hand of fate or devil’s claws

by tentaclemonster

Summary:

Jon has certain desires he's suppressed all his life. When Elias offers to use his powers to fulfill those desires, Jon finds that he can't deny himself any longer.

Notes:

Title from the song A Stroke of Luck by Garbage.

My apologies to the ghost of Original Elias Bouchard for this fic and literally no one else.

There was a short window of time when Jon was a child where he thought the things he felt only meant that he didn’t like girls. 

That, in itself, wasn’t so odd. Most other primary school boys didn’t like girls at that age, either. 

At five, six, seven Jon was young enough that it was normal not to have any crushes, for there not to be some little girl in his class who made his heart race when she asked to borrow a pencil or who he wanted to hold hands with on the playground. 

At eight, he could point to his first brushes with the horrors of the world as a reason for his disinterest, both the tragic but entirely mundane horror that left him an orphan and the much less than normal horror of watching his bully be dragged off by a monster that could have easily have gotten him instead. Either on its own would be enough to make a child disinterested in others, to retreat in on himself, but with both together – well, who had time for silly crushes in light of all that? 

And at nine, ten, eleven when Jon finally started noticing not girls, but boys, it was still only a matter of being normal. A different sort of normal, yes, but still normal enough and becoming more acceptable with every passing year.

That Jon didn’t have any inclination at that point to act on his feelings didn’t hurt, either. 

It made it easier to ignore them, to pretend that they weren’t relevant because at that point in his life, they really weren’t. If Jon happened to look at other boys, he did so surreptitiously. A quick glance and then away. He didn’t let himself focus on them, didn’t stare or make himself known. If his thoughts lingered on their legs or the pink plush of their lips or the way their slim thighs pressed together under their desks where his eyes wouldn’t dare to look for too long, it was simple enough to push the thoughts away until he was alone. To focus on other things. 

Being attracted to men instead of women was something for future Jon to deal with, he decided. Current Jon was far too busy with school work to even think of dating and far too averse to giving anyone another reason to punch him in the face should he decide to try his luck with some boy or another. He had other things to do, but he also had at least a smidgen of self preservation, something that he would unfortunately grow out of in time. 

It was easy enough to believe for a little while that the only thing his attraction signified was that he was gay. At nine years old, there was nothing abnormal about looking at other nine year olds, after all – or at ten, eleven, twelve. Not when he was still a child himself and those boys were his peers. 

It was at thirteen that Jon first got the inkling that something was wrong, when he noticed that as he and his peers were aging his attraction to them wasn’t. The same boys he’d so slyly look at before, the ones he’d so secretly think of at night under the darkness of his covers, were growing up. They were getting taller, gaining muscle, their voices cracking and deepening. Puberty seemed to spread like a magic wand being waved over all of them. 

And then almost as suddenly, just like the flame of a candle being pressed between wet fingers, Jon’s attraction to them went out. 

He could still feel the spark of it if he thought of them as they were before, if he pictured them as their younger selves, but only then. Looking at them during lessons or passing them in the hall as the young men they were growing into suddenly evoked such a nothing reaction he may as well have been looking at girls instead or even trees or a box of shoe string for that matter. They held no interest to him, not the way they had before. Not how his fantasies of what they looked like when they were younger did. Not how the boys in the years below him suddenly began to. 

At thirteen, there was an inkling that something was wrong, but it was still possible to deny what it was. 

There wasn’t that much of a difference between thirteen and ten, or at least that’s what Jon told himself. Most of Jon’s peers might have been going through the obvious physical changes of puberty, but some of them weren’t yet. They were still small and boyish. They could probably pass for ten or younger and it wasn’t like Jon himself had never been mistaken for less than his actual age before. He’d always been intimidated by boys older than him, too, had always been an easy target to be picked on by them. Being a friendless bookworm with dead parents had practically fixed a kick me sign permanently on his back. It made sense then that he wouldn’t be attracted to older boys when his experiences with them had always leaned more towards fear and fists than friendship. 

There were plenty of reasons why he would find younger boys safer to be attracted to, Jon told himself. Plenty of perfectly normal, sensible reasons, and in time obviously that would change. When he left school and went to uni and met men he had no history with to make him nervous about them, certainly it would change. 

At thirteen, being in denial about it was easy. 

It was harder at fourteen. 

At fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

At twenty, then twenty-five.

At thirty.

As Jon got older, the subjects of his fantasies never did. They remained frozen in time, stuck in the Neverland of his mind, never growing up while Jon himself was horribly aware of how he was aging with each passing year. After a time it became glaringly obvious to him that no matter how much he continued to refuse to acknowledge what that meant, there was no plausible deniability left for him to back his protestations up with. No matter how disgusted he was with himself, how revolted and ashamed, there was nothing left but the truth of it for all that he was the only one who knew it and clung to the desperate hope that he would keep being the only one who ever would.

Jon never did anything about it, of course. It was only ever thoughts. Only feelings. He wasn’t a monster. He knew it would be wrong to act on any of it. 

Still, he refused to be around children regardless of how much he told himself that he’d never act. He had no reason to be around a child anyway so the lack of exposure wasn’t hard to arrange and that made it simple enough not to even think on it most of the time. Everyone at uni was an adult. There was no reason for a child to be around. He could often go days without seeing a single boy at all and when it couldn’t be avoided, Jon knew how to be restrained. He knew how vital it was for him to be so.

If he sometimes passed a father with his young son walking hand in hand down the pavement, if there was occasionally a particularly pretty boy on the television, if a mother would sometimes bring her son to the library – Jon tried not to look. He’d walk faster, he’d change the channel, he’d get up and leave. Anything to avoid looking at them. 

And if he couldn’t avoid looking, if he happened to look before he remembered not to, it was only ever a glance. He never let it last longer than he’d look at anyone else and certainly there was no harm in that. There was no violation in just looking at someone.

And if later at home he crawled into bed and found himself thinking about that boy he had looked at again, he would try not to. He’d clasp his hands over his chest and take deep breaths until either the thoughts stopped and turned to some assignment he had due instead or he fell into a restless asleep. He’d ignore how his heart pounded beneath his palms while he laid there. He’d pretend he couldn’t feel his cock throbbing in his pants. 

If sometimes Jon couldn’t think of something else, couldn’t pretend any longer, if the frustration grew too much until his entire body was tingling from it and the need it inspired was burning through him with restless energy, if he slipped and touched himself while picturing that boy in his mind, if he thought of how it would feel to undress him, to touch him, to fuck him – 

They were just thoughts, Jon told himself. 

Just – sick, disgusting thoughts, but there was no harm in thinking them. He wasn’t hurting anyone but himself by thinking them. Jon didn’t enjoy being that way. He didn’t – welcome the feelings or the fantasies. He knew they were wrong. He tried to avoid them whenever he could, to always turn his mind to something else, to pretend he was a normal man just going to uni and getting about his life. 

Jon tried dating. He made himself do it, saying yes whenever anyone asked him out which was more people than he’d expected would. Most of it was about trying to be normal, but there was a part of him that still naively clung to a sliver of hope that maybe someday he actually could be. That he’d meet someone he would feel that certain spark towards. Someone appropriate for a grown man to be attracted to. Someone who wasn’t a little boy. 

No matter how much Jon hated himself, there was still that smallest of possibilities that there was someone out there somewhere in the world he could actually love and even in his lowest moments he couldn’t get rid of that anymore than he could his attraction.

He went out with both men and women, always around his age or older, taking care to never agree to go out with anyone much younger than him and never anyone who had children. Jon didn’t think he’d ever hurt a child, but there was a shred of doubt always just...lingering there in the back of his mind like a splinter he couldn’t get out from beneath his skin. The thought of being in a position where he’d have to find out if he was right about his self control or not was discomforting and horrible enough that he didn’t want to take the risk. Not ever. Not if he could help it.

Mostly, Jon hated the entire process of dating. 

There were times he didn’t, of course – meals he’d shared with someone that enjoyable conversation was had over or films they went to see where having company at the cinema made the experience better – but the majority of it was nothing more than an exercise in frustration. He didn’t connect with people easily. He usually found them boring or annoying or both and they found him too abrasive or standoffish to want to be around for long. That spark he desperately wanted to feel with another adult was never there, so utterly void in him that even when he wouldn’t mind grabbing dinner with someone for a second time or seeing the film playing the next week with them he couldn’t lie to himself about it being anything more than the start of a potential friendship at best. 

Most of the people Jon went out with, he couldn’t stand for even that little, and the few he enjoyed enough to try having sex with he soon learned to dislike from the experience. 

It didn’t take long to realize it was easier to pretend that he liked sex with men than it was with women. The men he’d slept with either never noticed that he wasn’t exactly enjoying himself or perhaps they just cared less if the person they were fucking was having as good a time as they were as long as he didn’t complain. With women, however, it was harder to hide that he wasn’t aroused by them. Impossible to deny it when they asked and even more impossible to explain, to say nothing of the humiliation of trying. It was horrible enough that it only took him a handful of tries to swear off trying his luck sleeping with anyone else for good.

And then Jon met Georgie and that – 

That was a surprise. 

Jon liked her more than he ever had anyone before. It still wasn’t the way he should’ve done, he knew. It wasn’t a romantic affection, to say nothing of his complete lack of sexual interest in her, but it was enough that it almost felt the way he thought liking another person should. They got along in a bickering sort of way. They shared the same academic interests, had the same taste in films and music, preferred cats to dogs, and all the other little points of commonality that relationships were built off of while you figured the bigger points out. 

Being with Georgie was never anything but enjoyable in the beginning, the glow of having someone he could actually call a friend still shiny and new and so entirely novel that every little facet about it amazed him.

Jon thought the whole thing was doomed the first time the topic of sex had come up and he made it clear he wasn’t interested in it, but Georgie was more understanding than anyone else had ever been. She didn’t mind that he didn’t want to sleep with her or that he’d never want to. She had entirely the wrong idea about why that was, of course, but Jon was thankful for having an easy excuse that she would accept. 

If he also felt horribly guilty for lying to her, the thought of her finding out the truth inspired a feeling far worse than that. 

It was a sort of dread that permeated the relationship even under his contentment, a paranoia that one day she’d just look at him and know or that he’d slip and gaze at some boy in public for a moment longer than normal while she was there and he would suddenly become unable to lie to her when she asked him what he was staring so hard at. 

There were even some nights where Jon had nightmares about it, just as vivid as the ones he had of his childhood monster. Sometimes he’d dream of suddenly blurting everything out to Georgie over breakfast while she stared at him in shocked horror and no matter how much he wanted to shut up, he physically couldn’t. His mouth would work without his consent as he told her one lurid detail of his fantasies after another while she sat silently listening, her disgust clear on her face, until he woke up in a cold sweat, his throat tight around the words he was still trying to speak and heartbeat pounding with panic over the possibility that he talked in his sleep.

Then sometimes the dreams were more vivid than that. 

Not just in the realm of confessing his attraction but acting on it – the fantasy more free than any he ever had when he was awake, his thoughts unbridled in a way they could only be when he was asleep and his mind took the reins of control from him. They’d usually start off with him and a boy in bed together with not a stitch of clothing on them. Jon’s hands and mouth would wander over the small body squirming under him, the boy sometimes trying to get away and sometimes trying to get closer. Jon would be lost in his arousal whether the boy wanted him back or not, consumed with the feel of soft skin beneath his fingertips and plunging his tongue into a small mouth that either inexpertly tried to kiss Jon back or struggled to resist. The tone of the dream would begin as erotic only to abruptly turn when Georgie walked in on them and started screaming demands to know what the hell Jon was doing. 

Sometimes after waking up from those nightmares, Jon considered breaking up with Georgie that very day just for the sake of making them stop, but every time he found himself about to – he just couldn’t. There would always be something that stopped him before he could get the words out. A smile, a joke, a laugh, a cup of tea prepared just how he liked it, the way Georgie would talk to The Admiral when she didn’t think Jon was listening. Something that made him remember that for all his paranoia and fear over Georgie knowing, there was plenty he liked about being with her.

And so time went on. 

Georgie never found out and Jon didn’t end it and for awhile, other than the toll Jon’s secret was taking on him, things were good. It wasn’t the kind of relationship other people had, but there was a comfort in having someone in his life even if he saw her more as a best friend rather than the girlfriend she was supposed to be. It made it easier to pretend he was normal, to go to sleep with her at night like a million other men went to sleep with their partners, and to tell himself that whatever images were running through his mind and whatever he felt about them, it was what he was doing that actually mattered. 

It was probably the simplest time in Jon’s life, not to mention the happiest.

It was far less so when the relationship began to fracture.

When their once playful bickering started to gain a nasty edge to it. When they went from making ribbing remarks about one another that they’d both laugh at to little asides that hit too close to home. When the quiet comfort of nights spent in together were broken by the loudness of doors slammed as one of them stormed out. Their once simple camaraderie had turned to arguments so bad they couldn’t stand to be in a room with one another for days at a time after, then weeks, then longer. They’d ended up in a cycle of taking breaks and getting back together, but the fighting never improved and those breaks lasted longer every time.

Their inevitable break up, when it happened, came as more of a relief than a surprise. The kind of a relief where in hindsight it was less of a shock that things had imploded and more of a shock that they’d even lasted as long as they had.

When Georgie walked out after a particularly nasty argument and Jon just knew it was for the last time, he honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about the fact that it was something as simple as his personality clashing too hard with hers that had ruined things in the end and not the horrible secret he’d always been so terrified she would find out about. He ended up doing a little of both while he got whatever things he had out of Georgie’s flat before she came back, then went to his own and drank so much he could barely get out of bed the next morning because of the hangover. 

Being alone again afterwards was harder than he expected it to be. 

It shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t like Jon didn’t have any experience being alone. He’d been single for far longer than he’d been in a relationship and what he and Georgie had was hardly a normal romance in the first place, but it seemed like none of that mattered. He still found it difficult to adjust. Emotionally painful in a way he didn’t have any reference for handling other than the deaths of his parents and grandmother which weren’t exactly the same.

He had gotten too used to being with Georgie, that was the problem. To having someone he could talk to, someone he could go to bed with at night and wake up with in the morning, someone who genuinely cared about him the way few people ever had. To go from having that to having nothing but his own empty flat and not a single person he wanted to spend time with outside of it was like having a bruise that ached every time he breathed. The relationship ending felt like an abject failure and it was a failure that pained him all the more because at some point during the course of being with Georgie, Jon had unknowingly started to delude himself into believing that he could actually avoid failing at all.

Jon dealt with it the only way he knew how, burying his feelings down as best as he could and busying himself with his education. The method worked far better for his post break up depression than it ever did with his attraction to boys or the fantasies they inspired. 

The wound closed up. It healed. And it didn’t reopen when he and Georgie finally saw one another again and decided they should sit down and clear the air. It was a hard conversation, but it was made easier by he and Georgie being on the same page about where they stood. They both agreed it was better that they not get back together, that they had incompatibilities that were too much to make a relationship work and problems spawning from them that weren’t ever going to be solved. The door was open for them to go back to being friends someday, though, and Jon was more than happy to take the first tentative steps through it.

His remaining time at Oxford was little different from how it was when he first started. 

He went to class, did the work, kept his eyes off of any boy he happened to cross paths with, and repressed his fantasies until he couldn’t anymore and found himself getting off on them, disgusted with himself for every second he had his hand on his cock. For days after he gave in, he’d feel on edge and awkward, unreasonably paranoid that his guilt was obvious enough that anyone could look at him and see it. He would become nauseous from thinking that it was only inevitable that someone would find out, his stomach a twisting mess of nerves and self-loathing. 

Then eventually the guilt would fade, his worries would ease back down to the level of background noise, and the whole cycle of repression, surrender, and shame would reset again. 

Jon sometimes thought he should’ve been more of a nervous wreck throughout it all, but he wasn’t. He was functioning, in plenty of ways excelling. As terrible as it was, the cycle that his attraction took him through became just another part of his life. It was unavoidable and he couldn’t change it, so he began to think of it as something like an illness instead. Other people dealt with migraines or depression or anxiety and had to figure out how to form their lives around those conditions while what Jon had to deal with was...this. 

It helped a bit to think of it in those terms, as just a sickness he was surviving rather than something that defined who he was as a person. Even in his lowest moments, Jon could still hold on to the fact that his problem hadn’t infected anyone else. He’d never once acted on his fantasies. He’d never been alone with a boy, never touched one or otherwise behaved inappropriately. 

As loathsome as his feelings were, Jon had never crossed the line and as long as he didn’t it was possible for him to not consider himself to be a monster. Close to one, perhaps, but it was a difference that mattered to him. It was the anchor that kept him from sinking into self-hatred, that got him through graduation and the years after. 

Of course, that line of thought became utterly laughable when he was hired on at The Magnus Institute. Statement by statement, Jon’s definition of monstrosity expanded to dimensions not even his worst nightmares could have prepared him for and though of course the things he was learning were all disturbing and terrifying, at first they also came with a sick sense of relief. 

The only thing Jon had ever done was have thoughts, after all. How bad was that, really, when compared to the kinds of things actual monsters were doing to people? How little impact did his fantasies have on the subjects of them considering what other people had been through? What was Jon compared to the likes of Jurgen Leitner? How did his thoughts, his fantasies, the occasional look given to a boy he passed in the street that all went unacted on outside of his own mind measure up to the kind of suffering wrought by the Jane Prentisses of the world? 

For a moment – a brief, flash in the pan of a moment – a part of Jon was actually sickly thrilled that those kinds of monsters existed because surely it meant that he wasn’t one. 

Later, Jon would look back at that moment and want to laugh at the twisted irony of it. If he believed in the concept of karma, he might have even thought that this hubris was the reason his position as Archivist had changed him to say nothing of all the other little horrors working at the Institute brought. That some dreadful force in the world had sensed his hope and decided to reach out and crush it just to punish him for having the audacity to feel it in the first place. 

That wasn’t it, of course. Jon knew that. The situation at the Institute was far more complex than that and it was certainly bigger than Jon himself. It was still difficult not to feel like it was personal, however. As though a knife that had been stuck in him for all his life had finally been removed only for it to be shoved back in and twisted the second he began to feel relief at its absence. 

Bad enough that he was the kind of man who was attracted to little boys, who got off on fantasies of them, which would make him monster enough in anyone’s eyes – no, he had to be more than that. The kind of thing that had a perverse fixation on other peoples’ trauma, even if it also horrified and terrified him. Someone who could make them relive it, that could force them to tell him about their worst experiences in gruesome detail, while he sat there savoring it all like their fear was a relaxing nightcap at the end of a long day. 

And if what Jon was becoming was the height of cruel irony, then the fact that it was so obvious was just the cherry on top. 

For all his lifetime of paranoia over how people would just know about his attraction to boys by looking at him and his fear of how they would react, it was nothing compared to what it was like when people actually suspected you of being a monster. It wasn’t the kind of monster Jon always worried people would know him to be, but that made little difference. The way Tim looked at him with barely veiled disgust and Martin was so wary even when trying to express his concern, to say nothing of how all of them thought he was capable of beating a man to death – it was his every paranoid worry about being found out and found abominable come to life even if the finer details were different than he’d ever expected.

Jon had Georgie, of course, and she was wonderful, but it was impossible for her to truly understand what was happening to him and unfair to put her in the position where she felt the need to try to. He was consumed with guilt over relying on her in the first place and interjecting himself into her life when he knew she was better off without him, more so now than she’d ever been. Jon would’ve felt the same even if it wasn’t for the secret that he’d always kept from her, but with it he was constantly reminded that the person she thought he was didn’t exist. 

If his caginess and odd behavior made her look at him like he was turning into a stranger, then Jon knew it was nothing compared to how she’d look at him if she knew everything he was hiding from her.

The entire situation felt as untenable as it did inescapable. The stress of investigating Gertrude’s murder without anyone finding out, of having everyone think he’d killed Jurgen Leitner himself, the way he felt in between reading statements at Georgie’s flat when he could do nothing but wait for another to be sent to him like he was an addict waiting for a fix – it was all more taxing than anything he’d ever been through. 

Jon hardly slept and when he did, he did so badly, his sleep filled with both nightmares of bugs and burning flesh and erotic dreams of little boys that he didn’t remember to hate himself for having until he woke up. It was harder to control his fantasies with his mind so preoccupied elsewhere even when he was awake. They became more common, more...graphic. When he was particularly stressed, it seemed that was where his waking thoughts always took him, at first idly and then with single minded focus. Jon found himself indulging in the fantasies more and more often just to take the edge off, but all it did was add a film of constant shame to the tension and yet once he’d opened that door it was impossible to just go back to ignoring his urges again as he’d tried to for years before.

That there was going to be a breaking point seemed inevitable to Jon. He was coping as well as he could, but it was on a razor’s edge and he was all too aware that there was a thin line between coping and crashing. He hoped that solving Gertrude’s murder would at least help him ease away from the edge he was on and in a way, he supposed it did. 

Jon just hadn’t expected to find himself on the edge of another cliff quite so quickly or how alluring it would be to give in to the urge to jump.

 

*

 

Elias’ office was silent except for the sound of pen scratching across paper and the faint ticking of the clock on the wall. He wasn’t looking at Jon anymore, but Jon supposed that didn’t mean anything when Elias didn’t actually need his eyes on Jon to be able to see him. 

Or to see into his head. 

The thought wasn’t an assuring one. Not now, not before. Ever since Jon had found out what Elias could do, it had been a disquieting horror that had slowly gnawed its way through him and now that he was actually alone with Elias, it had only gotten worse. It bit at him harder, chewed faster. It made Jon’s pulse quicken and the cold sweat that had broken out all over his body chill a little more. The sound of the pen and the clock were nothing compared to the pounding of his heart, the rush of blood in his ears, the dry click of his throat as he swallowed, all of which seemed deafening though logically he knew they weren’t. 

Jon wanted to fidget where he sat across from Elias. He wanted to squirm. He wanted to get up and leave.

He did none of it. He sat as still as a statue, frozen like his life depended on it.

“Anything else?” Elias asked after a few beats had passed. 

There was plenty else.

Am I still human? Jon wanted to ask Elias. What is this place doing to me? What has it already done? Am I destined to just keep changing until I’m no different from that thing in Alexandria? Shambling under the Institute for the rest of eternity, preying on whatever poor bastard happens to stumble across me in the tunnels? 

“You must know,” was what came out of Jon’s mouth instead. 

Three words choked out and tinged with desperation. 

Jon regretted speaking them instantly, but he couldn’t take them back. 

Elias’ pen paused. He looked up to meet Jon’s eyes and held the gaze for a moment before he let out a long exhale and put the pen down. He leaned back in his seat – and then he smiled. 

It was a gratified expression, inordinately pleased. It was completely at odds with the heavy weight of dread in Jon’s chest, keeping him anchored where he sat.

“I had wondered if you would say anything,” Elias said. “You know, that’s the catch to what I am, Jon. You can’t know what people are going to do until they decide to do it. There’s usually time enough between the deciding and the acting to plan for them, but on rare occasion it’s still possible to be surprised. You, Jon, have always been full of surprises. I can’t begin to tell you how refreshing it is.” 

Jon swallowed hard, his dread growing heavier. 

“How long?” he made himself ask. 

“Oh, since the beginning.” 

The dread deepened, spread, multiplied until Jon felt like he could hardly breathe from the crushing weight of its tendrils wrapping around him. 

“The very first time we met I knew every perverse little thought that had ever crossed your mind,” Elias told him without a care. “Every fantasy you ever gave in to, every cold shower you took afterwards trying to make yourself feel clean again. I can describe to you the first little boy you ever looked at as an adult and knew there was nothing normal about how he made you feel. I can tell you where you saw him and what you thought about doing to him in your bed that night. I know you’ve been thinking about it more often since I promoted you, that the stress of the job is making it worse, that the fantasies are starting to not be enough to satisfy your needs. I know that after Jane Prentiss attacked the Institute, you went online looking for more and you didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when you couldn’t find anything. I know –”

“Enough!” Jon snapped at last. He was breathing heavily, his heartbeat a sledgehammer pounding against his ribs. He felt as though that hammer would break through the bone if he had to hear another word of what Elias knew, all the things Jon had never told anyone laid out like they were nothing. “Just – that’s enough, Elias. You’ve made your point.”

“But I haven’t.” Elias’ smile softened, his voice gentled. “You must know I never judged you for it, Jon. After everything I’ve done, I’m hardly in a position to call you a monster because of a few idle fantasies.”

Jon scoffed. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find a murderer’s acceptance particularly reassuring.”

“Of course I will, if you’ll forgive me for pointing out that my acceptance is liable to be the only kind you’ll ever get. If the others knew, they wouldn’t be nearly as understanding as I am.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“No, you don’t, do you? But perhaps I should tell you anyway. Sometimes it’s better to voice our quiet thoughts aloud, don’t you agree? It can help put things in perspective.”

Jon said nothing, but Elias was undeterred by his silence. 

“Let’s start with Tim,” Elias said. It was in the same tone of voice he’d used with Jon on prior occasions to discuss the weather and other mundane things, like this conversation was little more noteworthy than commenting that it hadn’t rained in a week. For some reason, that only made it all the worse. “Tim already thinks there’s something deeply, unfixably wrong with you and this would only be confirmation that he was right all along. Melanie never liked you much to begin with and I’m afraid that now that she’s officially part of the team, she wouldn’t be inclined to be any more kinder to you if she knew – not that she would have accepted you had she found out before, of course. Then there’s Martin’s blossoming little crush which will never survive knowing why you’ll never return his affections, to say nothing of how dear Georgie will feel when she finds out she actually shared a bed with someone of your predilections. It’s Basira and Daisy you should be the most concerned with knowing, however. Do you know why, Jon?”

Elias barely paused to wait for an answer.  

“They’ll never believe you when you assure them that you’ve never molested a child,” he told Jon bluntly, “or that the one time you looked for child pornography you failed to find any and you swear to them you were sickened enough with yourself to never do it again. Their distrust will be understandable – police officers, you know, they hear those kinds of things in their line of work from men like you all the time and it’s always a lie. They won’t give the benefit of the doubt to you that this time it’s the truth. Neither of them will take it as personally as the others will, at least, but I can tell you from experience that a gun shot doesn’t need to be personal in order to be effective. Daisy usually does the killing in that relationship, but I think Basira might make an exception just for you, Jon. Wouldn’t that be a treat for her, do you think? To learn that she’s just as capable of doing the dirty work her partner is so adept at with the right incentive?”

Elias was still smiling as he finished, still so genial despite the unseemliness of what he was saying.

Jon shut his eyes and bit down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. 

“Are you going to tell them?” he asked, though he was nearly certain he already knew.

If Elias had wanted the others to know about him, they’d know. It wasn’t like Elias hadn’t had the opportunity – or years worth of opportunities, apparently. There was nothing for him to gain from telling them now, not when he’d already told Jon that he needed him to stop the Unknowing. Setting fire to the shreds left of Jon’s life was hardly going to help him accomplish it. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t that.

Still, just voicing the possibility made Jon nauseous. Nothing Elias said about how the others would react was a lie. It was nothing Jon didn’t already know, hadn’t already agonized over a thousand times before.

It was still more relieving than it should have been to hear Elias’ answer.

“I have no reason to reveal all your secrets. It’s none of their business, to say nothing of how the others knowing would only make it more difficult for you to do your job.”

Jon let out a short, humorless laugh and brought a hand up to rub at his forehead where a dull ache had started to form. He kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want to look at Elias right now, didn’t want to see what he was sure would be an affable expression on his face and feel the punch in the gut that such apparent friendliness would land on him.

Rarely had Jon ever imagined what it might be like for someone to know everything there was to know about him and actually accept it, because it had seemed ludicrous that anyone ever could, but here was Elias doing just that. 

Elias, the murderous manipulator serving a horrible master to who only knew what end. 

A worse person to have on his side, Jon – could imagine, actually, but that didn’t make it any better. He didn’t believe for a moment that Elias didn’t have some hidden agenda behind his acceptance, but the very fact of it still rankled as much as it made Jon feel horribly vulnerable and vulnerable wasn’t something he could afford himself to be. Not here in this place and especially not here with this man.

Sympathy from the devil, Jon was finding, was far more bitter than it was sweet. 

“Where does that leave us?” Jon asked. “You aren’t going to say anything, fine. I should never have said anything, either. There’s no point to this entire conversation.”

“I disagree. The others not knowing hardly matters when you’re already self-destructing well enough on your own. Your outlet for your fantasies clearly isn’t enough anymore. You never would have broached this subject with me if your control was as good as it once was. You never would have went looking for something to fuel your fantasies outside of your own mind if the thoughts were still enough.”

Jon tensed in his seat, a wonder as he was tense enough already. “That was a mistake. The circumstances were – it was one time. I slipped one time. It won’t happen again.” 

Elias clicked his tongue, the sound quick and doubtful. “Oh, but I think it will. I think as used as you are to lying to yourself, you know that the stress you were under that night has only gotten worse and it’s only a matter of time before you make the same mistake again...and then again and again. I wonder how long after that just pictures and video will be enough to sate you. How long until you find yourself wanting the real thing? How long will the desire nag at you until you either act on it or do something drastic to avoid giving in?”

“I wouldn’t –“ Jon started hotly, only for the words to abruptly cut off as his throat seemed to close on them. He swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut tighter until he felt like they were burning behind his eyelids before he took a shuddering breath that made him feel lightheaded when he exhaled. 

Always in the back of Jon’s mind, there was that worry, that splinter of a feeling he couldn’t get out. It itched at him now, making him want to dig his nails into his skin and claw until he drew it out of him in a bloody mess of skin and flesh. 

Jon wouldn’t – Jon hadn’t – but he could. 

He might. 

He’d never been alone with a boy, after all, never tested if his self control was really as strong as he told himself it was or if it was only just wishful thinking on his part. For all the times Jon had reassured himself that he had never done anything and never would, he’d also never had the opportunity. Had, in fact, avoided any possibility of having the opportunity because a part of him knew the outcome wasn’t guaranteed.

“I wouldn’t,” Jon tried again, but the words came out soft instead of confident as he meant them to be, like they were a lie he’d lost the energy to tell.

“This isn’t your fault, Jon,” Elias soothed. The gentle tone made the hairs stand on the back of Jon’s neck at the same time as something twisted painfully in his chest. How often had he wished for someone to tell him that very thing and yet to hear it now, to hear it from Elias – it was as galling as it was pathetic. “You’ve tried your hardest dealing with this alone and it’s been a commendable effort. Other men would have failed miserably.”

Jon let out a wet laugh and pressed his fingers harder into his forehead, the heat behind his eyelids burning hotter. “I’ve failed miserably, Elias.” 

“You haven’t. Not yet, at least. You’ve done nothing wrong so far but make a single failed internet search and that’s certainly nothing our police friends could arrest you for even if I didn’t have enough leverage over them to square us both away should they learn about it. As long as you keep these fantasies of yours in the realm of thoughts from now on, that won’t change, and you must know, Jon, I am more than happy to help you do that.”

“Help me? How? How could you possibly help me?” Jon demanded. Then he scoffed and added, “And why would you, anyway, when just earlier you were telling me that I had to figure things out on my own?”

“There are limits to how much I can help you in discovering how to stop the Unknowing, yes, but this is a different matter. Besides, you’ll need to be able to focus to succeed at your task and you can hardly do that if you’re too worried about these impulses of yours escalating to function. Or if you end up in a prison cell for acting on them.” 

Jon barely held back a flinch at the implication.

Elias went on, “I hope my help will make your work easier, but they’re separate subjects. Connected, of course, but I see no harm in being more forthcoming in this than in matters more related to...business, as it were.”

“You still haven’t said what this help you’re offering entails.”

“As you know, one of the benefits of my position is the ability to see things. The material of your thoughts, feelings, and memories, the choices you turn them into. I can see all of it, but I can show you things, too. Things that –“ Elias stopped and let out a short laugh. “Well, what’s the point of explaining when a demonstration is worth a thousand words? Open your eyes, Jon. See what it is I’m offering you.”

Something clenched in Jon’s chest at the foreboding that lurked in those words even behind Elias’ cheerful delivery of them and for a moment, he didn’t want to open his eyes at all. He didn’t know what to expect, but surely whatever Elias wanted to show him, whatever help he was offering, was nothing good. It couldn’t be, not when the whole subject was such a rotten one, but especially not from Elias himself who Jon didn’t believe for a second was only concerned with his well being out of the kindness of his heart. 

Jon imagined for an instant standing with his eyes still shut, turning, and just walking out of the office without so much as a look back at Elias. It would serve Elias right to have Jon rebuke him after everything he’d done, to have one thing not go how he expected for all his claims of liking it when Jon surprised him. 

It was what he should do. It was probably the right thing to do, but – 

But Elias wasn’t wrong, was he? 

Jon was escalating and there was every chance he would escalate further given enough time and stress, two things he’d had both too little and too much of lately, respectively. Jon didn’t want to believe that he’d go as far as to prey on a child, but the belief felt less certain than it had been before. The foundations of it had been crumbling for years now and it was past the point where he could deny that it was in danger of collapsing any longer, if that point had ever existed in the first place. Whatever help Elias was offering was sure to be something terrible, to come with hidden motivation and strings attached, but Jon needed help and Elias was the only one offering. 

Jon took a deep breath and exhaled it. He dropped his hand from his head and at last opened his eyes – 

And froze. 

There was a boy in front of him. 

He couldn’t have been older than ten, this pretty boy who sat perched on the edge of Elias’ desk, his legs dangling above the floor where they were too short for his feet to reach it and his hands laced together in his lap. He stared at Jon with grey eyes and a raised brow, sweet lips tilted up at one end in the beginning of a smile that made Jon’s gut twist with something familiar and warm. 

It took every ounce of willpower for Jon to tear his eyes away and look at Elias who still sat behind his desk, already watching Jon back and looking for all the world like a scientist dissecting something whose insides he found particularly interesting. Jon tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled sound. His mind was still too focused on the boy for his mouth to work, the boy he had to fight not to look at again, who was so close Jon could reach out and touch him if he wanted to. 

Jon’s hands clenched into fists in his lap to avoid the impulse. The injured one stung, but the pain was a welcome distraction to the growing heat in his stomach and the panicked thudding of his heartbeat to say nothing of how his chest felt as though there was a heavy weight pressing down on it and his lungs like they were on the verge of seizing up and making him wheeze. It suddenly took an effort that it hadn’t before to not gasp and choke for air like there were hands wrapped around his throat, strangling him. He had to remind himself to keep breathing normally, every inhale and exhale as deliberate as the last.

“Oh, don’t look so stricken, Jon,” Elias said in response to whatever picture of shock Jon made sitting there. “He isn’t real – or, at least, he’s not really here. He was a real boy once, but this before you is only my memory of that boy projected out into the world. He only exists because I want him to. If he speaks or moves, it’s all at my direction. He has no more thoughts or feelings of his own than a puppet would.”

Jon’s mind struggled to process the information, to comprehend the power Elias was describing and what it meant, to understand what he was doing using it here and now like this. Then suddenly he recalled Leanne Denikin’s statement and wished he hadn’t. Elias’ puppet comparison was even less reassuring after remembering they lived in a world where there existed such a thing as sentient dolls.

“Who was he?” Jon forced the question out, because it seemed the thing to ask. Better than the breakdown he felt himself teetering towards, surely. Even if the boy wasn’t really there like Elias said, he was still a real child somewhere in the world.

Elias only looked amused at the question. “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?”

Jon almost snapped that no, it wasn’t obvious, actually, before he stopped himself. 

He took a deep breath and looked at the boy again. 

Grey eyes still stared back at Jon, but now that the shock of his presence wasn’t as strong, Jon was quick to realize that those eyes were familiar to him – and they weren’t the end of the familiarity, either. The boy’s hair, his skin, the shape of his nose, the line of his jaw. Even his clothing was identical down to the shiny black shoes, albeit all in child size. 

It took little effort for Jon to imagine what this boy would look like when he grew up. Not when the older version was so close for Jon to compare him to.

“This is you,” Jon stated what did seem so glaringly obvious to him now that he felt blind for not noticing immediately. 

“It was,” Elias corrected. “Elias Bouchard, age nine. I could show you someone else, but I thought you’d be more comfortable with a boy who was consenting to his likeness being projected like this – in a manner of speaking, of course. I certainly have no problem with the younger version of my body being used for a good cause.”

“A good cause,” Jon repeated. There was a nearly hysterical edge to his voice. “You can’t be suggesting –“ 

He stopped abruptly. His face went hot from just thinking of what Elias was implying. To actually say it while still looking at the boy felt like it would burn him alive for all that the boy continued to stare placidly back at Jon, not a single reaction given to what was being said about him. It gave credence to Elias’ description of the boy as just being a puppet – a thought being projected with no inner life or will of its own – but that hardly made Jon feel any less perverse.

Elias, of course, had none of the hesitance he did. 

“You agree that your current outlet for your impulses is no longer working for you, yes? Well, here’s a new one,” Elias said it like it was all so sensible. So – so logical. “It’s no different from all the other fantasies you’ve had. This one is just a little more...advanced.”

Jon let out a helpless laugh. “It is different. Of course, it’s different. It doesn’t matter if he isn’t real. This isn’t just some picture in my head. I can see him right in front of me. I can – I can touch him, if I wanted to, and you want me to – to what, Elias? What do you expect me to do with him?”

“This isn’t about what I expect, Jon, it’s about what you want. Surely after all the thoughts you’ve had, you have some idea of what that is.” 

Jon’s face burned hotter. The boy still sat there smiling at him and Jon was suddenly horribly aware that he’d been staring at the boy this entire time. 

“I don’t –“

“I think the time for lying is well behind us now,” Elias interrupted him, “or maybe the problem isn’t honesty. Maybe you’re so used to denying yourself that you don’t even know how to take what you want when it’s right in front of you. Is that the problem, Jon? Do you need someone else to take the lead?”

Whatever sharp retort Jon was about to say in response to that dried up in his mouth as the boy suddenly moved. 

Jon abruptly sat up straighter, his body gone rigid with added tension as the boy came closer. He was still smiling at Jon, a mirror to the smile on Elias’ face, as he hopped off the desk and made his way to him. As he came to a stop just inches away. As he lowered himself to his knees in a smooth practiced movement that Jon knew no actual child could have managed at the same time as his cock throbbed between his legs at the picture the boy made kneeling there before him and looking nothing but pleased at the situation. When the boy reached out and put his small hands on Jon’s knees, Jon could feel the heat of them like they were twin brands. It was nothing compared to how he burned as those hands slid up his thighs until they were resting at the buttons of his trousers, deliberately avoiding his covered erection and yet so close that all it would take was for Jon to shift his hips up just so for those small palms to be cupping it.

“You can say no, of course,” he heard Elias say, but his voice was distant. The words were quieter than they should have been under the sound of Jon’s own heart pounding in his chest so hard it may as well have been a drum beat. 

Jon swallowed and only heard the dry click of his throat as he stared down at the boy. 

He should say no, he knew. He meant to say no. He planned to. 

Somehow his mouth didn’t open at all. 

His silence was all the invitation the boy needed. Those small hands immediately began to work at his buttons, deftly undoing one then another. 

Jon felt more aware of his own body than he’d ever been in his life as he watched and felt every subtle movement of small fingers brushing against him through the fabric, every muscle in him tight with strain and a simmering heat warming up to boiling beneath his skin. His cock ached more for this projection than it ever had for any real boy, any thought, any fantasy he’d ever had, and yet when at last his buttons were all undone and the boy’s hand slipped into his trousers and wrapped around him, Jon learned that the ache was nothing compared to what it felt like to actually have the boy’s hands on his skin.

He made a strangled sound that he didn’t have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about as the boy pulled his cock out, his hand so small that his fingers hardly fit around it. Something low in Jon’s stomach clenched at the sight of him, at how obscene he looked. He realized with a sudden jolt that he liked the difference in size. How slight the boy looked, how small compared to Jon himself, how his small hands made Jon’s cock look bigger. He liked it even more when the boy leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the head of his cock, his wet little tongue coming out to lick at the underside of it like he’d done it a thousand times before and not only knew just what Jon liked but was eager to give it to him. 

It was the boy’s apparent eagerness as much as his actions that had something in Jon breaking, the tautly pulled rope holding up the remaining vestiges of his control snapping at long last. 

His hand reached out and buried itself in the boy’s hair before he made the conscious decision to do it, the feel of it as soft as silk just as he’d always imagined. He gasped as he forced the boy’s head further into his lap. The boy didn’t resist the hold or so much as flinch at what would have been a painful grip on anyone else. He didn’t resist as Jon forced his cock past his pretty lips and into the wet heat of a mouth so small that it could barely take him. He didn’t fight even when Jon began to fuck that mouth with unrestrained eagerness, his arousal urging him to fuck into a throat that didn’t choke once but only swallowed around him, so tight and wet and compliant.

Jon was vaguely aware of the noises he was making as he fucked the boy’s face and even more vaguely of the fact that Elias was still in the room, but his vision was tunneled to nothing but his building need and the sight of the boy satisfying it for him. It was easy in the moment to forget that the boy wasn’t real when he looked like he was, his lips stretched painfully wide around Jon’s cock, face red and eyes watering as he took it and kept taking without complaint. His little hands were clawing into Jon’s still clothed thighs, soft whining noises coming from his throat that reverberated around Jon’s cock on every thrust into it, nostrils flaring as he seemed to struggle to breathe through his nose as his mouth was put to better use. 

The picture he painted was as perverse as it was thrilling, both terrible and beautiful all at once. 

Jon couldn’t look away from him even if he wanted to. 

He couldn’t stop staring at his cock pulling nearly all the way out of the boy’s mouth and the way his throat bulged as it pushed back in. He couldn’t help but imagine what the boy would look like with all his clothes off as he was laid back on the floor and Jon fucked his ass instead. Jon wondered if he would be able to see his cock through the boy’s belly as he could through his throat, if the boy’s own little cock would be hard from it. He imagined what noises the boy would make if his mouth wasn’t covered, if he’d moan for Jon, if he’d say his name and beg for more.

The thought of the boy begging was enough to send Jon over the edge, moaning as he thrust his cock into the boy’s throat one last time and spilled himself inside. The boy swallowed what Jon gave him and the ease that he took it with had an added wave of heat rush through Jon that made his grip tighten in the boy’s hair as he rode out his pleasure. 

When he was done, his hand slackened but stayed. The boy remained where he was as well, kneeling with Jon’s now softened cock still buried in his mouth. He kept it warm as the rest of Jon’s body relaxed into a boneless heap in his chair, covered in sweat and gasping as he struggled to catch his breath. Jon’s mind was blank for a moment, empty of all thoughts but for a pleasant buzzing that echoed the eased state of his body. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so calm, when he hadn’t had a single worry occupying the forefront of his mind, but dimly Jon thought that perhaps he’d never been. He relished the peace of it and ignored the sharp little thing just coming alive in the back of his mind that told him he shouldn’t feel peaceful at all after what he’d just done, thankful that he was relaxed enough that he could ignore it.

Jon could have stayed like that for awhile longer had he not been distracted by the sound of clothes rustling from across the room. 

His attention was drawn, however. His head looked up away from the boy to see Elias behind his desk buttoning up his trousers, his face noticeably more flush than usual and his clothes looking more rumpled than Jon had ever seen them. A second later he pulled out a handful of tissues to wipe his hands off with and even in Jon’s slackened state he could still put two and two together and understand what Elias needed to clean off. His face burned with embarrassment and disgust before he went cold all over as the reality of everything he’d just done tumbled over him like a pile of rocks.

Jon’s head jerked down to look at the boy, but suddenly there was no boy there at all. He had disappeared into thin air, leaving only Jon’s soft cock hanging out of his trousers in the open. 

Jon made a startled noise, his embarrassment growing exponentially, as he hurried to tuck it back in. His head snapped back up again at the sound of chuckling to find Elias leaning back into his chair. There was a soft, almost indulgent expression on his face. He was looking at Jon as though Jon was a pet who had done something it didn’t know was amusing. The affection in that gaze didn’t make Jon feel any better. If anything, it only made him feel more alien. More exposed like a nerve ripped out from beneath the skin.

“It’s a shame,” Elias told him. “I had hoped the afterglow would last longer.”

“I –“ Jon tried, but couldn’t get the words out. Didn’t even know what the words were. Pins and needles pricked along his clammy skin and for a moment he was positive he would be sick all over the floor. 

The moment passed, but the nausea didn’t. The memories of what he’d just done to the boy played on loop in his mind, his heartbeat going more hummingbird fast every time the loop repeated as the shame built up like a crescendo of chains wrapping around his ribs, squeezing tight and weighing him down. 

“Perhaps next time,” Elias said, and the merest suggestion of a next time was all Jon could take before he abruptly stood and lurched out of his feet, turning quickly to stumble towards the door. 

He wrenched it open and barely made it a few steps out before he stopped in his tracks and looked over to see Rosie still at her desk. 

Her face was bright red as she stared at her computer screen that Jon could see from where he was standing was grey and lifeless, the machine not even on. She very pointedly did not look at him or so much as incline her head to acknowledge he was there, but Jon could see her reflection in the screen. He could see how embarrassed she looked, even aside from her flushed face.

A wave of horror more intense than anything Jon had felt before washed over him and he hurried his way past like he was fleeing for his life, barely registering Elias’ voice behind his retreating figure calmly calling out for Rosie to please shut the door for him.

If Jon was at all capable of pride then maybe he would have felt the barest smidgen of it for making it to the nearest restroom before collapsing on his knees in front of a toilet and losing everything in his stomach to it. As it was, all he felt was shame and repulsion. Repulsion for himself, for Elias, for the boy version of Elias whose image Jon couldn’t get out of his mind now as if it had burned away the image of every other boy he’d ever seen until it was only one left. He knocked his forehead so hard into the porcelain of the toilet that it hurt and sobbed once before he managed to shove a fist into his mouth and bite down hard on his knuckles to stifle his cries. His body shook as they wracked through him, his throat tight and silent while he wished more than anything that he could just scream.

Next time, Elias had said. Next time. Next time. 

There couldn’t be a next time. There shouldn’t have been a first time. 

Jon had made a mistake – the one mistake he’d told himself he’d never make. It didn’t matter that the boy wasn’t real when he’d felt like he was. It didn’t matter when Jon now knew exactly what it felt like to give in to his desires, how good it – 

No. No, it couldn’t happen again. Jon couldn’t let it happen again. He wouldn’t. Doing it once was a mistake, but it didn’t have to be a mistake he repeated. Jon had more self control than that even if he hadn’t been able to control himself when it mattered, but then he had been – vulnerable, and Elias’ offer had taken him by surprise. Now that Jon knew what Elias could do, he could prepare for it and refuse it. He just had to control himself better in the future. He would. He swore to himself that he would.

By the time Jon managed to pull himself off the restroom floor and splash some cold water on his face to get rid of the evidence of his tears, he almost believed that he meant it. 

 

*

 

The days following, Jon was nearly glad that he was ostracized from almost everyone in his life. 

It made it easier to hide the guilt he was positive radiated from him like a bad smell and the thing that preoccupied his thoughts when he wasn’t focused on work. The only person he couldn’t hide from was Georgie who was under the impression he was coming down with something and was becoming increasingly dissatisfied by his efforts at putting her off. Not even telling her about what he did at the Institute was enough to convince her that nothing else was wrong and that he was keeping no more secrets from her. 

Jon resolved to himself that he would move out of her flat as soon as physically possible. Orsinov’s visit was enough to decide that – it was hardly safe for Georgie to have him there – but suddenly lying to her about everything was harder on his stomach than it had ever been before. If lying was difficult then the thought of telling her the truth now after what he’d done was like swallowing broken glass.

Jon couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the boy. He couldn’t stop remembering. 

He’d tried. He’d truly, honestly tried, but the images were painted on the backs of his eyelids every time he closed them. They came to him in his idle moments and in his dreams. Late at night when he was alone in his borrowed bed and it took everything in him not to wrap his hand around his cock and imagine it was a smaller hand on him. A pair of lips. The wet inside of a mouth. Reading statements and trying to find more details about the Unknowing served as a fine distraction until he inevitably remembered that Elias was the one sending the statements to him and he recalled Elias’ offer of a next time. 

The fact that a next time was possible at all haunted Jon almost as much as his memories of the first time did. 

Always before this the possibility of him touching a boy was easy to deny because of a lack of opportunity and the lack of opportunity served as a balm for his shame. Now Jon had all the opportunity he wanted and all he had to do was go to Elias and Elias would just...know. Jon wouldn’t even have to ask for it. He could remain passive and let Elias take the lead again and tell himself later that this made any kind of difference at all. That it made him less culpable, perhaps, even if he knew deep down that was just denial and between he and Elias and the projection of a boy who had long since grown up, he was the most responsible one of them all. 

The temptation was like an itch Jon desperately wanted to scratch but couldn’t reach on his own. It grew stronger by the day, ironically made worse by the fact that he was fighting it so hard. There were times when Jon recalled the relaxation he’d felt after he’d come in the boy’s mouth and thought he’d be far less stressed if he did do it again. Times when he thought too long on the fact that the boy hadn’t been real, had only been a fantasy. An advanced kind of fantasy, Elias had called it, but a fantasy nonetheless. What harm was there in it, really, if he did give in again? Who was being hurt? The questions gnawed at him, ravenous from the lack of any good answer to feed it while he starved from another kind of hunger altogether. 

In those moments Jon could almost feel himself swaying. Justifying the choice to himself like he had already made it. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to give in, but it was the hardest thing to pull back from the brink of making that decision. Each time was harder than the last and yet, somehow, Jon managed it. 

And had Nikola Orsinov never taken him, Jon liked to think that he would have kept managing. 

Deep down he knew that was just a warm blanket of denial he wrapped himself despite how little it did to keep away the cold truth, but there was some measure of comfort in the lie that knowing how false it was did nothing to expel. 

A small blessing, that, but still.

 

*

 

There was something starkly alien in remembering that not so long ago the only feelings Elias’ office invoked in Jon were ones of polite interest and patient frustration. 

How many times had he come there to discuss the state of the archives with Elias only to have his frustrations with the mess of it all tempered by Elias’ easy assurances that he was confident Jon could sort it out? How many times had they exchanged small talk after about the weather, some new artifact or research material they’d acquired, the more bureaucratic dealings of the Institute that Elias occasionally spoke to him of?

To think that Jon had sat across from Elias time and again and felt nothing more for him than the basic deference he thought he owed his boss, nothing more for this room than he would any other office – it confounded him. 

Or, at least, it would have had he not been so preoccupied by his anger and the bone deep exhaustion that it was only barely keeping at bay. If under all of that there was also a stinging gash over the fact that apparently no one had noticed he’d been kidnapped, Jon forced that emotion down even deeper. 

It was not their fault, he knew. Even if things had been fine between them all the month before, it still wouldn’t have been, but as it was he knew he had no right to feel hurt about it especially when Elias was the one who kept the reason for his absence from them. Absolutely no right at all. 

If only telling himself that would stop the panging in his chest as he stared out the closed door Melanie had just left through. 

“It was remiss of me not to ask before,” Elias’ voice suddenly rang out from behind him, “but how are you, Jon? Really?”

Jon took a deep breath and willed himself to turn. 

Elias sat behind his desk, looking at Jon like he was a curiosity. His expression was interested, if not particularly concerned. 

A wave of deja vu over the last time Jon was in this office swept over him. If he weren’t so exhausted, he might have been embarrassed or ashamed at the memories that came with it, but as it was – 

A month. It had been a month. 

“Do you honestly care?” Jon asked.

“Would you believe it if I said I did?” Elias replied. When Jon only stared at him unimpressed in return, Elias’ lips twitched up into a dry little smile. “Well, if you refuse to trust that I have some interest in your well being, at least believe me when I say that I had quite a different idea of what would follow after the last time we saw one another in mind. I knew you would try to keep your distance, of course, it was only expected that you would need time to consider things, but I was not pleased at the turn of events that kept you away.”

“How inconvenient for you that my kidnapping got in the way of your plans.”

Jon’s waspish reply only made Elias look more amused, a counter to his frustration with Jon’s sarcasm before. 

“Oh, inconvenient for the both of us, I would imagine. Somehow I doubt your captors were keen to let you...indulge.”

Despite himself, heat rose in Jon’s face at the innuendo. 

“Between the bouts of torture, I was hardly in the mood,” he shot back.

It was even mostly the truth. 

Even if Jon hadn’t been tied up most of the time and watched when he wasn’t, the need to indulge as Elias called it was barely present, too overcome by pain and fear and anger. Jon wasn’t free from his thoughts as not even captivity and the abject terror and indignities that went with it seemed capable of severing his inclinations from him entirely, but they were less driven by arousal and the shame of it and more by regret – regret that he’d stormed out on Elias that last time, regret that he hadn’t gone back, regret that he regretted those things in the first place though that last one began to dwindle as time went on and what seemed like a moral dilemma in the relative safety of Georgie’s flat started to become far less of one weeks into being held prisoner. 

Remembering the pleasure of having the boy and the short calm afterwards was the best mental escape Jon had. When Orsinov was torturing him or he was tied down and stinging from it after or those long stretches of days at a time where he was left utterly alone which was somehow more maddening than the physical pain, it was where his mind went. 

Here to Elias’ office. 

Here with the boy. 

Jon didn’t always imagine fucking him. It wasn’t always even sexual. Sometimes just picturing having the boy kneeling before him, his head in Jon’s lap while Jon petted his hair was enough to bring a temporary peace. The guilt he felt over it didn’t last long. It couldn’t, really, when those little daydreams were the only lifeline he had outside of frustrating thoughts of needing to escape but not knowing how. Not even Jon’s lifelong hatred of being attracted to boys could bring him to resent his fantasies when they were the only thing keeping him sane.

He would never tell Elias any of that, of course, both because of how mortifying it would be to say it aloud and what Jon suspected it would do for Elias’ ego – but then maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe Elias already knew it or maybe he saw something in Jon’s expression as he stared across at him that gave him an inkling that Orsinov’s imprisonment had broken Jon’s will to deny himself this where Elias’ own coaxing hadn’t. 

Either way, Jon could see the subtle shift in Elias’ eyes as it happened. The turn from curiosity to anticipation, amusement to exultation. Hadn’t Elias told him that he could only see things after someone had decided what they wanted to do? Jon wondered if he saw anything now. If he was looking ahead or if he was refraining from it because he wanted to be surprised. Hadn’t he said how much he liked it when Jon surprised him, too?

“Nothing has changed about my offer, Jon,” Elias told him. “I hope you won’t let our little disagreement earlier disincline you from accepting when I haven’t let it change my willingness to help.” 

A vindictive little part of Jon wanted to deny himself just to spite Elias. The impulse was there, throbbing with violence, but the rest of Jon was just – 

Tired. 

So very, very tired. 

“Not here,” he finally said. He was only a little surprised that he felt more relief than revulsion at his own weakness. “Just – not at the Institute again.” 

“I assume your former girlfriend’s spare bedroom is also out of the question.”

Jon gave him a withering look, but Elias’ smile only grew at it. 

“Well, as it happens I have a perfectly serviceable home myself,” Elias said, standing from his seat. “No one to see or hear anything they shouldn’t there.”

As Elias came around his desk, the nerves that had been dormant in Jon before came slowly to life. They fluttered in his stomach and spread heat up the back of his neck. There was wariness there, but mixed with it was pure anticipation. The flare of shame that came with it, with knowing that he wanted this, came as a small surprise after it had been absent for so long but Jon swallowed it down. Ignored it. He didn’t know whether to be happy or not that it was easier to push away his guilt than it had ever been. 

“Right,” he said. “Should we – now?”

“Did you want to wait? I would have thought you’d had enough of that.”

Jon didn’t want to wait. He inhaled deeply and nodded. He didn’t even flinch when Elias put an overly familiar hand on his shoulder and led him to the door. 

They stopped at Rosie’s desk on the way out and Jon felt heat rising up his face remembering the last time he’d come out of Elias’ office to see her there. Judging by the way the curious look she shot them morphed into her brows shooting up and her face tinging pink, Rosie remembered as well as he did. 

Jon cleared his throat and looked away from her, then felt completely foolish for it. He considered forcibly shaking Elias’ hand off his shoulder before realizing that would probably be far more damning than keeping it there. 

“I’ll be out of the office for the rest of the day,” Elias told her. To Jon’s annoyance, he sounded entirely unbothered himself. “See to it that anyone who calls or comes up knows not to expect me back in until morning.”

“Of course,” Rosie said, just a little too quickly. “I’ll just – I’ll do that, sir.”

“Good. I’ll see you in the morning, then, Rosie. Have a pleasant evening.” 

“You as well, sir, and – and you too, Mr. Sims. I hope you both – um, yes, you too.”

Jon couldn’t bring himself to look at her and see if she looked as flustered as she sounded. He stuttered out a thank you and hoped that it sounded far less strangled to Rosie than it did to him and then he and Elias were walking again. 

Elias’ hand only left him when they got on the lift and the doors closed in front of them. When Jon turned to Elias, he was somehow unsurprised to see the little grin playing about Elias’ face. 

“You’re enjoying this,” Jon accused.

Elias only hummed in response to Jon’s growing annoyance.

“She’ll think –“

Elias interrupted him with a laugh. “I’m afraid that ship has sailed. She already thinks we’re having a torrid office romance. After you were so loud the last time –“ 

Jon’s face burned with humiliation at the reminder. 

“– she couldn’t have thought anything else,” Elias finished. He shot Jon a sidelong look. “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourself, you know. Especially in our line of work. You learn to appreciate your amusements where you may.”

“I don’t find it amusing to be the subject of office gossip,” Jon grit out. “If the others hear about this –“

“They won’t. They didn’t after the last time, did they? Rosie isn’t the gossiping type. And if they somehow hear of it anyway, then you may feel free to tell them whatever you’d like to castigate me as a villain taking advantage of your person. They’ll believe it and I promise I won’t be offended.” 

Jon stared at Elias as he considered it then, despite himself, felt guilty for considering it. It was a ridiculous thing to feel guilty about, as if he owed Elias anything after everything he’d done. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” Jon said after a moment. “Not that you aren’t a villain –“

Elias huffed. 

“– but you aren’t forcing yourself on me and I won’t say otherwise. It’s no one’s business anyway and if they ask – if anyone asks, I’ll just tell them that.”

“Well, I do appreciate it, Jon. Although I wouldn’t have been offended, it would certainly be annoying if I had Martin trying to kill me instead of just Melanie. I’m happy enough to avoid that.”

“It’s better than them knowing the truth, at least,” was all Jon said, though something in his stomach twisted at the thought of them thinking he and Elias were involved in any other way, too.

Jon supposed it would hardly be the worst thing any of them had thought of him, but that wasn’t exactly reassuring. 

“Of course it is,” Elias replied and then they fell into silence as the lift slowly crawled its way down.

Soon enough it came to a stop and they got off it, blessedly managing to make it out of the building without anyone seeing them leave together which Jon only belatedly realized he should have been concerned about. As Elias led him across the street, Jon hardly had the time to think to ask where exactly they were going before they were already coming to a stop in front of a row of townhouses that were familiar to Jon as he’d seen them every single time he’d left work for the day, though he’d never had any reason to think much on the Institute’s neighbors before. 

Elias led him up a few stairs and was pulling out a set of keys and unlocking the door they were in front of before Jon could so much as blink. The door swung inwards and Elias looked at him expectantly. 

“You live across from the Institute?” Jon asked in surprise.

“The Institute owns it,” Elias said, inclining his head to the open door. “It comes with the job.”

Considering Jon’s last residence was a month mostly spent tied to a chair and hiding out at Georgie’s flat before that because he was wanted for a murder Elias committed, he didn’t know whether to be more annoyed or jealous. 

Jealous, Jon decided on once he actually went inside. The room he walked into was airy and spacious with sunlight filtering through the windows making the hardwood floors shine. There were several pieces of comfortable looking furniture and plenty of tall shelves full with books whose spines told him just how old they were at a glance and other antiques besides. A wide hallway led off in one direction while a staircase led up in another and Jon assumed the kitchen and bedrooms and whatever else they went to were just as nice as this. 

The look of it all was rustic, which Jon hadn’t expected from Elias if he’d even expected anything, but done in a way that spoke of purposeful design rather than just age and what likely took an atrocious amount of money to get it just right, which seemed to suit Elias perfectly.

Then Jon heard the front door close behind him and any thoughts about Elias’ choice of interior decoration were pushed aside to make room for a sudden surge of nervousness about why he was there. 

“Having second thoughts?” Elias asked as he walked past Jon, further into the house and then up the stairs. 

He didn’t stop, giving Jon no choice but to follow him or stay standing there alone. Or turn around and leave and pretend that none of this had ever happened. As certain as he’d thought been about doing this before, the last option had appeal. 

Jon hesitated for a moment then followed. He could only see Elias’ back as they headed up, but Jon wouldn’t have been surprised to know that Elias was smirking. 

“Second thoughts,” Jon answered the question, trying to ignore how the band of nerves in his chest tightened with every step he took, “and third and fourth ones. I still don’t know what you’re getting out of this, Elias.”

“Other than helping a friend in need?”

“We aren’t friends and you aren’t altruistic. Even if that wasn’t the case, most friends would draw a line at this.”

“Poor friends, those, I would say.” 

“Decent people, I would.”

Elias sighed. “It’s only what I I told you before, Jon. I want to help you and one learns to take their amusements as they come.”

“And this amuses you?” 

Elias paused on the top of the staircase and turned back to look down at Jon. There was a knowing little smile on his face and an intensity in his gaze that made Jon suddenly reconsider leaving after all. Heat crawled up the back of his neck at the magnitude of the attention on him as the moment seemed to stretch out far longer than was comfortable. 

“Immensely,” Elias finally said before he turned to continue up without another word. 

Jon stood there for a moment, completely still, and took a deep breath before following. 

Only a few steps later they came up on the next floor. Jon initially mistook it for only an office space as there were more shelves of books and things here, a sitting area, and a desk that looked to be well used from the papers strewn across it, but the presence of the large bed pressed back into the center of the far wall dismissed his first assumption. 

Any other observations Jon might’ve had dried up in his mouth the moment he saw the bed was occupied and he found all of his attention engaged with trying not to swallow his own tongue because of what he saw.

The boy looked both as real then as he had the first time and yet far more real than he’d been in any fantasy Jon had had of him since. He sat in the middle of the bed with not a stitch of clothing on him, the sheets pulled up to cover him below the waist and nothing else, leaving this chest and arms bare for Jon to take his fill. His hands rested on his sheet covered knees and he bit down on his bottom lip in apparent nervousness as he watched Jon from beneath his lashes with grey eyes that had gone dark with something that looked blatantly like lust.

The image he made went straight to Jon’s cock. It made him feel like all the air had been punched out of his chest. 

It couldn’t have been more of an enticement if it tried. Everything about it was seductive, teasing, giving Jon just enough to make his cock ache while letting his imagination fill in the gaps for what he couldn’t see. Jon knew all of it must have been purposeful even before Elias said another word, that Elias had conjured up the entire obscene image to get just this reaction, but Jon couldn’t even bring himself to be angry when it had worked so well and he was so consumed with want.

His eyes followed Elias as he made his way over to the bed and stopped to run a hand through the boy’s hair, the touch starting off gentle only to pull violently at the last moment. The boy’s head jerked back, his throat bared as he made a helpless little noise that sounded like it had been forced out of him. Watching them together made Jon’s cock throb more than even the boy alone did, the picture they made looking nothing less than a father towering over his son. 

That comparison shouldn’t have made the desire warming in Jon’s stomach burn all the hotter and yet – 

The disgust Jon felt at himself was nearly as powerful as his arousal. It still wasn’t strong enough to stop his feet from taking him to the bed, however. The feeling was no longer an impediment so much as a force of habit at this point, rote but so easy to discard. Too easy.

Jon’s hands were shaking by the time he reached the bed, his heartbeat pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. The shaking only stopped when he reached out and touched the boy himself. He pressed a palm to the boy’s face and felt the soft skin of his cheek against his thumb. 

Jon was only pulled away from the moment when Elias’ hand left the boy’s hair and covered his own. 

The touch made him startle. His eyes jerked away from the boy to look at Elias. Naked desire was written across Elias’ face, a match for what Jon was sure was reflected in his own expression, along with no small amount of amusement. 

“How are those second thoughts coming along?” Elias asked, before his lips twisted upwards in humor at whatever he saw in Jon’s reflection. 

His hand left Jon’s as suddenly as it had touched him and he made his way around the bed where he sat so close behind the boy that it would take nothing for Elias to pull him into his lap. His posture was the picture of relaxation and interest. It reminded Jon more of someone about to take in a show on the telly rather than what Elias was clearly aiming to watch him doing now. 

A spark of something not unpleasant ignited in Jon’s chest at the attention at the same time as it made his skin crawl. 

He was too aware of his hand still on the boy’s face, the soft warmth of him beneath the tips of his fingers. He could still feel where Elias had touched his hand like he’d been burned, the memory of Elias’ fingers on his skin like the throb that lingered after being kissed with the tip of a lit cigarette. 

“Do you have to be here for this?” Jon demanded. To his own consternation, he sounded far more flustered than he did appalled. 

“And miss the show?” At the look Jon gave him in response to that, Elias chuckled. “As it happens, yes, I do. Loath as I am to admit it, but I’m not all powerful. I’ve yet to master creating such a projection where I can’t actually see it in front of me. Even this takes a great amount of concentration and effort on my part, only made easier because I’ve had practice.”

“Practice,” Jon repeated.

“Do you think you’re the only one with desires not easily sated?” Elias’ eyes flicked down to the boy for a moment before they rose back up to meet Jon’s. His smile had turned guileful. “Granted, this particular desire wasn’t one I had ever considered indulging in before meeting you, Jon, but you’ve certainly shown me the appeal of it. It was only fair that I got to try him out myself, don’t you think?”

Picturing what Elias meant by trying out the boy himself made it hard for Jon to think anything at all. 

He bit the inside of his cheek to stay the flush of heat that swept through him, but it hardly worked and he could see from Elias’ expression that it hadn’t gone unnoticed. 

The boy’s head suddenly turned in Jon’s hand, drawing Jon’s full attention back to him just as he put his lips to Jon’s thumb and pressed a soft kiss to it before he sucked the tip of it into his mouth. Jon’s breathing hitched as he felt a small tongue swirling around his thumb, hot and slick wet. The boy’s cheeks hollowed as he started to suck, looking up at Jon from underneath his lashes all the while. Jon couldn’t hold back his gasp at the feeling of it or stop the way it turned into an eager groan when the boy’s hands went to his belt and made quick work of pulling it off then his trousers and underwear down. 

Jon expected the boy’s hand would go to his cock next. He anticipated feeling it in the boy’s small hands again and seeing it push into his mouth like it had before, but to his consternation the moment his cock sprung free from the confines of his clothes, the boy pulled back. 

The boy let go of Jon as he moved away, sliding back on the bed until he was in Elias’ lap, his bare back pressed flush to Elias’ clothed chest. Jon’s thumb slipped out of the boy’s mouth at the same time as the sheet covering the boy’s waist slipped down and revealed his little cock to Jon for the first time. Jon swallowed thickly at the sight of it, so small and already hard between slim thighs. Any disappointment Jon felt over the boy no longer touching him disappeared, replaced by a flash of hot desire all across his body. 

Then the boy’s legs uncrossed, stretched out and spread, and the desire only burned all the brighter. 

Elias’ hand went to the boy’s hair and pulled, forcing the boy to bare his throat again. 

“What do you think?” Elias asked in that tone he used when he already knew the answer to something. “Was this worth the wait?”

It was, Jon thought desperately. It was worth all the wait. Not just the month he’d spent in Orsinov’s care, but all the years of waiting that came before. 

Projection or not, nothing else compared to the boy laid out and bared before his very eyes. No fantasy Jon had ever had could compete with the sight of those spread legs and the little cock between them so close within his reach. No images Jon had pictured about whatever random boy he saw on the street were as good as this boy’s throat tipped back as though he were an offering made for Jon to devour. Those impossible wet dreams of fucking boys and having them want it in a way Jon knew none of them ever would in reality were nothing when Jon actually had a boy right in front of him, docile and willing to take whatever Jon gave him without complaint. 

The difference was night and day. When you compared being given a four course meal you could gorge yourself on until your stomach hurt or being given a blurry picture of some unknown food and told that was all you could have to live on, there was no question of what won out.

Jon said none of that to Elias, of course. He wouldn’t have even if he could get his mouth to work. 

He answered instead by getting on the bed and finally doing something he’d wanted to do for years. He put his hands on the boy. 

Jon’s touch was tentative at first. Almost reverent. He started at the boy’s knees and when he didn’t flinch, Jon slid his hands slowly up his legs in a light caress. There was a lump in Jon’s throat as he felt the skin beneath his fingertips, all softness and warmth, and then his hands slid up to the boy’s thighs where he was even softer and hotter. Jon liked the look of his hands there. He liked how big they were compared to the slim thighs they rested on, how his fingers could wrap so far around them. The boy’s skin looked so delicate and bruiseable. Jon imagined squeezing him hard enough to leave a mark, dark bruises in the shape of his fingers on the boy’s thighs that would linger for days. He didn’t even know if it was possible to bruise the boy, if any mark he put on him would show up again after Elias made him disappear, but Jon wanted to find out. He couldn’t think of anything else he’d ever been so curious to know in his life. His cock throbbed with the need to mark the boy as his and he resisted the urge to do it now, if only barely.

Jon’s hands left the boy’s thighs almost reluctantly. They wandered upwards. To the boy’s hips, to his stomach, to his chest. His touch became less tentative by the time his hands reached the boy’s throat, his thumbs digging into bone of the boy’s jawline hard enough to make the boy’s mouth open and a small gasping moan escape it. 

The impulse to kiss him hit Jon like a bolt of lightning. 

He couldn’t stop himself from giving in to it, either, from leaning down and capturing the boy’s small mouth with his own. The boy’s lips parted some more beneath the kiss and Jon took it for the invitation that it was and slipped inside. The boy made a startled sound as Jon’s tongue entered him that had Jon’s cock aching with the need to bury more of himself inside of the boy’s small body. To not just give the boy his tongue but to fuck his cock into him and rut until he filled the boy so much that his come was leaking out. 

Jon kissed the boy harder as he pictured it, as his desire for it grew until it was nearly painful. 

It was so easy to control the kiss. The boy’s tongue was small and weak just like the rest of him. It took nothing for Jon’s tongue to press down on it, to lick at it and force it down, to swipe at the roof of his mouth which made the boy shiver and squirm like it tickled. Jon met no resistance as he kissed the boy and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until his throat began to ache with the need to breathe. 

The knowledge that the boy wouldn’t be able to resist even if he wanted to lit a spark inside of Jon and that spark became a fire. Jon’s hands left the boy’s throat driven by the burn of it. 

There was nothing tentative about the touch now as he reached down and pulled the boy’s thighs up, encouraging him to wrap his legs around Jon’s waist. There was nothing reverent about how rough he was when he grabbed the boy by the ass and squeezed the soft flesh there to bring his body closer until Jon’s cock was pressed to the boy’s and they were moving against each other, Jon fucking between his thighs as the boy cried out into Jon’s mouth and his back arched and his body twisted with the shock of pleasure. The sounds the boy was making were muffled by Jon’s mouth still on his, but Jon loved it anyway. The boy squirmed beneath Jon, writhing like he was desperate for it, and Jon loved that, too. He loved it far too much. 

He had to pull away from the kiss at last, gasping both for much needed air and at just how good it felt. 

Jon kept thrusting between the boy’s thighs like he could come just from that alone, like he could spill himself all over the boy’s soft belly with ease. Jon could, he knew that he could, but he wanted more. He wanted to be buried inside of the boy, to feel more than just a pair of thighs around his cock. One of his hands gripping the boy’s ass wandered farther. His fingers slipped to the center of him until they were pressed against his hole and any thought of being gentle Jon might have had was long gone as he forced two fingers inside, making the boy whimper at the sudden penetration. The boy was as hot and tight around Jon’s fingers as he imagined, but to Jon’s surprise he was also slick with viscous wetness like someone had already gotten him ready to be fucked. 

And then a bit of awareness seeped into Jon as he realized that someone had done just that.

Jon’s attention was torn from the boy for the first time in what felt like ages as he looked up and realized that somehow, despite his proximity, Jon had forgotten Elias was there. 

He might have expected Elias to be amused at his forgetfulness, to mock him for how lost he had become in the boy’s body, but there was none of that to be found in Elias’ expression. Elias’ mouth was slack, not smiling. There was a red flush high in his face and his grey eyes bore into Jon, dark with arousal. 

Jon felt a frisson go through him as he looked back, as his cock still thrust between the boy’s thighs, as Jon fucked against him even harder and thrust his fingers into the whining boy under him while he and Elias stared at each other. There was no self-consciousness in Jon at being watched now, no little voice in his head telling him to be wary of Elias, to warn him that he’d made a grave mistake and needed to stop this immediately. All Jon felt was the burn of the same arousal he saw reflected in Elias’ eyes and Elias’ close attention was nothing less than more kindling thrown on top of it. 

It made the ache of Jon’s cock and balls feel more urgent, the desire to bury himself inside the boy more demanding as though his life depended on fulfilling it. Jon was long past the point of denying himself. He didn’t turn to go back now. 

Jon tore his gaze away from Elias at the same time as he ripped his fingers out of the boy suddenly enough to make him gasp. Jon barely noticed his hand was shaking as he got it around his cock and wasted no more time in pulling out from between the boy’s thighs to guide himself to the boy’s hole. 

There it only took one push, just the barest amount force, before Jon started feeding his cock inside. 

The boy gasped loudly as the head of Jon’s cock slipped into him, but Jon’s own curse was even louder at the tight heat now surrounding him. Jon had a thought in the back of his mind that he should go slow, that he should be gentle with the small thing beneath him, and it was destroyed in an instant by the reality of actually being inside. His hands flew to the boy’s hips in a bruising grip that he used to jerk the boy’s body down by force, thrusting more of his cock into him in a rough jerking motion that made them both let out sharp sounds. It took another rough thrust after that for Jon to be completely buried inside of the boy, his balls flush against the boy’s ass and the heat of the boy’s hole surrounding Jon, so hot and tight and wet that Jon could have wept for it. 

Then he pulled his cock back a little before giving a hard thrust back in and Jon did cry. 

He could feel the wetness in his eyes as he repeated the thrusts, as he started to pull out farther and thrust back into the boy even harder and more desperately. The boy’s legs were wrapped tight around him, his little cock hard and bouncing between his legs as Jon fucked him, his face flushed red and mouth open as a litany of moans and gasps escaped him. Jon watched the boy as his cock pounded into him and his balls ached with a building need. Jon was enraptured by the image he made, at how the boy seemed to enjoy being used as little more than a doll for Jon to take his pleasure from. He was still watching as the hand that had been holding the boy by the hair finally let go and began wandering his body instead. 

The boy’s head fell back onto Elias’ chest as Elias let go of him, as Elias touched him. Elias’ large hands spread up the boy’s chest. His fingers pinched the boy’s nipples hard enough to make the boy’s face crumple with pain and a sound tear out of him that sent a bolt of lust slamming into Jon that made him fuck the boy even harder, chasing the pleasure that was building up in him even faster to its completion. When Elias’ hands wandered lower, when one of them wrapped around the boy’s little cock and squeezed it hard and it made the boy arch and moan and his hole tighten around Jon, that was it. Jon fucked into him one last time and cursed as he came, spilling himself inside in a long moment of drawn out pleasure that licked its way up his spine and felt like it would burn him alive if it didn’t end.

But of course it ended. 

The pleasure drew itself to the highest peak it could reach and then stopped before letting Jon topple back down from into into the warm, sated haze waiting for him at the bottom. He was panting with exertion and so relaxed he was muzzy with it, his mind bleary with his own gratification to the point that he felt like his head was stuffed with cotton. That cottony feeling cushioned him in its softness and kept the reality of what he’d just done from sinking in just yet. 

It was also why Jon didn’t immediately balk when Elias shifted to slide the boy out of his lap and to the side so the hands that were just fondling that small body could leave it and go to his belt instead. 

Jon watched, his mind not immediately understanding what he was watching, as Elias undid his belt enough to loosen his trousers. He watched as Elias all but tore his buttons out of their holes. He watched as Elias slid a hand into the opening and pulled out his cock and it was only then that something like alarm shot through Jon. His mind was finally rushing to catch up with what his eyes were seeing just as Elias grabbed the boy by the face and roughly turned it to him before forcing his cock between the boy’s lips. 

And then the feeling that shot through Jon wasn’t alarm at all. It was a shock of sudden arousal that made his soft cock still buried in the boy give a throb of renewed desire to get hard again. Jon’s hips gave an involuntary thrust into the boy and he made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a curse at the feeling it elicited in him, a sharp pleasure mixed with a tinge of pain from how sensitive his cock still was from coming so recently.

Elias laughed softly at it as he fucked the boy’s face. 

“You’ll have to forgive me, Jon,” Elias said, not sounding very sorry at all. “I – ah, I’d say I couldn’t help myself, but it would be a lie. There’s just no fun in that, is there?”

Jon’s mouth was too dry to say anything. There was too much heat prickling up his body as he watched Elias’ cock slide between the pretty spit-slick lips of a boy who looked like he could be Elias’ own son, the boy’s eyes watering and throat bulging every time Elias thrust back in. Elias’ cock was slim and long and the boy moaned around it like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted, the sounds loud even though they were muffled. 

Jon’s cock was already half hard again at the sight and sounds alone, but then the boy started to squirm like sucking Elias off was enough to make him desperate and the next thrust Jon gave into the boy wasn’t involuntary at all.

Nor was the one after that or the one after that or the one after that or –

“Oh, that’s the spirit,” Elias said breathlessly as Jon pushed the boy’s knees to his chest and started to fuck him even harder than he had before. 

He and Elias moved in tandem, every thrust of Jon’s cock into the boy’s ass met with a thrust of Elias’ cock down the boy’s throat. The boy’s hands were fisted in the sheets at his sides, white knuckled. His skin was flush red from his face down and tears were leaking from his tightly shut eyes. He was not just compliant as Jon and Elias took him, but rapturous. He moaned constantly around the cock in his mouth like every shred of pleasure Jon and Elias were getting from him was reverberating through him and echoing out of his well fucked throat. Jon’s moans were just as loud while Elias was more quiet in his pleasure, letting out gasps and pants that hitched every time his cock fucked so deeply into the boy’s mouth that his balls touched the boy’s chin.

It was that part of the boy Jon’s eyes kept finding themselves drawn back to. Every once over he made started where his cock was fucking into the boy’s ass and went to his pretty nipples still dark and sensitive from where Elias had twisted them and then only ended at the boy’s face before starting all over again, resting on the last part every time until eventually he stopped looking anywhere else at all. 

Jon’s eyes stayed stuck there – on the boy’s red face, on the tear soaked lashes on his shut eyes, on his hollowed cheeks as he sucked Elias off, and most of all on his mouth, lips stretched wide around Elias’ cock that thrust between them and came out slick wet every time he pulled back. Jon was still staring at that mouth when Elias let out a ragged gasp and pulled his cock out of it, hand going to it to jerk it off once then twice and then he was coming, spilling himself all over the boy’s face. 

Jon himself only lasted a few seconds longer. The sight of the boy’s come covered face was enough to send him over the edge, making him come inside the boy again with a loud groan and his hands squeezing the boy’s hips so hard that Jon was sure the impression of his fingers would be bruised into the boy not just on his skin but far deeper, down to his very bones. 

The thought was a pleasing one, sending one last thrill through Jon and making him squeeze just a little bit harder while the boy whimpered and pressed forward into the grip of his hands.

 

*

 

The time after passed by in a haze, making the minutes crawl on like the last bit of syrup moving down the side of an upturned bottle. 

Jon didn’t remember pulling his cock out of the boy. He didn’t remember how he’d come to be laying on his back on the bed or when the boy’s nude body had curled up against his still clothed side, the boy’s face buried in Jon’s sweat drenched shirt and Elias’ come rubbing off on the fabric while Jon’s fingers ran up the soft skin of the boy’s back. 

Instead what Jon remembered was this: being hot until the heat turned to warmth and then to comfortable coolness, his pulse pounding until it slowed back to a normal speed, his breaths panting until they slowed as well as his heartbeat, going from the ragged breaths of a man who’d just run a race to the deep and even breathing of someone who was exhausted in the best kind of way. 

Jon remembered blinking and suddenly realizing that he was staring at a ceiling and an unfamiliar one at that. He remembered casting a glance down at the small body curled against his chest, the boy’s hand fisted in his shirt, eyes closed and face slack and looking for all the world like he was sleeping. He remembered looking over to the side then and seeing Elias who was on his back as well. Elias was a hairsbreadth away from Jon, his hands folded behind his head and eyes closed, lips upturned in a satisfied expression. Jon remembered thinking he’d never seen someone look so damn smug while sleeping and through the fog clouding his mind didn’t consider that Elias wasn’t sleeping at all.

Jon didn’t remember falling asleep himself. Just slowly blinking at the sight of Elias next to him, just inhaling, just something he wanted to say on the tip of his tongue only to have the words escape him as he exhaled. 

Jon blinked again and his eyes stayed shut and he slept – actually slept – for the first time in weeks. 

He did so peacefully and without a single dream.

 

*

 

When Jon woke up, it was by degrees measured in sounds. The sound of a page turning, of the rain pattering outside, of his own steady heartbeat and the softness of his breathing.

And then the sound of a voice from across the room – 

“Ah. Finally awake, are we?”

It was the last one that had Jon opening his eyes. 

The ceiling was still above him and while it was no more familiar to him now than it had been in those fleeting moments before he fell asleep, it was at least more familiar than anything else. Jon noticed the absence of a small weight pressed against his chest before he actually looked down and saw the boy was no longer there. The pang that shot through him at that was different from what he’d felt that first time in Elias’ office. The boy’s absence then had been sudden, a shock to Jon’s system. His absence now was less of a stab of surprise and more the deep ache of a bruise being pressed, all disappointment mixed with yearning. 

Jon didn’t realize until then that he’d wanted to wake up with the boy still next to him. That he’d wanted to see that small body cuddled close against his chest, that he’d wanted to kiss the boy awake and slide his cock inside of him again and fuck him again – not hard, but gently. Soft and slow and lovely. The images of a hundred lazy early morning fantasies Jon didn’t know he had in him ran through his mind before he finally pushed them aside with a visceral wave of embarrassment, those sentimental images somehow feeling more perverse than something entirely sexual would have done. 

When Jon realized a moment later that his soft cock was still hanging out of his trousers the same as it had been the first time, it did nothing for his embarrassment but at least it got his mind on something else.

Jon hurried to tuck himself away as he sat up, pointedly not looking anywhere near the other occupant of the room.

He cleared his throat. “What time is it?” 

“Quarter past midnight,” came Elias’ prompt answer.

The sound of a book being shut and a chair creaking followed, but it was the answer that had Jon’s head snapping up to Elias. He was sitting at his desk and leaning back in his seat, relaxed with his hands folded against his stomach. His expression was sated in a way that made Jon’s lingering embarrassment throb with renewed life. 

The image of Elias’ cock pulling out of the boy’s mouth and spilling all over his face came to Jon unbidden, the thing that had likely put that satisfied look on Elias’ face. It was much harder to push away those images than any thoughts of what Jon would have done to the boy had he woken up still next to him, but somehow Jon managed. 

Mostly.

He cleared his throat again and tried to ignore the heat crawling up his face. 

“You let me sleep for that long?” he asked.

“After the month you’ve had, I assumed you needed it. Besides, I wasn’t aware you had any pressing business to attend to. If I had been, of course I would have woken you.”

“The Unknowing –“

“ – isn’t going to happen tonight, is it? And you’re not going to get anywhere close to stopping it if you’re sleep deprived. If anything you should go right back to it and catch up on what you’ve missed out on.”

Jon stared at Elias incredulously, but he could detect no hint on Elias’ face that he was anything but serious. “I’m not going to sleep in your bed, Elias.”

“Funny,” Elias drew out the word, “and here I was thinking you already had.” 

Annoyance twinged in Jon at the flippancy. He opened his mouth to snap something in reply, but Elias shook his head and held up a hand to stave him off before he could.

“Really, Jon, where else are you planning to go? Would you care to go wake Miss Barker up in the middle of the night to ask her to extend her kindness to you yet again? Nevermind that you’ve already been kidnapped from her flat once. You were lucky that Orsinov was only interested in acquiring you rather than harming her, but there’s nothing to say she’ll be spared a second time. Of course, I suppose you could always go across the street. It isn’t like the Institute has ever been attacked while one of its employees was using it as a safe haven.”

Jon’s mouth closed and his jaw clenched. There was nothing he could say to any of that, he knew – Elias wasn’t wrong. Jon couldn’t go back to Georgie’s – it wasn’t safe for her to say nothing of how unwilling he was to have to rely on her again – and the Institute’s safety for him was dubious at best. If Jane Prentiss and all the horror that came with her could get in, who was to say that something else couldn’t? Security was hardly their workplace’s strong suit. 

Jon tried to rack his brain for where else he could go that wasn’t Elias’ home, but came up with nothing. He felt utterly pathetic for that fact. 

The smug certainty on Elias’ face that Jon would agree with him didn’t help, either. 

“Did you plan this?” Jon asked suddenly. He made no effort to hide the suspicion in his voice.

Elias, for his part, made no effort to hide his amusement at it. 

“If by plan this you mean did I assume that sleeping in my bed was unlikely to be objectionable to you after what all else you’ve done in it? In that case, yes, Jon, I planned this. Clearly I should have been more prepared for this stubbornness instead. You do so hate to do anything the easy way, don’t you?”

“This is hardly easy for me,” Jon said waspishly. “None of this has been easy for me.”

“Oh, but it could be, and that’s what galls you the most, isn’t it?” Elias asked, looking at Jon with something far too close to affection for Jon’s comfort. “You’re so unused to getting what you want that when someone offers it to you, you don’t know what to do with yourself. So you deny the hand being extended your way because as horrible as it is to live with all those desires you have being unfulfilled, at least you’re used to going without. Getting what you want scares you, Jon, because if you get used to having and what you have ends up getting taken away, what then? It’s a horrible way to live.” 

“As opposed to what? Living a life filled with shooting elderly women and beating men to death with pipes?”

“Needs must,” Elias replied without a lick of shame. “You know plenty enough about need, don’t you? You know that sometimes the things we need and the acts we must commit in order to get those things aren’t always virtuous. Tonight you needed something from me and I gave it to you. Right now you need somewhere to rest your head where you’re unlikely to be abducted by monsters in the middle of the night and I’m giving you that, too. Kindness isn’t a weapon, Jon. It won’t kill you to be on the receiving end of it.”

Jon wasn’t so sure that Elias’ brand of kindness wouldn’t kill him, actually. 

He opened his mouth to say as much but he was stopped by a touch on his elbow before he could speak, a touch that – when Jon turned his head in surprise – he found to belong to a small hand. The boy was back in bed with him as naked as he’d been before, hair mussed as though from being pulled and eyes blinking drowsily as though he’d been in bed with Jon all along and had just woken up to the sound of voices. 

Jon found the words in his mouth disappearing at the sight of him, all sleeptouched and lovely – so lovely, in fact, that it took Jon a moment longer than it should have done to realize that shutting his mouth was probably the entire point of the boy’s reappearance. The anger Jon expected to feel at that realization wasn’t as strong as he anticipated feeling. It was muted, more resignation than rage, five small fingers on his arm tempering it down to nothing at all. 

The manipulation was no surprise – Jon could expect nothing more from Elias whose every word, every expression, every so called act of kindness was a ploy – but his own reaction was. It worried him far more than the manipulation itself did.

Jon spoke, trying to force a heat into his words that he didn’t actually feel, “If you think you can use this to control me –”

“Oh, Jon,” Elias interrupted. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to control you.”

Jon turned his head to glare at him and found Elias was smiling softly. The smile only widened when the boy’s hand tightened around Jon’s arm and pulled gently at him, causing Jon’s glare to falter and the small bit of ire he felt towards Elias to dwindle down even further.

“Go back to sleep,” Elias said then, apparently deciding their conversation was done. He closed the matter some more by looking away from Jon to pick the book on his desk up, turning it back to whatever page he’d stopped on before. “I’ll make sure he’s still there when you wake up in the morning. I promise.” 

Heat born of embarrassment crawled up the back of Jon’s neck at the same time as he thought: not trying to control me, my ass. 

The anger he should have felt still wasn’t there, though, and the impulse to say something else – to continue the argument in spite of Elias being done with it – wasn’t much more present. The touch on his arm was stronger, the soft pull of the boy’s fingers silently begging him to lay back down with him far more alluring a prospect than having a fight he didn’t really want to have and wasn’t sure he would win anyway. It was all a manipulation, of course: the boy’s entire body, his entire being, to say nothing of everything he did with them. It had been since the very first time Elias had made him appear. Jon knew it as well as he knew anything, but knowing didn’t make Jon stop wanting to give in to it. 

And so Jon did. 

He let the boy pull him back to the bed. He let him curl up against his chest again and let himself wrap an arm around the small nude form. Jon let himself enjoy the weight of him, enjoy the soft pleasure he felt at the thought of going to sleep again and waking up to that weight still there next to him, at the thought of what he might do to the boy in the morning. 

Manipulation or not, Jon let it happen. He just didn’t let himself wonder what it said about him that it was the most content he’d been in years. 

And in the morning when he awoke to find that Elias had kept his promise, that the boy was still there seeming to sleep peacefully in his arms, Jon didn’t allow himself to focus long on the relief he felt about that either.

 

*

 

It was too easy to get used to it, that was the thing. 

It was too easy to fall into a pattern that began with waking up in Elias’ bed in the morning with the boy beside him and ended with him going back to Elias’ place after a day spent at the Institute searching for more information on the Unknowing to find the boy already there as soon as he walked in the door. It was too easy to become accustomed to having the boy however he wanted him as though Jon had had him all his life, to accept that Elias being there was part of the package, to share the boy with Elias and lose himself in the pleasure of it instead of dwelling on all the reasons he shouldn’t have been doing it at all. 

It was all too easy by far and yet Jon sank into it like an anchor thrown out to sea.

And with every press of his lips on the boy’s mouth, every thrust of his cock into his body, every second he watched Elias touching and fucking this younger version of himself, he sank deeper still. 

The little voice in his head that told him he was doing something horrible that he could never take back quieted. His resignation dwindled. His concerns vaporized as though they’d never been there to start with. Even his enmity towards Elias was lessening by the day, too difficult to keep up in the face of what Elias was giving him and the inescapable relief Jon felt for having it, a relief so strong that no amount of reminding himself of what Elias was and what he had done could even put a dent in it. 

Whatever hatred Jon had for Elias wasn’t as strong as the anticipation he felt when he had the boy between his legs, the boy’s small hand wrapped around his cock and leading it to his lips. Whatever betrayal Elias had dealt him by framing him for Jurgen Leitner’s murder didn’t sting as much as having the boy between them soothed him, both of their cocks inside of him moving together, a depravity shared making for pleasure doubled. Whatever horror and disgust that had pervaded Jon the first time he knew Elias could peer into his head and see every perverse little fantasy he’d ever had was nothing, nothing at all, compared to Elias’ touch – his fingers on Jon’s wrist, his palm on the back of Jon’s neck, his hand on Jon’s hip, his lips ghosting against Jon’s neck – and the reality that rather than be repulsed as he knew he once would have been, Jon liked it. That he welcomed it, even.

Elias never put his hands on Jon like that when they were alone and maybe that’s what made the difference, what made Jon enjoy his touch how he never had another adult’s. The boy was always there with them, always in the middle. There was only so much space they could keep when they were both fucking him, after all, both buried in the same body. It was excusable, then, that Elias would put a hand on Jon’s hip to pull him deeper into the boy. It was excusable that Elias would bury a hand in Jon’s hair to guide his head between the boy’s legs. It was excusable that he would wrap his fingers around Jon’s wrist and guide his hand to where he should touch the boy – between his thighs, on his chest, to his throat urging Jon to wrap his own fingers around it and squeeze, urging him to choke the boy, reassuring him he couldn’t possibly hurt him no matter how hard his fingers pressed. It was excusable that Jon would get used to this part of it, too. That he would get used to Elias as much as he did the boy. That he would come to enjoy having Elias there, sharing the boy with him. 

It was excusable that by the time Jon realized that he was sharing himself with Elias just as much as they were sharing the boy with one another, Jon was so well and truly full of excuses that he couldn’t have found a way to run out of them even if he wanted to. 

Except Jon didn’t want to. 

That was the other thing. It was too easy to get used to the new pattern of his life and he didn’t want to stop it. He didn’t want to go back to denying himself, or to the guilt and the shame that came with it. Getting what he wanted was so easy to get used to, but just the thought of giving it up was difficult. It was as repulsive a thought as indulging in his desires once was to him.

 

*

 

Pleasure was pleasure, but work still went on. The Unknowing still needed to be researched and it needed to be stopped.

The pleasure made the work easier for Jon, for the most part. He was more relaxed than he had been before the boy, no longer agonized by the shame of his desires or any fear that Elias would spring his knowledge of them on him or anyone else at any moment which was as much of a weight lifted from his shoulders as no longer being wanted for murder was. 

Still, he found his mind wandering. 

It wasn’t a problem when he was reading statements. His focus never wavered then. It was when he was doing anything else that he would find himself preoccupied with thoughts of the boy, of how he’d been that morning and how long Jon had left in the day before he could have him again, and – more than anything – of how close he already was. Elias’ office was just a short distance away, after all. A ride up the lift and a little walk out of it and that was it. Jon had no doubt that Elias would let him in with a knowing smile and suggestive comment if he came asking, that was clear enough to him at this point. The thought of just how easy it would be made Jon’s skin itch with need, an anticipation that he wanted to claw at to get some relief. 

Only self-preservation kept him in his own office – that and whatever dignity he still had left in him. 

If the thought of getting caught making frequent trips to see Elias was a prospect Jon didn’t want to face then the thought of how smug Elias would be over Jon’s reliance on him was no better, to say nothing of the fact that any forays into Elias’ office to have the boy while he was at work meant Jon would have to walk past Rosie’s desk to get there. Every time the urge struck him and all the reasons it was a horrible idea didn’t seem bad enough, Jon heard Elias’ voice in his head saying things like ‘so loud the last time’ and ‘torrid office romance’ and his embarrassment at the memory was enough that he managed to stay right where he was. 

It was already a miracle that no one had yet to notice that he’d been leaving the Institute with Elias every evening and Jon was paranoid enough that one day that would change. There was no reason to tempt fate any further.

Of course it helped that no one seemed to be paying much attention to him these days anyway. 

Tim avoided Jon like he was plague ridden and for all that Melanie worked at the Institute now, Jon hardly saw her around, murder attempts on Elias excepted. The only people other than Elias he saw with any frequency were Martin who was awkward around him to the point of being skittish and clearly feeling guilty for not noticing that Jon had been kidnapped and trying to make up for it with cups of tea and smiles that were just a touch too wobbly to be real, and Basira who was far less awkward and didn’t waver in her serious expression at all for any kind of smile, wobbly or not.

“You’re alright, aren’t you?” Martin asked Jon one day as he set some tea by Jon’s elbow so gently it was like he thought Jon would startle at the lightest click of ceramic on wood. “It’s just – you’ve been different lately, is all. Since you’ve been back, you’ve been – lighter, I guess? Happy? It’s not bad! It’s not, not a bad kind of different or anything, it’s not like you don’t deserve to be happy, it’s just –“

Then Basira, a few days later: “Normally I wouldn’t ask about the stupid little smile that’s been on your face lately because it isn’t my business, those aren’t conversations I enjoy having and we’re not close like that in the first place...except you just got back from being held captive by some monsters who did who knows what to you and that isn’t even the least normal thing that we’ve got going on here, so – here I am. Asking. You’ve still got your head in this, don’t you? Whatever happened to you while you were gone, it didn’t completely scramble your brain?” 

And what exactly could Jon say to either of them? Telling them the truth was out of the question – more so than it had ever been – and to make up some lie that would only get found out would do nothing to help any of them. Barring both of those impossible choices, Jon went with the third option: he deflected. He assured them he was fine, that he was only feeling positive because he was sure he was closer to learning what they needed about the Unknowing, and that no, Basira, he hadn’t cracked while in captivity. 

Martin smiled at Jon, the line of his mouth faltering at one end like he wasn’t sure whether Jon was lying to him or whether he should feel relieved that Jon was perfectly okay after all and Basira only gave a short nod, her expression too blank for Jon to know whether she believed a word out of his mouth. Neither of them asked after his mental state again, however, so Jon supposed he’d done a good enough job putting them off. 

Whatever guilt he felt over that was tempered by knowing that he hadn’t exactly lied. He was getting closer to figuring the Unknowing out. He could feel the answer in front of him, just off in the distance and incrementally – statement by statement, one new bit of information uncovered at a time – he was getting closer to it. 

It was only a matter of staying the course, no matter what else was going on in his life or where his research took him.

 

*

 

The lease on his Jon’s flat ran out while he’d been suspected of Jurgen Leitner’s murder and he’d been unable to do anything to stop it considering he was a fugitive and all. Georgie, thankfully, had arranged for his things to be put in storage save for a bag with enough clothing and other necessities for him to live on while he’d stayed with her. The bag had carved out a place by his temporary bed for the duration of him hiding away at Georgie’s and it was still there right where he left it when, after he escaped Orsinov’s tender care, Jon let himself into Georgie’s flat after hours lurking outside waiting for her to leave and retrieved it. In its place he left behind the spare key she’d given him months ago and a note that assured her as much as one could assure anyone of anything on a small, yellow square of Post-It that he was alive, just fine, didn’t need a place to stay any more, and that he would explain everything to her just as soon as he could.

Jon gave The Admiral a few scratches under the chin and a large handful of treats before he left to assuage some of his guilt for not facing that conversation directly. It did little to help, but Jon supposed he’d dodged far worse conversations with Georgie over the years. That realization didn’t do anything for the guilt, either.

The bag went from Georgie’s flat to the Institute until he finished his work and then it went across the street to Elias’. 

Now it was on Elias’ bed, everything in it pulled out just so Jon could catalog it all before putting it back in, thinking to himself all the while that it was a good thing he’d always been a light traveler anyway. 

“They do say absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Elias commented from where he sat on the bed, his back to the headboard as he watched and didn’t lift a finger to help.

Not that Jon would accept Elias’ help even if he did offer it. Not in this, at least.

“I doubt having a heart is something you’d know much about.” The reply came out distracted and without any heat. 

Jon’s mind was frankly less occupied with Elias than it was on cataloging the same inventory he’d counted through twice already: a few shirts and trousers, socks and underwear, passport, wallet. Jon tried to think of what, if anything, he was forgetting as he put it all back in the bag from it came but he could think of nothing he needed that he couldn’t get where he was going.

“It wasn’t my heart I was referring to, but while we’re on the subject, yes I do think I’ll miss you, Jon. As much as I imagine you’ll miss me...in one way or another.”

“With any luck I won’t be gone long enough to miss anything,” Jon replied blithely, zipping the bag in a quick motion.

Only then did Jon deign to look at Elias. He met the considering gaze leveled at him, dropped his eyes down only long enough to glance the slightest upturn of Elias’ lips. 

There was nothing in that expression that was new or more worrisome than usual. Elias still looked at him like he knew something Jon didn’t. He still smiled as though whatever he saw amused him. That expression used to make Jon feel valued but awkward when Elias was just his boss, then it had made him afraid imagining what Elias could see, then angry because he knew. Now it didn’t make him feel much of anything. Content, maybe. The way one became content with things they got used to, no matter how they’d once felt about them.

“Then good luck to you,” Elias said, matching Jon’s tone. Then the upturn of his lips quirked up just a bit more. “But just in case you find yourself running short on luck, why don’t I remind you of what you’ll have to miss. One more for the road and all that.”

Jon didn’t have time to wonder about what he meant. Small hands were already pressing at his back, already untucking his shirt, already sliding beneath it to touch his bare skin, short nails on small fingers already scratching down his spine in a way that made his breath hitch and sent a sharp throb low in his stomach.

“One more for the road,” Jon agreed, inhaling sharply as one of those small hands slipped beneath his trousers and down further still.

Elias’ expression didn’t change. There had never been a question that Jon would do anything but.

 

*

 

Jon would never admit it to him, but Elias wasn’t wrong. Absence did make his heart grow fonder and far sooner than he thought. He was only a half hour into his flight to Beijing when the thought of Elias and the boy crossed his mind and then stayed there. 

Jon found himself wondering what Elias did with the boy when he wasn’t there, his thoughts varying between the amusingly domestic and the obscene enough to make Jon squirm in his seat, drawing odd looks from the passenger next to him that made Jon flush with the heat of embarrassment. Jon supposed both options were as likely or unlikely as the other, really. For all Jon knew – and for all that Elias had admitted he’d tried out the boy before giving him to Jon – maybe Elias didn’t project the boy at all when Jon wasn’t there to share him. A part of Jon wanted to believe otherwise, though. It felt better to believe otherwise, to see the boy less like a toy Elias only brought out when Jon was around to play with him and then stored away when Jon was gone and more like he was...real. More like he was there with Elias when Jon wasn’t, more like he missed Jon as much as Jon missed him, more like he existed outside of those moments when Jon was fucking him or after when they were wrapped in the soft afterglow of it.

And if Jon liked the thought of Elias fucking the boy without him, if he liked imagining them tangled together in their bed, a subject of his voyeuristic fantasies – well, there was that, too.

Jon’s longing didn’t stop once the flight landed. If anything, it only grew once he was settled into his room at the Pu Songling Research Centre. The quiet dark of the room, the unfamiliar bed, the lack of Elias on one side of him and the boy on the other all made for a more lonely experience than he’d expected. At some point, of all the things about this arrangement with Elias that he’d gotten used to, the companionship had become the primary of them all and Jon found himself at a loss without it. Even with all the work he had, the research he needed to do, the Unknowing looming over him – still, it was that which he couldn’t stop thinking on. The fact that he had become accustomed to having people to come home to and without them, he was unable to feel at home anywhere else. When he received the statements Elias sent to tide him over and read the small, unsigned note inside which only read ‘thinking fondly of your return’, the warmth that bloomed in Jon’s chest was enough to hurt. When he thought of how Elias was part of what caused that warmth, when he remembered what all Elias had done, when he remembered what Elias was – 

Shame had long since left Jon behind, but still he found that it was all the more likely to come back for a visit when he was alone. 

Getting kidnapped again was almost a relief, really, if only for the fact that it put his shame into perspective. 

There were worse forms that companionship could take than what he had with Elias and the boy, he thought, when compared to the partnership of Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert. There were worse things Jon could have become when compared to what was left of Gerard Keay. And certainly there were worse things than finding something that made you happy that hurt no one else when others found their joy in trying to destroy the world.

It was difficult to keep the fires of his shame burning when taken in context with everything else. This, Jon had already figured out but it was becoming easier to remember with every reminder.

Most of all, though, it was hard to keep feeling ashamed when Jon was just so relieved to be going home, the fondness of his heart so full in the end that he feared that it would burst from his chest and splatter the walls of the flight back red with the depth of his yearning.

 

*

 

Elias was waiting for him at the airport. 

The sight of him nearly made Jon stumble with surprise as he noticed Elias leaning nonchalantly with a shoulder against a wall far back away from the crowd. His eyes were drawn to Elias almost immediately despite having not expected him, as though a part of him somehow already knew to look for him there. Elias, of course, was already looking at Jon. His gaze was expectant, the upturn of his lips as he gave Jon a once over inordinately pleased, and for all that Jon had decided there were worse things than being whatever he was with Elias, he still wouldn’t let his mind linger on how the surprise of Elias’ presence was hardly an unpleasant one.

“So I was right,” Elias said once Jon approached. “You did miss me.”

“The way your skin misses the kiss of the scalpel after surgery,” Jon replied before he could think better of it. Heat crawled up the back of his neck as he realized only belatedly that it was the exact kind of thing Elias would love to hear.

As if to prove the point, the upturn of Elias’ lips tilted up a few degrees more. He looked incredibly smug. “Oh, you romantic. You should get kidnapped more often, Jon. I like the things it brings out in you.”

That declaration was more honest than Jon wanted to examine at the moment. Instead, he cleared his throat and asked, “Is that why you’re here, then? To kidnap me?”

“I’ll be your kindest abductor yet,” Elias promised. 

That shouldn’t have been comforting, Jon thought somewhere in the distant back of his mind. Not after the things he’d been through and some of them so recently. It shouldn’t have made anticipation coil low in his belly, warming him from the inside out.

Yet, when Elias tilted his head in unspoken invitation, it was anticipation that Jon felt more than anything. 

It made it easy to start walking when Elias pushed his shoulder off of the wall and started moving, Jon falling into step next to him as they left the airport together. Jon didn’t ask where they were going, because it seemed self evident where there destination must be and what they would do once they got there. He didn’t open his mouth to tell Elias everything he had learned about the Unknowing because it seemed just as true that if Jon knew now then Elias must know already himself. He didn’t complain as he once might have when they reached a car and Elias held the door open for him, ever presenting the picture of the gentleman even when they both knew he was anything but.

The only thing that made Jon falter, the only thing that didn’t come easy, was how Elias’ close proximity as he held the door open meant their bodies had to brush together for Jon to get into the car. 

Jon did pause then without quite knowing why, his hand clenching on the top of the car as he stopped just short of getting inside. He raised his eyes up to meet Elias’ and could only feel the frisson of something pass between them as their gazes held. That and the warmth of their chests pressed together, their legs. It lasted a long moment before Elias’ hand was on the small of Jon’s back exerting a gentle, lingering pressure and Jon broke the look, hand loosening as he got in the car and Elias closed the door gently behind him.

That feeling remained, though, even after Elias got in the car himself, even as they started driving away from the airport to more familiar pastures. It was anticipation again, but there was something new about it, some novelty that had Jon feeling flushed and antsy in the passenger seat, that had his hands curled into fists in his lap as he pointedly didn’t look at Elias because to look at him felt like something would break and Jon knew, even if he couldn’t quite acknowledge it at the moment, that such breaking wasn’t meant to happen in a car, no matter how nice a car it might be.

It was no surprise when they eventually came to park upon the familiar street that the Institute called home, nor was it a surprise when instead of heading to the Institute itself after they got out of the car they went to the row of houses across from it, nor was it a surprise when Elias unlocked the door and allowed Jon to go in first that Jon found the boy already there waiting for them, kneeling inside the door with his hands folded in his lap and an expression of longing on his face so stark that it made Jon shudder as he hurried to approach the boy, to bury his hands in his hair as though he needed the grip to remain upright and feel the boy’s small hands on him, unfastening his trousers with haste to get his cock out of their confines and into his mouth.

And when Elias approached Jon from behind, his hands settling low on Jon’s hips and his lips pressing against the side of Jon’s throat, there was only the most momentary surprise about that. It was lost somewhere in the push of Jon’s cock into the boy’s mouth, the familiarity of that hot, wet heat, and the feeling deep inside that there wasn’t anything surprising about it at all. 

That it was expected, a finality more than a twist, the destination they’d been heading towards all along.

 

*

 

Hands on his hips and a kiss on his throat were as restrained as it got. Soon enough, perhaps in response to Jon not flinching away or rejecting his touch, Elias’ grip on Jon’s hips tightened, the gentle kiss at his throat turned biting, and the work the boy had done in unfastening his trousers was inevitably continued far more roughly when Elias tore them down and pressed himself so close to Jon’s bare ass that there was no possibility of mistaking the hardness pressing against him for anything but what it was. 

And still, the boy’s mouth worked over him. The boy took Jon’s cock into his throat as Jon heard Elias spitting behind him, the filthy sound so unlike Elias that it made something in Jon twist with violent want even before he felt the wet fingers pressed against him, even before the sudden push of them inside made him gasp and thrust deeper into the boy’s mouth. The boy swallowed around Jon as Elias’ fingers moved inside him, twisting as Elias’ other hand gripped Jon by the hip so hard that he was sure he’d have a bruises in the shape of his fingers there in the morning. Jon was on the edge of coming in the boy’s mouth from the twin sensations when suddenly the mouth was gone and the fingers were being ripped out of him, one loss or the other making a startled sound of protest escape him before he even realized what had happened. 

“Much as I want to continue this,” Elias said tightly as he jerked Jon’s trousers back up and gave him a push towards the staircase, “I’d rather it not be on the living room floor.”

“I don’t really care where it is,” Jon snapped. He turned to glance back at Elias only long enough to take in the flush of his face and the desire in his eyes before he was moving despite his words, up the stairs with every quick step matching the continuing pulse in his cock. 

“Now, now. Your knees will thank me for the bed in the morning.”

Jon would have replied with something appropriately biting about how he’d never thank Elias for anything, but then he ascended to the top floor and it was forgotten as the bed in question came into view and he took in the boy in the middle of it, the way he was naked now and spread out in such a way that Jon had a perfect view of his small fingers moving inside of himself, his plush red mouth open with the pleasure of it. 

“You’re a bastard,” Jon said with the exact wrong kind of heat. 

Elias only laughed in response, but Jon was too occupied with getting to the bed to care. He nearly fell over the boy in his haste, but that didn’t matter either. Worrying about a small fumble was nothing when there were better things to do like grabbing the boy by the wrist and roughly pulling his fingers out of himself, heedless of the cry of displeasure he let out at now being empty. Things like shoving his own trousers back down, pressing his cock to the place the boy had gotten ready for him already and giving the boy something else to cry over. 

Jon wasn’t slow once he was inside the boy. He wasn’t gentle in how he started fucking him or the way he gripped the boy’s thighs and pushed them as far apart as he could. His time away wouldn’t allow him to be kind now, not when he had been without for so long, and the feeling of Elias getting on the bed behind him and grabbing him by the hair to wrench his head back certainly wasn’t making him any more inclined. 

And then Elias pressed his lips to Jon’s and Jon only thrust harder into the boy as he moaned into Elias’ mouth, kissing him until his chest became tight from the lack of air, kissing him until he felt Elias’ cock pressed to his ass and then pressing inside of it and he had to wrench his mouth away to gasp as he came inside the boy harder than he ever had since this started.

And still, Elias kept moving in Jon even as Jon collapsed over the boy, spent and done. The pattern of Elias’ thrusts were almost frantic, desperate as Jon heard him gasping behind him before finally the thrusts stopped, a sound was torn out of Elias’ mouth and Jon felt the warmth of Elias’ come spilling inside of him. 

They stayed like that, the three of them connected for a long moment in a pile of tangled limbs before Elias pulled out of Jon and rolled onto his side of the bed and Jon simply rolled onto his back, slipping out of the boy and pulling his small body against him. Everything was quiet for a bit except for their panting, gasping breaths until – 

“Welcome home, then,” Elias said. Jon made an incredulous noise and turned his head to the side, meeting Elias’ eyes with his own. Elias’ hair was mussed and sweat slick, the look on his face far more soft than anything Jon had ever seen on him before. “It truly was everything I’d imagined.”

“I didn’t imagine this at all,” Jon said honestly. 

“Oh, that’s alright.” Elias sighed. He reached a hand out and cupped the side of Jon’s face, his thumb brushing over Jon’s brow in a gesture that somehow felt more intimate than what they’d just done. Jon was frozen from the gentle warmth of it. “No need to imagine when you’ll see for yourself soon enough. I know all of your fantasies, Jon. It’s only fair I teach you some of mine.”

 

*

 

July was a month of waiting. 

They knew now when the Unknowing would take place, they knew where, and they even had something of a plan to stop it if one counted blowing everything to pieces as a plan. 

Still, none of it changed the fact that the when was a month away and there was nothing they could do except wait until it was time. 

Jon found the wait to be as frustrating as it was a relief, as much a hope as it was a terror. Soon, it would be over but soon couldn’t seem to come soon enough and as much as he wanted to finally see this all come to an end, Jon couldn’t help but worry exactly what that end would be. 

“You shouldn’t be so concerned, you know,” Elias told him one night. The boy was tucked between them in bed, his back to Elias’ front and his head buried in Jon’s chest. Elias’ fingers trailed up and down Jon’s arm from shoulder to wrist and Jon found the touch pleasant despite himself. He’d come to realize that he enjoyed far too much of Elias despite himself, but he was damned if he knew what he could do about it now. “I have the utmost faith in your abilities as my Archivist. Everything will turn out how it’s meant to turn out.”

“When you say faith...” Jon hedged.

“I only mean there’s a future ahead of us that doesn’t involve you dying. Not a month from now, not any time else.”

“Everyone dies eventually, Elias.”

Elias’ smile at that was slow and crooked. “The eventual can take longer to arrive than you think.”

“Alright, well, when I’m in Great Yarmouth avoiding it, I’d appreciate –“ Jon stopped short, heat crawling up the back of his neck as he realized what he was about to say. 

The stopping was worthless, however. Elias quirked a brow, amused, as though he’d heard it anyway. 

“Do you know something I don’t?” Elias asked. His fingers trailed back up to Jon’s shoulder and stayed there, tracing circles in the skin. “Is Melanie planning to take a pair of shears to my throat while you’re not there to stop her? Has Martin told you he’s going to slip a bit of arsenic in my tea? I think I’d like to see that, actually. I don’t think he has a talent for murder, but it would certainly be entertaining to see him try.”

Jon said nothing, but he thought of plenty and Elias gaze only bored into him like that meant he’d said enough.

“Well,” Elias said at last, his fingers still moving in those gentling circles, “regardless of anything else, I’m rather good at avoiding the eventual myself. I’ll still be here when you come back, Jon. The future doesn’t involve me dying, either.” 

Jon wondered for a moment how far gone he was that he was reassured by that promise, but then the boy snuggled closer to his chest and Elias’ fingers trailed back down his arm again and he realized that it was too late for it to matter. He was caught here, entwined with Elias – with both versions of him, the adult and the child. 

Maybe it was past time that he finally accepted it.

 

*

 

On the sixth of August, Jon didn’t die.

It was about the only thing that turned out how it was meant to turn out, at least as far as Jon was concerned which – to be fair – took quite awhile.

 

*

 

His mind was a fog, everything all cottony and dim around the edges, but the smell of antiseptic was sharp enough to cut through it and tingle something in him into the first tendrils of awareness. With awareness came sound, the rhythmic beeping high above his head. With sound came feeling, scratchy sheets against his arms and something like a bracelet around his wrist. With feeling came the urge to open his eyes, to blink them sleepily and see the white around him – pure and clean and familiar. 

All of his senses added up to the knowledge of a place, the fact of being in this place brought with it the memory of how he got there, and only then did Jon inhale sharply, did he think of the explosion, did he notice the lack of pain in his body that he knew should be there for how close he was to it and did he think that something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong.

“And there you are,” said a familiar voice off to the side and Jon had enough strength to turn his head towards it, to see the man sitting in the chair by his hospital bed and recognize him.

Recognize the wash of relief at seeing him.

“Elias,” Jon rasped out. 

“I did tell you that I’d be here when you came back,” Elias said, as though Jon was foolish to ever doubt he’d be anywhere but.

“What happened?” Jon asked, then coughed from the dryness in his mouth. Elias moved to get him a cup of water from the bedside table and Jon was too curious, too concerned, too grateful, honestly, to feel pathetic by the way Elias had to lead the straw to his lips for him to drink. 

“Oh, plenty,” Elias said as Jon drank. “We had a bit of a fire at the Institute while you were gone – no real damage to the Archive or anyone else, thankfully. As for the rest, well, I suppose I should start by telling you that you’ve been in a coma for that past six months.”

Jon choked on the water and jerked back away from the cup. He stared at Elias’ face looking for some sign that it had been a joke – a bad, insensitive joke. 

He saw none. 

“Right,” Elias said, putting the cup back on the table and leaning back in his seat. “I’ll start at the beginning...”