Jonelias Week 2024

Trying to remember exactly who he’d told to run is as useless as moving, and doesn’t matter anyway. There are steady footsteps approaching regardless, and just as soon as he’s noticed them there comes the sound of the knob already turning back the bolt. The door slides ponderously, ominously open.

All the lights blink on, now. Jon squeezes his eyes closed and swears he can feel the buzzing of the fluorescents on his skin.

“My dear archivist,” a voice says, warm and faintly mocking, “I do hope you’re not sleeping on the job.”

“‘Lias,” Jon grunts. Then, with what feels like the last energy left in his body, “Not safe. Ge’out.”

“I am well aware of the danger, thank you,” Elias says, closer, and when Jon squints open his eyes it’s to the sight of a gloved hand reaching down to pick up— 

The book, Jon remembers with a jolt of fear he can feel crackle through all his extremities. His whole body curls back from the unassuming hardcover, thin plastic over the jacket gone brittle and yellow with age.

“Yes, yes, quite scary,” Elias says in the tones of someone soothing a child at bedtime. “Very noble and horribly unamusing of you to evacuate the premises, by the way.”

Jon makes a croaking, questioning sound.

“Oh, no actual criticism meant,” Elias says. A container is set down in Jon’s line of sight, a heavy concrete bucket that looks like it might regularly be used to store biohazards or uranium, and the top unscrewed. “No, you did wonderfully, Jon. Exactly as a good team head should. Entirely different tack than Gertrude would have chosen, you understand.” The lid separates with a pop. “I would not say that woman had a particular love for or focus on teams.”

“Elias,” Jon says urgently as the book is dropped into the bucket, one elbow pulled laboriously under him to try to lever his body upright. Elias tuts at him as he screws the lid back on.

“Shh, let me finish this. Then we’ll have a look and see what’s to be done about you,” the man says. Both he and the bucket disappear from Jon’s sightline along the floor.

Jon is awash with memories now, the nervous pulse he’d seen beating hard in Martin’s neck, Tim’s raised hands as he’d backed away and the thin, easily broken skin at his wrist the gesture had revealed. Sasha had stayed the longest, trying to talk to him as the pain bent him in half. He’d snapped after her like a dog in the end, sent her tripping out the door in her haste to get away.

God, he’s so thirsty. His tongue is stone and saliva dust in his mouth. He manages, slowly, to push up from the elbow, wobbling on one weak arm until he can shift to brace against the desk. It exhausts him. He closes his eyes and doesn’t move again until he hears the footsteps return, the rustle of fabric directly in front of him.

Odd, he thinks, as he forces his eyes open again with a drag like sandpaper. He swears he can feel heat against his face from where Elias is crouched, staring. Like the man is several times warmer than the rest of the room, radiating it outward. Jon would push himself closer if he could move.

“Shall we have a look, then?” Elias says, reaching out.

“What—” Hands cup his jaw, tilt his face to the light, and the contact sparks and scalds like an electrical shock, like coming out of hypothermia. Jon grimaces, but the hands hold him too firmly to twist away.

“My goodness,” Elias says mildly. “Aren’t those impressive.”

“What…?”

Jon feels a thumb push at his upper lip, the faint pressure and palpable heat of it against a canine.

“It would have been a bloodbath down here,” Elias says, sounding somewhat regretful. “Should I leave you to your own devices, then? You seem so determined to isolate yourself.”

Elias is so warm. His hands burn on Jon’s face and it feels so good. He wants more of them. Elias’ thumb follows the line of his teeth towards his molars and pulls his lip with it.

“Of course, with this level of bodily corruption, you just might just die of it,” Elias continues. “A suboptimal outcome, I think you’ll agree.”

Elias is smiling faintly at him, at ease and completely sure of himself. “Why aren’t y’fraid?” Jon asks him. The pressure of Elias’ thumb shifts as he speaks, and Jon opens his mouth slightly wider to catch it between his teeth. Something about the way the flesh gives against the barest pressure is mesmerizing. 

Elias arches a brow at the question. “Perhaps you should try to be frightening,” he says. 

When Jon bites down the blood doesn’t even have a taste, it just feels like heat suddenly flooding his mouth, a wet warmth soaking into all corners until he might be drooling with it. He can feel it in a burning line all the way down his throat as he swallows automatically, and then greedily, again and again, groaning at the relief of it. He finds he can raise his arms after all, after the first few sucking mouthfuls, and grab Elias’ forearm to keep his hand where it is.

“At least your self-preservation instincts are still intact,” Elias mutters, thumb moving against Jon’s tongue. “Ouch. There are other, easier ways to do this, you know.”

There are. Jon is suddenly and acutely aware of them, the wrist already so close, the crook of the arm just under the suitcoat, the line of Elias’ neck half-hidden in his starched collar. There are so many places the blood runs hot and fast under Elias’ skin.

“Already?” Elias asks as Jon lets him fall from his mouth, licking at his lips to chase the last of the heat. “Self-preservation and restraint. A red-letter day for you, archivist.”

His back hits the linoleum a second later, Jon going from leant against the desk to posed over him on all fours with no memory of the movements between. 

“I want,” Jon says harshly, and then doesn’t know how to end it, or to describe the way his is entire body is being pulled into it, the pure sensation of I want, I want, iwantiwantiwantiwant—

Elias’ eyes are somewhat wider than they had been, but at that he chuckles. “Are you asking permission, Jon?” he says, sounding delighted. He reaches up and starts loosening his tie. “Come here, then.”

The snort escapes him before he can stop it, and a giggle can’t help but follow at the slow, menacing turn of Elias’ gaze in his direction.

Jon will be mortified tomorrow, would be actively dying of it now but everything is still golden and bubbly and objectively hilarious tonight, his head swimming pleasantly in the overheated dark of the black cab. The oaky astringency of what was probably very good wine— a lot of very good wine— still warms his mouth, and in the rush to exit he’d grabbed Elias’ coat; he can smell his cologne on the rain-damp collar when he turns his head. He is turning his head… frequently.

The party they’d left was far too nice to have a bed where everyone threw their jackets and coats and outerwear too highbrow to be called either. There was a whole separate room on the ground floor for it instead, narrow and dim and aggressively paneled in dark wood, like the coat check at a museum. The party and its loud conversations and live string quartet were upstairs, and when Jon had hidden himself away among the minks to get away from the noise it was just him and the caterers down there. Where Elias had found him, nursing yet another overfull glass.

“First time caught snogging in a closet, then?” Jon says into the prickly silence.

Elias doesn’t react except to close his eyes as though in existential anguish.

“Ah, chin up,” Jon says cheerfully. “‘M sure it happens all the time.”

“Let me assure you,” Elias says, bitingly precise, “as a longtime acquaintance of Sir and Mrs. Wollingston and their circle: it does not.”

“Bit of a boring group, then.”

“Yes, they are,” Elias says. “And I do hope you realize we have afforded these people their sole source of social entertainment for the next decade.”

“Oh, surely not a decade ,” Jon says, hand to his mouth as though in shock. He can’t stop smiling, so the effect is somewhat ruined.

Elias clearly finds his levity misplaced. “Jon, we will never hear the end of this. I, especially, will never hear the end of this. I will be interred to whispers telling all attendees how I was caught in flagrante with my much younger employee in the garderobe , a man I then had to practically carry out of the house!”

Elias says this last half-turned, one hand slapped down onto the seat between them. It’s the most exercised Jon’s ever seen him about… anything, really.

“Poor Mr. Bouchard,” he says with faux sympathy, and follows it with another snorting giggle.

“... you are quite inebriated, aren’t you,” Elias says with some resignation, and Jon twists in his seat as well, elbow going to brace against the seat back as the cab encounters cobbles. He points a wavering finger directly into Elias’ face; Elias’ shorter coat sleeves ride up over his wrists.

“First— first! Point the first. I want it known, I told you. I told you it was this or horse tranquilizers if you wanted me to sit— stand— mingle through all of that,” Jon says, shuddering at the remembered sea of faces, inescapable drone of perfect BBC syllables, jewelry with stones large enough to choke said tranquilized horse. “Ugh.”

“You told me nothing of the sort,” Elias snaps back. “You told Rosie, and then lied to my face when I asked if you’d be able to handle this single evening out.” 

“But you know everything,” Jon says, and as drunk as he is it seems obvious. “Telling anyone was enough.”

Elias doesn’t challenge him on that, Jon notices. “If I’d realized your anxiety was this deeply entrenched, I would have asked Miss James or Tim to accompany me to this event,” the man says instead.

He clearly means it as some kind of cutting remark, which might make a future, sober Jon frantic with the threat of replacement. Tonight’s Jon only hears a certain exclusion. “Not Martin?” he notes on a smothered laugh.

“Martin has— many useful qualities, which do not include the public representation of the Institute in social spaces,” Elias says, and then even more acerbically, “which must now be your designation as well, head archivist.”

“Go on about my useful qualities, then,” Jon requests, leaning in further, delighted and aghast at his own shamelessness. The cab rounds a well-lit street corner and he gets a flash of Elias’ face in the orange glow: aghast is the least of it.

“I will not be encouraging you further,” Elias says, so stiffly, stiff enough to hang shirts off.

“You certainly didn’t have a problem encouraging me earlier,” Jon says with glee. “Anyways. It really wasn’t that bad.”

“My tie has vanished,” Elias says, outrage creeping into his voice. “Half the buttons on my shirt are missing! I look ridiculous.”

He does at that, but disheveled is an unusual and therefore deeply entertaining look on him. One unfortunately Jon also finds deeply attractive; he’s already decided he isn’t going to say anything about the hair unless and until Elias discovers it himself.

“No, your tie is in my pocket,” Jon, and with some rummaging is able to pull out the mangled strip of silk. “And I don’t want to hear anything about missing buttons, all right? I saw what you did to my neck.”

There was a very large mirror on the way out of the coat closet, old enough to have little rivulets in the silver backing. The age and patina hadn’t done anything to disguise the enormous red love bites marching up the line of his jugular. Elias had had to practically tear Jon away from the sight, one of their hosts watching in polite and horrified fascination.

Elias gives the general area of Jon’s collarbone a very shifty glance at that. “Hardly as visible,” he says unconvincingly.

“Oh, would you like a few yourself then?” Jon threatens. “Turnabout, etcetera.”

“I—” and surprisingly, Elias just presses his lips together and scowls at him.

“Oh you do,” Jon realizes. 

“No.”

“Yes,” Jon says, thrilled by the idea. “Wollingswhatsit interrupted before I could really get your kit off. I bet you’re absolutely gagging for it now.”

Elias’ expression is almost enough to derail Jon into a laughing fit. “That is the most appalling—”

The end of that sentence is lost as Jon, already fairly far over the centre line of the seats, lets the movement of the cab taking another turn collapse him the rest of the way into Elias’ space. It turns out Elias had the right of it: the love bites are quite fun to make and leave in a hot trail under Elias’ jaw, down his throat, nuzzling into the warm line between neck and shoulder. The lack of tie and buttons make it dead easy. He is not particularly neat about it, but Elias curls a knee up and digs his fingers into Jon’s hair in what is very much not an objection. The nearly silent moans vibrating under Jon’s lips are quite instructive.

Even more fun is Elias’ full-body freeze when the cabbie raps a few knuckles on the plastic divider and requests they keep it in their pants until the ride’s over. When Jon sits back, Elias’ eyes bore into his with murderous intent.

“I can if you can,” Jon says, flexing the hand that’s landed very high on Elias’ thigh.

“You demonstrably can’t,” Elias says, then, “do not,” as Jon’s fingers start to creep up. 

At the same time, he shifts in the seat and it oh-so-incidentally spreads his knees wider. The slag.

“Say that with more conviction,” Jon requests, smiling and dizzy and giddy, Elias’ mouth still just a few inches away and more tempting than anything Jon’s ever seen in his life as his lips part on a little, “Ah,” as Jon’s hand moves in for the kill.

Several minutes later, the cabbie jolts up to Jon’s kerb with a little more verve than usual. By that time, Jon has Elias making a continuous string of tiny, cut-off noises into his ear, one leg fully up on the seat and his back against the door. The hair is even more exquisite now. Jon leaves him slumped there to scoot back into his own seat and handle the fare. 

“Coming up, then?” Jon asks brightly as he cracks his door to the wet, chilly night.

"Do you think this won't make me want to kill you a second time any less?" Jon asks out loud in his flat, staring at his own eyes in the mirror. He could swear that for a brief moment they turn grey but he blinks and nothing but silence answers him. He presses his lips together, and tells himself it doesn't sting.

Jonah has to remember. He has to, because Jon remembers his face, that first week, when their eyes had first crossed. A mixture of awe, and pride, and fear. Gone in a heartbeat, of course, but Jon had seen it, he had, and it means Jonah has to remember. How, when Martin doesn't? How, when he was dead? It doesn't even matter to Jon anymore. He only wants -- he only needs --

He puts the flowers into an old vase inherited by his grandmother, waits for almost an hour and then, at last, he gives in, and calls Elias.

"Dekker only knew how to emprison the Not!Them, but surely there's a way to kill it without merely knowing it to death?" he asks without preambule the moment the call connects.

"Pardon?" Elias says, with the perfect tone of mild confusion that would put most actors to shame, and Jon glowers at the phone.

"Don't do that," he snaps despite himself. "You sent me flowers, you asshole."

"A gesture of good will," Elias tells him. "You've been rather tense ever since you came back to work --"

"I can't do this," Jon cuts him off, staring off at the vase. "I'm not going to do this. You want to hear it? Fine. I won't try to kill you again. Does that make you feel better? And no, I don't accept flowers as an adequate sorry for ruining your life and the world for my own very brief gain and enjoyment, but for god's sake, I need something -- someone -- to be real with me. Right now. Just. Be real with me, Jonah. Please."

"You understand your volatile mood is exactly the reason I can't trust that you won't try to kill me again, don't you?" Jonah asks, and Jon lets out a shaky breath of relief, shamefully realizing his eyes are filling with tears. "Or, god forbid, succeed at it once more."

"You haven't made me a complete monster yet, here," Jon manages to say.

"And yet at times I feel foolish enough to want to bring you right back to godhood all the same," Jonah sighs. "If only for how magnificent you were, at the end."

"Shut up," Jon mutters.

"Well, you're young," Elias says, amused. "You haven't met many people yet."

Jon frowns. "Are there others?" he asks. "How many? Is this a -- what, a polite zombie apocalypse? Vampires? A strange mutant gene?"

"Nothing as dull as that, I'm afraid; but shouldn't we start at the beginning, Jonathan? What don't you tell me what you see?"

"I --" Jon wavers, hesitant. Elias decides he might as well make a proper gesture of goodwill, and leaves work fully behind to get up, closing the distance between Jon to offer him his hand, the very same Jon had only accepted to shake after being hired with his little black gloves on. Jon looks back at him, takes a deep breath, and remove the very same glove from his left hand this time and, very carefully, brush his fingers over Elias' opened palm.

Elias shudders; despite centuries of life, there is still something sickeningly terrifying about watching his skin immediately wrinkle and pale, a few patch of it simply falling off into ashes to reveal dull, white bone underneath -- no blood, no warmth, nothing but the End --

It's ever so embarassing to be the first to remove his hand, but he does it all the same. All the while Jon's eyes have darkened still, somehow, and now they stare at him with such bottomless, cold hunger that Elias worries a moment he'll push; Elias also cannot help but lean forwards. What if they kissed? he wonders. Would Jon manage to undo centuries of good and horrid work in a moment? Does Jon have the power to kill yet, or will the fear still be enough to sustain him, once he grow stronger? It's something Elias usually appreciate, how passive Death can be in its certainty It shall always get what It wants in the End.

But then his God goes and picks some young avatars like Jon, brimming with life and the urge for action, and it begs the question --

"You should be dead," Jon murmurs. "And that still makes you afraid, even now. I can see -- every second you are stealing from others, every missed heartbeats that sends you hunting, every moment you are walking when you should be rotting in the earth and I know -- I know you know that you are already rotting, as we speak; you live and talk and breath but you are dead, you've been dead for centuries --"

"It's a bargain I've made, and it's not entirely displeasing, usually," Elias says, after a beat. Jon blinks and seems to come back to himself, his face crumbling into a mixture of guilt, curiosity and terror, and he hastily put his glove back on. "Very impressive," Elias tells him, to regain full control of his senses and the situation. "Is that how it is for everyone you touch, then?"

"...Yes," Jon mutters, reluctantly, fleeing his gaze now. "It -- it didn't use to be so... so much but it's been getting... hard. Since university."

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: M/M

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Relationship: Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Elias Bouchard | Jonah MagnusJonathan "Jon" Sims | The ArchivistMichael | The Distortion (The Magnus Archives)

Additional Tags: Sickfic, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: e101 Another Twist (The Magnus Archives), Joneliasweek2024, Hurt Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus, a little bit. as a treat, POV Alternating, It/Its Pronouns For Michael | The Distortion (The Magnus Archives), No beta we kayak like Tim

Language: English

Summary: