is making a valiant attempt at not appearing to be afraid for his life. "Oops."

"Was it because he wasn't in love with you? Is that why you left Barnabas Bennett to die in the Lonely?"

"You'll understand, I think, why I don’t want to answer a question like that." 

"I do." Jon sits up on his knees and inches forward. Elias's face lights up as Jon slides into his lap, confused pleasure overtaking his fear. "Tell me anyway. I'm not going to compel you."

"I'd consider this—" Elias's hands go to his waist and when they encounter no resistance slide under his shirt, "—to be extremely compelling, but I take your meaning. I...it wasn't about being spurned. I'd never seen someone consumed by the Lonely. I weighed my infatuation against my curiosity, and made a decision.' 

"Mm." Jon can feel the words filling in the tiny gaps in his knowledge. Its always been satisfying to know more than he should. 

Elias is taking liberties with his distraction and teasing his way up Jon's body. Jon allows him to tug his shirt off and pull him closer with a hand on the back of his head. In his mind all Jon can see is Jonah Magnus, touching Barnabas Bennett's skull on a dark night. Mourning but regretting nothing.

"Is that how things are going to end with me?" he asks, devastatingly close to Elias's mouth. 

Being crowded into the space above him Jon can't miss the flinch. Elias bites his tongue around a no caught in the sudden maelstrom of his own feelings. His affection for Jon, buried beneath his selfish cruelty, buried now beneath the kinder mask of a lover. No is the answer he thinks would be best to give aloud since he's here in bed with Jon. No is also the answer he doesn't want to give because he fears it's the truth. 

"If it'll save you some torment," Jon says quietly. "I know you can't complete your ritual on your own." 

"Jon," he says desperately, pulling Jon down into a kiss. His hands shake as they drag Jon in closer. Jon steadies himself with a hand on Elias's chest and feels a human heart drum against his palm. 

"Jon," Elias says, just as hungry but far more breathless. "What don't you know at this point?"

"Regarding you? Your thoughts and feelings maybe. Very little else." 

Elias smiles. "God, that's terrifying." 

"Yes, well, I'm rapidly getting used to it." He allows Elias to free him from his sweatpants so he can touch them both. 

Under normal circumstances Jon thinks he would be overwhelmed by the intimacy of being in Elias's lap like that, staring into each other's eyes, Jon unblinking, but it seems almost inconsequential compared to everything else he knows about Elias. The cold, grey eyes staring up at him in wonder have a long sordid history, and Jon knows it all. 

"Do you like knowing so much about me?" Elias asks, smirking. "Is it getting you off?"

"No," Jon says. A blatant lie. "Why, are you into it?"

Elias switches up his grip, focusing his attention entirely on Jon, which throws him off. "Obviously." 

Jon kisses him this time, primarily to shut him up. He already knows everything Elias wants to say anyway. 

*

Jon lies under the covers in Elias's bed, hogging most of them but allowing Elias’s hand in his hair as a consolation prize. They’re facing each other, neither of them attempting sleep.

"I don't suppose you might tell me what you're thinking."

Jon is thinking about Elias Bouchard—the real one—cheerfully hobbling around with his crutches as a child, and Jonah Magnus, who never broke a bone in his life. He frowns. "You can't hear my thoughts anymore?" 

"I can hear something in your thoughts, I just can't decipher any of it. It’s all too loud. No need to look so smug."

"It's what you deserve for reading my mind for years without my knowledge.” He pauses. “It's less than you deserve, really."

Elias's hand slows in his hair before finally stopping. "Do you intend to get in my way?”

Instead of immediately saying no, Jon takes a page from Elias’s book and attempts to coldly weigh his options. On one end of the scale sits everything he’s ever known and loved along with the objective knowledge of what the right thing to do is. On the other end is the worst person he's ever met, and the eternal prison tower he’s been dreaming of for nearly two centuries. 

"Undecided," Jon says softly. 

Elias bolts upright. Jon watches him forcefully dull his excitement. He goes back down to his elbow. "Would you join me then?"

"Jesus, Elias, I said I was undecided.”

"Ordinarily a question like ‘are you going to stop me from ending the world’ warrants a firmer answer than ‘IDK’ so excuse me for being optimistic.” 

Jon rolls over onto his side, pointedly yanking the blankets along with him. Elias sounds unaffected as he slides in behind Jon and gets an arm around his waist. 

“I think you’re already decided.”

Jon sighs. “Yes, I’ve decided to strangle you in your sleep. Close your eyes so I can get started.”

Though he can’t see him he can tell Elias is grinning at the back of his head like a bastard. Jon pointedly shuts his own eyes though he’s far from tired now. Elias doesn’t need to consider that there’s an option outside of Jon either helping him or impeding him. A path where Elias chooses Jon over the end of the world. 

That can wait till morning.