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Jon can’t help but associate Elias with the humble authority of his office in the Institute: the rows of old, wilting books lining his shelves, the dusty metal globe and dull gold-plated pens perched on the sturdy oak desk that also holds up a faded black computer monitor and piles and piles of boring papers. So terribly mundane that it should’ve been suspicious. He thinks about this — about the stacks of paperwork and last-century furnishings — to avoid thinking about where he finds himself now. It’s a last ditch attempt to push Elias into the velvet-soft box of normalcy; if an evil boss, then still a boss, a superior he finds himself begrudgingly reporting to because he simply doesn’t know enough about the office politics of the supernatural. But their relationship is — something else, now, which is something Jon has to force himself to admit as he sits fully dressed with soapy water soaking through his clothes in Elias’ stupidly expensive clawfoot bathtub.
The man in question had generously left Jon to his own devices, ushering him to the bathroom with a perfunctory hand on his back when he’d shown up at his door, shivering and covered in quickly-drying blood. With the door closed and locked behind him, Jon had watched the tub fill up with manic patience and decided to plunge in immediately after there was just enough water inside to cover his body, as if removing his clothes would somehow leave him more vulnerable than he already was in this veritable lion’s den. The water is now lukewarm, almost cold, and Jon actually has no memory of pouring in any soap, but here he sits anyway, in a foamy stew of dirty water with his feet hanging off the edge of the tub and head tilted slightly upwards so that he isn’t entirely submerged. He’s sure he stammered out something, maybe even the truth, but Elias had already known, hadn’t he? How he’d known Elias’ address, how he’d run all the way here in only a light jacket in the early-spring cold of the night, what he’d done to that poor stranger — all of those questions Elias knew the full answers to, while Jon was managing on scraps alone. Well, no longer entirely on scraps. He feels quite satiated at the moment, something he’s sure he’ll muster up the energy to feel sick about later.
It’s telling, though, that where he had decided to run to was here, that he’d known even in his broken haze that there was nowhere else for him to go.
As he slowly reaches up to push a stray coil of damp hair off of his face, the dirt under his nails catches his eye. For some reason, he finds that he absolutely hates that dirt, the impurity of it, so wretchedly unclean as to be unforgivable. He furiously picks and scrubs at his fingernails until they shine, and then he repeats the process with one of Elias’ fancy soaps for good measure before collapsing again against the back of the tub. He stays like that, vaguely uncomfortable but not enough to shift his position, watching the water gently ripple as his chest rises and falls.
Then comes the knock on the door — entirely expected, but still abrupt enough to jolt Jon out of his catatonic state.
“Don’t—don’t come in.”
“Yes, well...you have been in there for a while, Jon.” After a brief pause, Elias walks in anyways, unhindered by Jon’s weak protests. He sets a small brass key on the sink and closes the door behind him, but keeps his distance. He takes in the sorry sight that Jon must make and sighs in a way that pretends at being put-upon, but hits closer to smug indulgence.
“I imagine that you’re conflicted about your newfound abilities.” Oh, so he’s decided to jump right into the meat of the matter. Not that Jon expected Elias to have any questions about the situation — no doubt he’s already plucked the details from his panicked mind.
“If by that you mean the fact that I left someone...on the ground—”
“Oh, let’s not dance around it. Yes, Jon, that man is dead.” There’s no cruel twist of glee to Elias’ face, but a kind of perverse pride radiates out from behind his grey eyes, barely noticeable, if Jon hadn’t been looking for it.
He’d known this, there was no way that someone could lose so much blood and still be alive, but hearing Elias say it so matter-of-factly starts him shivering again in nervous, wracking shudders even worse than before. The adrenaline had died down and Elias’ words had neatly cleaved open his mind to reveal the truth and the horror of his actions.
“I—I didn’t… I was hungry,” Jon stammers out, his mouth stubbornly insisting on running to excuses before his mind came up with — whatever a reasonable way to admit that you’d killed a man was. He tugs at a strand of hair with nervous energy, curling it around his finger over and over. “I didn’t know it would do that.” That’s really all he can say in his defense, and he’s not so sure about it, either. Had he known that pushing too far would lead to blood on his hands? All Jon can remember is the swirling desire, the hollow-bellied need to take, and consume, and survive.
“Unfortunately, you and I both know that this was avoidable. If you’d just done what you needed to, instead of insisting that you wouldn’t take any more statements in spite of your waning mental fortitude...well, you can’t say that the signs weren’t there.” Elias steps gingerly through the puddles of water on the floor and walks closer to the tub. After a moment’s hesitation, he reaches down and absentmindedly pats Jon’s head, threading his fingers through his hair for a brief moment. It’s gentle enough so that it doesn’t startle him, but firm enough that he doesn’t feel patronized. Jon’s hand slips from its own grip on his hair, sliding back into the lukewarm water. The touch is equal parts detached and affectionate. Different, but not unwelcome. Maybe something like this is what he wanted from Elias all along.
“I never wanted to become a monster,” Jon bites out amidst his swirl of complicated emotions. He doesn’t want to be calmed down by Elias, but there’s no denying that it’s working; his breathing becomes less shallow and his body slowly stops shaking and once again the water gently laps around him in the aftershocks of his motion.
“Now, what have I told you about your choices?” Elias continues to pet at his hair, fingers curling through damp and tangled strands, nails scratching at Jon’s scalp in soothing rhythms. Jon sighs and presses closer to Elias’ touch before he realizes what he’s doing, pushes away the conscious reasons why this is a bad idea. He’s too exhausted, and it feels so...nice. Elias’ hand travels slowly down his face to cup his cheek, and then down even further to tilt Jon’s chin up so that he’s left staring at Elias with his lips slightly parted and face red.
Elias lets go, rolls up his sleeves, grabs a bottle of shampoo and squeezes some of it into his palm. Even so, Jon doesn’t quite realize what he’s going to do until he plunges his hands into Jon’s hair, rubbing in the shampoo with firm strokes and massaging his scalp in a way that shocks heat into his body, sending warmth shooting down his spine. He moans and promptly tries to choke it back, but it’s already escaped his mouth. The shampoo smells clean, some sort of rosemary and cedarwood scent that gently burns its way through the nauseating residual scent of blood and grime. Jon’s sure that it’s ridiculously expensive in order to meet Elias’ standards, and it almost feels wasted in the way that it drips down Jon’s head and coats his hair in a soapy sheen. Intimate but perfunctory, Elias finishes working the shampoo into Jon’s scalp and plunges his hands into the dirty bathwater to rinse them off.
“Very good, Jon,” Elias says like he’s had some active role in all of this, as if he were capable of doing anything but a good job in the state that Elias leaves him in. “Are you capable of washing the rest of your body by yourself, or would you rather I do it for you?” He offers him the choice, but the way he’d nearly whined when Elias pulled away spoke for itself. Embarrassed to his core but hopelessly aroused, Jon puts up the token resistance anyways.
“I can...I can do it,” Jon says, and all but snatches the prepared bar of soap out of Elias’ hands. Before he can even start, Elias laughs and plucks the soap away, putting it off to the side before pinching the edge of Jon’s drenched sleeve, still miserably clinging to his wet body.
“I think it would be better if you took your clothes off first, wouldn’t you say?” Although the context with which he says those words gives Elias relatively pure intentions, it doesn’t stop Jon from furiously blushing. He’s about to say that he’ll be fine to do this himself as well, when Elias apparently decides that he’s not going to give Jon the choice this time. He starts with the sleeve that he’s still holding, unbuttoning the cuffs with quick fingers and pulling it down just a little so that he can hold up Jon’s wrist. He clenches his fingers around the bone and muscle and veins, rubs the flesh in a way that Jon finds distinctly uncomfortable before Elias lifts his arm to his mouth and kisses the inside of his wrist. Teeth scrape but find no purchase, his tongue presses for a brief second right up against the veins. Elias looks unfazed but raw — his suit jacket discarded well before he even came into the bathroom, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to the elbow, and quietly unprofessional in the way that he just... looks at Jon as he continues to hold his arm up to his lips. Jon shivers.
He lets Elias lean in, trembles as their faces get closer and closer, and hesitantly tilts his head back when Elias starts unbuttoning his shirt. He works his way down slowly, and when it’s fully unbuttoned he clutches the shirt at the collar with both hands and gives Jon a quick kiss, as if to give him just enough so that he can get acclimated to the idea of it. The fading scent of Elias’ cologne, the traces of bergamot that vaguely reminds Jon of the cups of tea that he always sees Martin clutching in the Archives, swims in Jon’s periphery as he dizzily tries to process the situation. He sees Elias smile and lean in again, kissing Jon for a little longer this time, dragging him deeper into it by pulling him up by his shirt. It’s Elias’ first display of impatience since he’s set foot into this room, the first indication that although he was in control, he wanted this just as much as Jon did. Jon squirms under the heat of Elias’ kiss, reciprocates eagerly and is left gasping when Elias pulls back for another moment, this cutoff feeling less like he’s easing Jon into it and more like a deliberate tease. As if to confirm this suspicion, Elias lightly presses his lips against Jon’s one more time before straightening up and pulling the shirt completely off. He folds it as neatly as he can before setting it down on the wet tiles, then immediately gets back to work, this time pulling at Jon’s undershirt and coaxing him to lift his arms so that he can pull it off too. His hair gets caught in the process, residual shampoo rubbing off on the shirt as he takes it off.
“You can’t just do that,” Jon snipes, still flushed and thrown off balance, the prickly words his last defense against a thorough seduction. “I don’t even — I’m your employee, first of all, and you’ve killed people! I — I mean—” He can feel the weakness of his words, but he keeps rambling on because the alternative would be to face the truth, which is that he’d throw his shame out the window and melt into Elias’ mouth again at the next opportunity.
“Jon,” Elias admonishes, and he doesn’t need to point out the obvious. Instead, he places his hands on Jon’s chest and watches as he goes still and silent with anticipation. Slowly, he strokes his hands up so that he’s gently holding onto Jon’s shoulders, smiling as Jon arches his back into the motion. Elias tightens his grip and leans forward again, and this time lingers for an agonizing heartbeat with his face pressed up against his, lips so close to Jon’s that he can feel the light heat of Elias’ breath as he softly exhales. If his goal was to keep prodding and teasing Jon into a constant state of wobbly haziness, he was decidedly succeeding.
“I hate you,” He can’t resist saying it, even now, even when the strength of the words has been burned out of him and left only a pulsing desire to get closer to the man who ruined and built his life in equal measure.
“Oh, is that so?” Elias slides one hand up from his shoulders to his neck to his cheek, cupping Jon’s face in a pleasantly solid grip. He feels an agonizing heat spread its way from high on the cheekbone to the rest of his head until he feels scorched and desperate for contact. He turns his face, nudges and nuzzles against the palm of Elias’ hand, flutters his eyes closed and mouths at the skin. It really took so little for him to give up control entirely, finally giving in to making a fool of himself just to catch those snippets of praise, the lightest of touches, familiar and beckoning.
“I—please,” Jon mumbles, leans forward and tries to capture Elias’ mouth, but he neatly backs away, just far enough to leave Jon hanging, mouth slightly open and eyes hooded.
“I really don’t know why you insist on being so rude,” Jon doesn’t look up, but he can hear the amusement in Elias’ voice, an indulgent tone that curls around his consciousness and leaves him weak and pleading. “After all, you keep coming to me for help, even though you’ve convinced yourself that I’m useless...do you really want my guidance so badly?”
“Please! Elias—” Elias gives Jon another assiduous kiss, and it feels like a reward for being so patient with his constant edging. Jon twists nervously, absently wonders if his mouth still tasted like the cigarette he had given in to smoking at some point during his frantic dash to Elias’ door. Elias coaxes his tongue into Jon’s mouth regardless, slipping in a hint of teeth that leaves his lips rosy-pink, as he undoubtedly notices with some satisfaction when he pulls back to admire his handiwork. Without leaving Jon enough time to whine and drag him back in, Elias noses his way into the side of Jon’s neck, breathes hot and runs his teeth over the scarred skin there before deciding on a spot to suck in a mark.
Jon jolts, predictably, the rules of the game being changed on him yet again. He wants to grip at Elias, to scrabble and hold on to the fabric of his shirt or run desperate fingers up and down his back, but he holds himself back because he doesn’t want to get Elias’ shirt wet, as stupid as that sounds. He sticks instead to curling his fingers in and out on top of the porcelain bottom of the tub, sending water swirling around his hands. Elias gives a little chuckle, muffled by the way he’s still tucked in the crook of Jon’s neck, and dives back in to suck another hickey into the skin right above the previous one, making Jon’s head spin with the intensity of his aching arousal.
“You...like using your teeth, don’t—you,” Jon tries for sarcastic but the words come out shaky and vulnerable, the little tilt of his voice and the bitten-back desperation giving away just how affected he is by Elias’ attentions. “I feel like you’re going to eat me.”
As if to mock him, Elias gives a final nip at Jon’s neck before pulling away, trailing his hands down Jon’s collarbone and lightly tracing at his scars. “I wouldn’t eat you, Jon.” The response seems unpolished, a less-than elegant comeback, another strike against Elias’ composed exterior. Jon feels some sort of satisfaction at that, at knocking something loose in Elias, but it’s immediately mitigated when he remembers that he’s revealed far too much about himself in the same span of time.
Elias dips his hands under the surface of the water again, reaches for Jon’s waist and hooks a finger into the waistband of Jon’s trousers. Without hesitation, he slides them off, pulling slowly as the damp fabric clings to Jon’s legs. Jon looks away, embarrassed and exposed despite what Elias had already managed to do to him. Elias lifts one of Jon’s legs out of the water, watches Jon take a shaky breath and tilt his head back, only looking back up at him when he inches Jon’s sock off as well, in a way that’s somehow more intimate than when he took off his pants. Elias presses a kiss on Jon’s ankle, then lowers the leg back down into the water before picking up the other leg and repeating the same process. When he goes for Jon’s boxers, the last piece of wet fabric remaining between him and complete vulnerability, he can't help but tease Jon again, grabbing at the hem and pulling it down minutely, sliding his fingers on the skin of Jon’s inner thigh. Jon clutches at his arms and shakes, looks away again as Elias spreads his legs apart, pushing one knee up and spreading the other leg out straight. He strokes up and down his thighs, rubs at Jon’s cunt through his wet boxers, presses two fingers up into him for just a brief second, pushing through the layer of cloth separating them. Jon’s breath catches and he sighs brokenly into the air, twisting one thigh against Elias’ hand to press it closer, his muscles tensing and twitching at his careful, slow touches. He’s practically grinding against Elias’ hand when he pulls away and firmly places both hands on Jon’s hips, making him buck against nothing but the rippling water. He pulls off Jon’s boxers, quickly now, with no lingering touches, and puts it on top of the pile of all of Jon’s other clothes. Jon watches him, torn between wanting to beg for more and the clawing embarrassment of his neediness.
“I believe you said that you’d be able to do this yourself,” Elias says and hands him the bar of soap again. It’s one of those fancy homemade kinds that have a raw herbal scent clinging to them, and Jon feels a slight flare of annoyance rise up again at the fact that apparently every item in this bathroom individually cost more than his weekly groceries. Elias smiles and steps out of the room with Jon’s discarded clothes before he can protest, and then immediately blush wildly at the implication that he wanted Elias’ hands all over his body. He’s reluctant to admit it, but after being so thoroughly attended to, he’d wanted Elias to — well, finish the job, at least. Not to mention that Elias had kissed him seemingly with the intent of leaving him flustered and unsatisfied, gently edged towards arousal and then unceremoniously left to his own devices. Jon goes back and forth, torn between deciding to wait it out on the hope that Elias will be so kind as to fuck him after he’s finished with his bath or to just reach in between his legs and finger himself to completion. When he finally chooses the latter, he’s interrupted before he can hardly do more than run his finger over his clit. The door swings open just a crack, enough so that he can see a sliver of Elias’ unreadable face through the opening.
“And—Jon?” Elias says, softly, “Don’t touch yourself.”
With that, he closes the door again and leaves Jon sitting upright in the bathtub, red-faced and mortified.
--
There’s no clothes set outside the door for him to wear when he finally gets out and towels himself off, so he rummages through the cabinets until he comes up with a soft, clean towel that’s large enough to wrap around his body. He rubs off a spot on the mirror where the fog had steamed it up and takes a curious look at himself. He’s forced to admit that there’s a kind of glowing healthiness there, clawing its way to the surface after the blood and sweat was washed off. It’s the most obvious result of his failure to control himself, a visible mark of the guilty satiation of having fed on the fears of another. His whole body is slightly flushed, thanks to the dual efforts of the hot water that he rinsed himself off with and the memory of Elias’ attentive petting.
The ugly pockmarks on his face where the worms had burrowed straight through hadn’t faded at all, something that his freaky Archivist regeneration ability apparently wasn’t able to fix. He traces the cluster on his cheek, wishes that he could look—better. More lovely. He shakes off the thought and leaves the bathroom without bothering to try any of Elias’ fancy lotions.
“Elias…?” He lingers outside the bathroom door, not sure where exactly to proceed from here. He hadn’t taken stock of his surroundings the first time around, and the hallway yawns out before him, stretching on with openings and doors in both directions. It’s less the Spiral’s enigmatic hallway and more a case of luxurious ostentatiousness. He’s about to pick a direction and start walking when Elias calls back to him from down the hall to his left.
“Over here, Jon,” he says, and Jon obediently follows his voice, even as he’s unable to resist the urge to peek into the rooms with open doorways as he passes them by. His reward is a glimpse of a personal library, floor-to-ceiling with books that he’s sure are in some way antiques, or haunted, or both. He itches to know those books, that room and it’s plush couch and polished coffee table and the flowing stacks of paper and piles of manuscripts that litter the inside. Jon feels like he’s been redrawing the picture of Elias in his head again and again over the course of the night, filling in details like the bottles of fancy shampoo (and one of wine) strewn along the bathroom floor, the little idiosyncrasies of his lived-in flat, what his hands feel like on his hair and what his lips feel like on his, until what he ends up with is as unrecognizable and alluring as it was the first day that he met him as a nervous young postdoc desperate for a job at the Magnus Institute. Elias is the authority figure he crawls back to, whose attention and praise he craves in a way that sickens him; he is the shadow puppeteer, the arbiter of his misery and his monsterification; he is the insatiable academic, whose curiosity burns and shivers through him in exactly the same way Jon’s does. It’s confusing and heady, and Jon walks through the door of Elias’ bedroom feeling like his throat is sliced clean through by the jaws of the wolf.
Elias is sitting down on the edge of the bed, some kind of surprisingly atrocious canopy thing, and when Jon approaches he wordlessly pulls him down into sitting next to him, turns him so that he’s facing his back. Jon lets him, because of course he does, and twitches as he feels Elias gather up his hair and stroke his fingers through to get the preliminary tangles out. He’s embarrassed by how immediately he’s aroused. He shifts impatiently as Elias runs a wide-toothed comb through his hair, tries to bite back the noises he wants to make as Elias gently brushes down in calming strokes.
“What is this, Elias? Why are we—playing house?” Jon scowls, then blushes at the thought of how pouty he sounded.
“Playing house?” Elias says softly, gently pressing a fresh towel that he procured from somewhere against Jon’s head to soak up some of the dampness before he starts combing through the strands again.
“Yes, what are you doing? I’m not your possession, your—plaything.” Not just another picture on the wall, not just another book gathering dust on Elias’ nightstand.
“I’m taking care of you,” Elias says, and there’s some strain to it, as if he’s offended that Jon isn’t fully appreciating the effort. Of course, Jon can’t say that he doesn’t appreciate it, but he’s regained some of his former snappishness and goes back to wielding it bluntly against Elias’ confusing advances.
“Now you want to take care of me? What about—what about when I was kidnapped, when I needed your help to stop the Unknowing, when I was begging you to help me?”
“My distance was necessary for you to succeed. Even now, I fear my presence will be, hmm, a distraction for you. Really, you shouldn’t be here at all. You did surprise me by managing to find your way here. Have I mentioned that my flat is now hidden to the best of the Lonely’s abilities?” Elias curls his fingers through Jon’s hair, plays with the end of a strand, watches pleasantly as Jon shakes at even this slight contact. “I am very proud of you, Jon.”
Jon feels embarrassment crawl up his body, the violent shame of being so hopelessly weak to Elias’ genuine praise.
“I appreciate you letting me take care of you, for once. Don’t you think you deserve it, after all you’ve been through? When was the last time that someone touched you without meaning to hurt you? No wonder you’re so skittish.”
“And you don’t intend to hurt me? Somehow, I doubt that. You’ve done nothing but watch monsters hunt me for sport for these last couple of months.”
“It was all a necessary component for your development. Believe me, I want nothing but your continued survival. But I’ve never touched you with the intention of doing you harm, Jon, you know that.” Elias finally finishes messing with Jon’s hair, apparently satisfied with his efforts. He gets up, places the comb on top of a desk and retrieves a shirt from his dresser. It seems to be some kind of button-up pajama shirt, which is entirely unsurprising, considering Elias’ tastes. Elias coaxes Jon’s arms through the shirt and does him the favor of buttoning it up as well. His hands slowly work their way up to Jon’s neck, and he leaves the top button undone and lingers there for a moment, fingertips brushing the curve of his neck where they meet his clavicles, watches intently the tremble of his throat as Jon self-consciously swallows.
Then, suddenly, he pulls away. “I’d imagine you’d want to get some rest, after your ordeal.” He sits back up on the bed, on the other end from where Jon is perched. “There’s a guest bedroom across the hall from mine, if you’d be so inclined—”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jon stands up and seethes, towel falling from where it was wrapped around his waist, leaving him exposed from the hem of the too-large shirt down. Elias looks away, arranges himself neatly on top of his bed and leans nonchalantly against the backboard. Jon almost growls in his haste to jump on top of him.
He lands on Elias’ lap, trying to surprise him in an act that didn’t so much take control as thrust the reins into Elias’ hands. It’d become clear to him that Elias could poke him and twist him into submission amidst weak protests that didn’t measure up to his actions, but after a certain point, Elias would wait for his permission. Not just for his permission, but for his willing participation, for him to beg and whine for it and debauch himself for Elias’ liking. He hooks his hands behind Elias’ neck and Elias sits up, leaving him at just the right position to curl his hands onto Jon’s hips and drag them closer and closer together. Jon slides right on top of where Elias’ cock bulges from under his boxers, sending a pinging sensation of arousal shooting through his body. Unable to resist, he grinds on top of Elias’ clothed dick, dragging it across his clit over and over again, and Elias quickly rolls their hips together until Jon’s moaning shamelessly into the air.
“I thought you didn’t want me to play house, as you put it,” Elias smiles down at Jon as he thrusts up one more time for effect, which gets the sweetest whine out of him before he scowls and responds.
“Shut up. I’m not—” His protest dissolves into another round of keening as Elias firmly attaches his mouth to Jon’s neck, right where he’d made his marks earlier, and sucks firmly to reinvigorate the slowly-dulling bruise. The marks are quickly becoming a favorite, dangerous thing of his, something temporarily indelible, a reminder that will be more difficult to hide tomorrow morning than the fact that he’s killed a man.
Jon thinks about murder. He thinks about the bloody, brutal way that Elias smashed in Leitner’s skull and left the viscera for Jon to find as the man in question runs his fingers over his clit, leaving Jon gasping after every stroke. He thinks about the endless manipulation, the constant threat that hangs over all of their heads put there by Elias’ incomprehensible machinations as he strokes and teases before finally sliding a finger inside, then two, jerking them slightly and leaving Jon keening and grabbing desperately onto Elias’ shoulders. He thinks about the unknown fate of the corpse that he left in that dark alleyway, the man with his face torn inside-out as he ripped his secrets out from inside of him until it peeled his skin and tore open his soul. He’s panting now, thinking that it’s horribly unfair that he’s laid out bare, and the only thoughts that can run through his mind that aren’t about how good it feels to get wrecked on Elias’ fingers is the bloody horror that’s been his life for the last few months. Jon forces himself to come to the conclusion that by all rights, he should hate this man for what he’s done and what he’s made him become, and he should absolutely not be letting him kiss him, again and again all over his face and neck and chest and so, so sweetly, as he spears Jon open with his fingers until he’s overwhelmed and incoherent.
“Jon,” Elias murmurs as he drags his fingers out of Jon’s cunt before plunging them back in and then slowly pulling them out again, leaving Jon shaking and whining at the emptiness, made even more hollow by the fact that he had been so close. “My Archivist—“
Jon doesn’t waste time trying to gather his mind up enough for a reply. He paws at the front of Elias’ pants until he obliges him and pulls out his cock, lining it up with the entrance of Jon’s cunt. Jon braces himself for Elias’ ministrations, for another round of humiliating edging, but Elias simply gives in to their mutual eagerness and slides his cock inside of him, spreading Jon apart as he pulls him down on his dick in such an achingly slow stretch that it makes Jon’s eyes well up with tears. When Elias finally bottoms out, he waits for only a moment before he jerks Jon back up with a thrust of his hips and sends him into a new round of twitching and gasping as the sensation of being filled full echoes through his body. Elias moves his firm grip from Jon’s hips to his chest, pressing him down into the soft sheets and positioning himself above him.
“You’re doing such a good job, doing so well,” Elias murmurs as he thrusts in again, sending a rippling heat through Jon’s body. The praise sinks in heavy and sticky, like a spoonful of honey shoved into his mouth. Elias doesn’t give him any time to get used to it before he’s pushing in and out, setting up a rhythm that somehow always manages to catch Jon off guard and sends a chorus of asynchronous moans slipping out of his mouth. Jon feels weak all the way through his body, barely able to hold himself up as Elias fucks him, legs slipping from where they cling to Elias’ back. He can’t take it for much longer, the intense buzz of deliberate overstimulation, and it’s not long before he’s back on the edge, so close that it hurts.
“I— fuck —” he says just because he feels like he should say something , pushing through the haze of sex and misery to reach into Elias’ head to try and rearrange it while he has the chance. “Am I—am I still human? Elias—ahh! ” Jon’s words break apart once again as Elias bites down hard on Jon’s neck, making him clench hard one last time around Elias before he’s coming, twitching violently on the sheets. And Elias has a wild look to him too, caught completely off guard by Jon’s compulsion, and he’s soon coming hard and fast into Jon while choking back the words that Jon threatened to hook out of him.
There’s a pause, the only sounds remaining their combined efforts at catching their breath. Elias is still disheveled, still tinged with some sort of quickly-repressed mania when he manages to elegantly pull out of Jon and lie down next to him. “Not that I can ever discourage your curiosity, but,” Elias twists so that he’s facing Jon, pulls at Jon’s wrists and holds them up to his chest in a way that seems far too intimate, despite it all. “You’ve asked this one before, and I believe I made my answer clear, at the time.”
“You’re...avoiding the question.”
“I suppose,” Elias says and Jon watches his pupils grow dark, finding eye contact inescapable as they’re positioned now, lying side by side. “That you are really only as human as you pretend to be, Jon.”
“...That’s a terrible answer.” Jon mutters, and then leans forward into Elias’ chest, utterly spent and fucked loose and pliant, thoroughly disheveled with no intention of getting up to clean himself off, as uncomfortable as Jon knew it would be, later on. And Elias reaches out and holds him so — so tenderly, so familiar with the act of holding Jon in his arms, as if he’d been practicing for it for years, long before Jon himself knew that he’d allow himself to be held like this. Elias runs his fingers slowly up the length of his neck and buries his fingers in Jon’s still-damp hair, twisting the strands lightly as Jon twitches and sighs. Jon breathes in, lets his eyes flutter closed and shifts closer into Elias’ warmth. He wants to know—so much more, to rip away Elias’ layers until it kills one or both of them, or until Jon finds a space between those layers that he can comfortably fit into and stay in forever. But for now, he finds himself letting go, content to curl up close and forgive this quiet manipulation.