Work Text:
Jon makes his way up the stairs from Artefact Storage with as much calm, collected energy as he can muster.
His hands feel clammy, one on the bannister almost pulling him up the staircase and the other gripping the plastic bag handles he holds tightly. His heart is pounding in his chest. His breathing is laboured, unused to the walk as he is. On a normal day he’d take the lift on his way up Elias’ office on the third floor.
Today is not a normal day.
He tries to keep his face relaxed in case he’s spotted but he’s nervous. He’s been planning this for the last few days, but he’s aware that at any moment something could go wrong. In fact, the reason he’s taking the stairs to begin with is a calculated decision. Being reminded of his own poor cardio and potentially being spotted by someone seems far less dangerous than the risk of getting stuck in the lift with an artefact that could technically be considered stolen.
In his defence, it’s for a good cause.
And he intends to give it back.
He’s not exactly being gung-ho about this - lord knows he learnt his lesson from the web table. He knows what precautions to take when handling something from Artefact Storage.
The mirror, which was described in an old statement he’d found as being able to reveal something’s true nature is still tucked in it’s original brown storage box, which Jon had then wrapped up in an old t-shirt before he’d stowed it in the bottom of the Tesco bag. It’s hardly a foolproof way to disguise it, but sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best option.
He forces himself to steady his breathing, more to steel his nerves than anything. He’s being careful. He’s planned this.
It’s one thirty on a Thursday afternoon - the time Elias schedules in for uninterrupted paperwork. If he’s timed it right, Elias will be alone in his office and Rosie will still be down in the canteen having lunch. With any luck, he’ll be absorbed in his work and won’t see Jon coming.
Or, if that fails, Jon will simply have to be quick.
With all the meeting rooms and clean, modern offices, the air smells fresher on the third floor than it does in the lower levels. The absence of that familiar mustiness is almost disconcerting, which is probably a sign Jon should get out more. Not that he can afford to, with the fate of the world looming on the horizon.
Nobody else seems to be around so he moves quickly down the corridor. He can’t loose his nerve. If he hesitates, he’s sure he’ll mess this up somehow.
He only pauses when he’s stood outside of Elias’ door.
The silver plaque with his name engraved winks at Jon in the overhead light of the hallway.
Jon opens the bag and begins pulling the box free of the shirt. He winces - the rustling seems particularly loud in the empty space. He tugs the box until it’s finally free, still safely closed.
“You can come in, Jon,” says a calm voice from inside the room. Jon’s stomach drops. So much for the element of surprise. Fine, he can make this work.
Jon drops the plastic bag which quietly thunks on the ground and opens the door.
It is just as meticulously organised as ever, a far cry from the chaos of Jon’s own office. Everything always has it’s place, from the artfully arranged books and curios on the shelves to the pens lined up on his desk. Behind him, the paned window frames the southbank and dozens of tiny figures walking over Vauxhall bridge.
Elias doesn’t bother looking up from his monitor, continuing to type away at something before cross referencing it with a sheet of paper. This is his chance. He knows Elias has been hiding things from him, and it’s time for Jon to find out exactly what those secrets are. He opens the box and reaches inside until his fingertips wrap around the cool metal handle.
“Can I help you? You know my door is always open to staff but I’d really like to get some work done this afternoon,” Elias continues, still focused on his work.
Jon brandishes the mirror in front of him with all the wild energy of a priest performing his first exorcism.
Elias looks up, unsurprised. It rocks Jon’s already shaky confidence, but he’s never been good at quitting whilst he’s ahead. He pushes past his nerves, striding with purpose towards Elias and shoving the mirror in his face over his desk.
Elias’ gaze trails over the mirror, a slightly far off look in his eyes and for a moment Jon thinks maybe he’s done it, maybe he’s finally caught him off guard.
And then Elias starts a slow, deep chuckle. He shakes his head, and gets to his feet.
“You know, if you had checked the files for this artefact a little more thoroughly, you would have known this plan was a bust,” he says. His voice is gently admonishing, as if that could soften the blow. Jon’s stomach drops. He keeps the mirror between them as Elias slowly rounds the desk, but cannot move his feet. His knuckles are white on the handle. Elias meets his eyes with an almost patronising smile. “It’s a hand mirror, Jon.”
The strength and speed that Elias moves with really shouldn’t be such a shock. After all, Jon had witnessed his handiwork with Leitner quite personally.
Elias’ hand wraps around Jon’s wrist in a vice grip, shoving Jon’s outstretched arm back towards his body. Jon’s elbow jolts with pain before it buckles, folding his arm inwards. He tries to step back but Elias follows, pushing and pushing until he’s twisted Jon’s hand around with the mirror still locked in his fist. Jon’s vision is filled a familiar face.
Jon wrenches his head to the side before he can meet his own gaze. He has gotten very adept at not looking at himself in the mirror.
Jon trips over on his own feet and stumbles backwards. His centre of gravity is thrown off just far enough that Elias’ grip on his wrist is the only thing keeping him from falling flat on his backside. Elias grunts with the effort but Jon keeps squirming, trying to tug himself free.
“Why are you doing this?” Jon asks desperately, forcefully. Elias makes another noise that’s far closer to a grasp but his fingers only tighten, his grip hot and a little painful.
“Whilst I appreciate your proactivity” - Elias says, voice forceful and gratifyingly strained with the effort of holding him in place - “You are not ready to know all of my secrets yet. Especially not when you’re so wilfully ignoring your own.”
Elias doesn’t drop Jon as he might have expected. Instead he pulls him forwards abruptly and Jon’s head whips forwards automatically as he tries to regain his balance once more.
Jon’s vision is filled with eyes that are wide and warped with terror. They look wrong, alien in his face. Where there should be brown, there is only a sickly, acidic green. Elias’ arm - the one not holding his wrist so tight it hurts - wraps around Jon to restrain him, or perhaps steady him.
Jon can’t bring himself to shake him off. He can only barely find the will to turn his neck, but stops before he turns far enough to break eye contact with himself. His eyes burn with unshed tears as air stings against them. He can’t even blink. Panic begins to rise like bile in his throat. He’s trapped.
At last Elias’ grip softens, thumb stroking apologetically over the tender flesh of Jon’s wrist before he pulls back. In his peripheral vision, Jon can see him fixing his now rumpled shirt. The mirror feels heavier without him to help carry the weight.
Jon opens his mouth and he is unsure if he should say something or perhaps scream. He doubts anyone would come to save him, and isn’t that a bleak thought?
In the end, all that comes out is the crack and hiss of empty static, growing steadily louder.
“That’s it Archivist, let it all out,” Elias coaxes. The green eyes of his reflection shudder through several emotions that Jon does not want to name.
He drops the mirror.
In the half instant where Jon is still coherent, he sees Elias flinch as it smashes and feels a bitter satisfaction.
The pain that follows is near indescribable.
Jon shatters, body and mind fragmenting into a hundred pieces that shift impossibly in the air. It is an agony unlike any of the others he has suffered, the kind that keeps him aware, unable to dissociate from a single severed piece of himself. He is incorporeal and he is flesh and he is the buzzing of static reaching a fever pitch in the air.
Elias stumbles backwards, falling against his own desk and nearly knocking his computer monitor over.
Jon should be dead, or at least, unable to comprehend what he sees. Instead, he is left to watch and just barely comprehend through the bright sharp pain of the parts that constitute him.
He watches and feels from a thousand angles as his flesh reforms and welds back together. He sees himself writhing; he sees each title on the faded spines of the books lining the office; he sees the haze of the polluted London skies. Every nerve end of his body lights up as it connects and reconnects. They grow and split into new pathways, wrapped around with new flesh into new organs on new limbs. It’s agony and it’s relief all at once, like all pressure and tension are forcefully expelled from his body as it reforms into something large enough to contain him.
Dozens of eyes blink against the light and Jon sees Elias in kaleidoscope fractions that stare back him, his lips ever so slightly parted in wonder.
Jon’s own mouths are whole enough again that he feels he can finally scream. They’re open wide, twin gaping maws, one above the other. The noise is shrill and loud. His scream is tinny and distorted and sounds awfully like a tape being rewound. It feels strange in his throat. It doesn’t vibrate up his body like it should, instead travelling up from inside him like a speaker down a long tunnel.
Jon can feel Elias’ gaze pressing down on him even as he contorts, his new spine moving in impossible ways, nails growing slowly, painfully sharp. He digs his new claws into the hardwood as his wings and eyes flare open. Something - a twelfth century vase gifted to Richard Mendelson by a shortlived head of Artefact Storage - shatters as parchment paper feathers clatter against the bookshelf.
The walls close in tight against him, or maybe Jon presses into them? Everything is overwhelming. The glare of the smog ridden afternoon beams into Elias’ south facing windows and the sheen of the overhead lights is too much. He squints against it, struggling to tamper down the sheer volume of information that pounds against his now distinctly inhuman skull.
Elias moves back behind the desk, past it, over to the window. Jon knows that his watch was an expensive gift from a distant, impersonal lover. He had an ear piercing in his younger years which has long since closed. On several occasions he has considered getting it repierced, for the novelty if nothing else.
Suddenly the bright, bright light is dimmed as Elias closes the blinds over his window.
Jon blinks rapidly, feeling the multitude of eyes on his face and along his body shift in unison.
It’s a little easier to think now, in the quiet darkness of the office. He takes stock of himself: He"s still clenching the stem of the shattered mirror in one - hand, for lack of a better word for it. There’s cuts all along his arm -leg?- and down his long neck from where he’d ended up rolling in the fragments of it.
He’s hunched with his belly low to the ground like an animal, wings spread protectively over himself. Even curled up he covers half the floor space of the office.
Somewhere in the room, Jon can hear the distant hiss of a tape recorder.
His focus is drawn to movement once more as Elias walks towards him. His posture is open and relaxed, and his mouth is open ever so slightly, one part awe and one part amusement. Jon’s lips pull back over his gums in a noise that’s half way between a hiss and a growl. Elias is unfazed, peering down at Jon’s prone, impossible form like he’s utterly fascinated.
Elias draws closer, one hand outstretched and Jon is suddenly afraid. He doesn’t want to be seen like this - let alone touched.
He cringes away, something - his tail - thumping back against the door that he doubts he could fit through now. An anxious cocktail of emotions is building inside of him, and the hackles along his spine rise as his wings puff up nervously.
As he shifts, the hand still holding what’s left of the mirror comes to the ground to steady himself, pressing the now empty frame of it against the floor.
Elias tuts.
"That mirror was gifted to Jonah Magnus by an admirer centuries ago. And you’ve broken a rather expensive vase. You really must be more careful with the artefacts in our possession, Jon." There"s no venom or anger behind his words, even if his tone is stern.
Jon snaps his teeth in his direction, just once. There is, for a gratifying instant, a single flicker of fear in Elias’ eyes. There’s still a deep rumbling from Jon’s new body. The sound fills him up as he breathes his irritation at Elias, himself, at the damn artefact.
Despite the hint of fear Jon had spotted, Elias seems mostly unshaken. He doesn’t hesitate as he kneels in front of Jon bar the slight twinge of pain which Jon knows is caused by his bad knee.
It puts them at eye level - Jon’s original two eyes on his face, that is. His whole body is still with tension.
“Please stop digging your claws into my flooring, Jonathan. It’s almost a century old,” Elias murmurs softly. Jon huffs out air from his snout, and they’re close enough that a strand of Elias’ grey hair flutters loose from it’s slicked down position. The three of his limbs not holding the mirror, he realises, are indeed digging into the floorboards.
The gentle tug of small fingers against Jon’s hand make him suddenly aware of just how much larger he is than Elias now. It’s one thing to feel his wings pressing against the two opposite walls of the office, and quite another to realise that Elias’ torso is probably the same diameter as his neck.
Elias glances at him like he’s just heard that thought and isn’t entirely impressed. He doesn’t say a word as pulls a handkerchief from his inside blazer pocket and shakes it open.
Tim used to think it was funny, a strange little anachronism that a man like Elias Bouchard carried one around in the twenty first century.
It makes more sense now as Jon watches him wrap his hand in it, then try to pry the mirror from his claws.
Jon"s growls louder and louder as he tugs what’s left of the broken mirror towards himself protectively. Elias’ fingers follow, but any resistance he offers is nothing compared to Jon’s strength.
He snaps his teeth again, another warning. This time it’s guided by a surge of possessiveness. It’s a familiar feeling from the rare occasions researchers or university students would dare to visit the archives, amplified a dozen times. The mirror is an artefact, a thing of knowledge and power. It’s his to guard and keep just as much as any statement is.
"Jon," Elias says warningly. Jon lifts his head up, chest feathers puffing out. Elias glares back at him. He now has to crane his neck up slightly to meet Jon’s primary eyes, but Jon still gets the sense that Elias is looking down at him.
There"s something in his grey eyes, cold and calculating that makes Jon pause. A shudder runs down his long spine from the base of his neck to the tip of his tail. In this form, he is stronger than Elias by a long shot. If he wanted to, he could crush him under his paws or maul him with either of his mouths. He knows, suddenly, that it would work. Elias’ body is still human and vulnerable. The fact that he’s survived as long as he has is a testament to just how dangerous his mind can be.
Elias’ eyes widen ever so slightly, and Jon catches a whiff of genuine fear from him for the first time. His mouths fill with saliva. There’s something in particular about this scent that draws him more than others with a statement have before. For a moment he assumes it is purely due to his heightened senses but, no. It’s what Elias fears.
He fears having some secret ripped from him.
He fears Jon ripping some secret from him.
“Jon,” Elias almost hisses, firm and almost desperate. Yes, Jon’s right, he knows he is, he knows that he was onto something when he pilfered the mirror from artefact storage. Elias has a secret that will irrevocably change something if Jon can only pry it out of him. His lower mouth opens. His voice - his human voice - echoes up the hollow, fleshless tube of his throat, buzzing with distorted static.
“Tell me,” Jon says.
“Archivist!” Elias snaps, sounding genuinely angry for the first time. He slams his hand over his mouth, then shifts slightly so that he can bite into the soft flesh between his index finger and thumb. He groans into his own skin. His eyes flutter but he does not look away from Jon.
He never looks away from Jon.
Elias gives a full body shudder and his knees nearly buckle.
He makes no move to hide the slight tent in his slacks, even as he must know that the eyes along Jon’s neck are fixed on his lower body. A shudder of his own travels through Jon, and he flicks his tail which thumps again against the door.
Even as he struggles to control himself, Elias feels no guilt. Not like Jon does.
Something shifts in the air, and Jon suddenly sees himself from Elias’ perspective, tall and monstrous and utterly inhuman. He is a snarling thing, all eyes from his long neck down to his fanned wings.
He sees the faces of Tim, Martin, Melanie, twisted in horror and disgust as they see him. His montrous reflection in their eyes is terribly, awfully familiar.
After all, he sees the same reflection in helpless eyes every night as he dreams.
Next, the eyes are Georgie’s, turning away from him again, rightly so. He dragged her back into his life and now she gets to see just what a mess he’s made of it. She calls him a monster and it hurts because it’s true, what else could he possibly be, consuming other peoples’ trauma.
Jon growls. He can’t get the images out of his mind but that doesn’t stop him from seeing Elias, staring up at him with an intense focus. Jon glares back, refusing to be cowed. He bares his teeth at Elias, whose mouth twists into an unpleasant, almost impressed smile.
Jon barely has time to wonder if that might be a bad sign before he can feel Elias dig deeper into his mind.
Jon lets out a wounded noise as he sees his grandmother, so real he can almost smell the perfume and faint hint of citrus cleaning products that always permeated her house. Her lips purse in the same perpetual look she’s always given him. It’s not disappointment. That would require a degree of emotional investment he simply hadn’t earnt from her. It’s the simple dissatisfaction of a woman forced to deal with a stupid boy, always throwing tantrums and running away from his problems.
When she sees him like this, all she sees was a bigger mess, left her to clear up.
Jon knows - has known - that he isn’t fully human for a long time. But it is one thing to understand, in his darkest, private moments that there is something monstrous within him, and quite another to have his exterior matches his insides. He shrinks back, ears pinned and curling his tail protectively around himself. He pulls in his wings, trying to make himself somehow smaller.
Everyone in his life already barely tolerates him. They each already think, to varying degrees, that there’s something wrong with him. How could he bare to let them see him like this, to show them just how right they are? And worse still, what if they realise what Jon himself fears most: that deep down, he’s always been some kind of monster. How else would he have let himself become this?
Elias withdraws his hand from his mouth and the ring of tooth marks is a dark, reddish pink. Jon stares at that ring, the slight twists in the line where his teeth grew slightly crooked, but never quite enough to justify braces.
He wants - something. He feels aware of the long tongue in his snout, pressing up against a mix of sharp and dull teeth. They’re the teeth of an omnivore, a scavenger predator picking at old wounds and secondhand fear. Not just sustained by, but relishing in the pain of others. He glares down at Elias, who watches him back free of any of the guilt or shame that plagues Jon.
Perhaps he’d just like to snap his jaws around that hand and leave a mark of his own.
He pushes that thought away quickly, his self-consciousness and guilt mixing into disgust at the desire. He cannot control himself or his appetites, and now everyone around him will know it with a glance.
"You may be the Archivist,” Elias says, cutting through Jon’s swirling throughts. His voice is low and almost kind, nothing like his anger before. “But this is still very much my domain. Now, behave yourself.”
Perhaps it’s the gentleness of his voice, perhaps it’s Jon’s own exhaustion. Either way, all the will to fight feels like it’s been drained from his huge body. He slumps low, belly to the ground, chin of his great head resting on the floor. The curiosity that had made him push Elias further than he has before is longer boiling over, but instead is reduced to a simmer once again.
It’s controllable.
He’s controllable.
Jon places the mirror on the ground and slides it towards Elias with a claw. He shifts his wings again, attempting to tuck them away properly. It’s enough to make some of the loose sheets of paper on Elias’ desk flutter to the ground.
“Good,” Elias says. The word is layered with meaning that spreads unwelcome warmth through Jon’s body. With his head on the ground like this he has to look up as Elias scoops up the mirror’s frame, fractions of glass still stuck within it.
A treacherous part of Jon’s mind reminds him that Elias has never once looked at him with disgust in his eyes.
The closest thing Jon sees in that moment is a flash of regret. Elias sighs almost sadly at the broken mirror. He places it on the desk carefully, still wrapped in the handkerchief. Jon does feel a pang of regret now that he’s thinking more clearly. He does genuinely have an appreciation for history, and it is a shame seeing something so well made broken in spite of the trouble it’s caused.
That thought makes a new one dawn on Jon with a slow, creeping sense of dread: he has no idea if he’s stuck like this now.
“I’m sure you’ll be back to your usual self in no time. This sort of transformation is… not sustainable whilst the laws of physics still apply,” Elias says, sounding close enough to his usual self that it gives Jon some small sense of normalcy. He hates that it comforts him as much as it does. “In the meantime you’re welcome to stay here - not that either of us has much say in the matter.” The corners of Elias’ lips upturn into a small smile.
Jon huffs. No, he supposes he doesn’t, unless he wants to smash his way through a listed building. He considers it half heartedly. In spite of himself, he knows deep down that he doesn’t want to destroy the Institute. If anything he feels a flair of territorial irritation at the thought of the building being damaged.
“You’d give the tourists on the bridge a sight to remember,” Elias muses, a spark of mischeif in his eyes. Jon shrinks back.
He still doesn’t want anyone else to see him like this. He tries to imagine what it would be like, to stalk through the corridors back down to the Archives, being seen for exactly what he is by strangers, his coworkers, his friends. There would be no awe in their eyes, no curiosity or quiet laughter.
In spite of his thick fur, Jon shivers.
He shuffles on the floor, attempting to find a comfortable position to lie in. Fragments of broken glass prick at his skin and he rumbles out an unhappy noise. Elias sighs, exasperated and fond.
“I suppose I ought not to leave you like that. It is partially my fault that you broke the mirror,” Elias admits. He doesn’t sound apologetic; he never does. Jon’s lower mouth - the one that can speak like a human - opens. Then he shuts it again. He doesn’t want to dignify that with a real response. Instead, he peels back his other set of lips and hisses at Elias, who only chuckles.
Jon watches as his smile widens. His expression deepens the lines on his face which Jon is realising for the first time are smile lines. It’s not that Elias doesn’t smile - he does, quite a lot in fact. But this is different. It’s not a knowing smirk or an insincere thing meant to charm donors. It’s a real, genuine smile. There’s not a trace of disgust or dissatisfaction on his face.
Elias sees him for what he is, and he does not think any less of Jon for it. If anything, the opposite is true. And although Jon knows - keeps reminding himself - that that’s a bad thing, that Elias is not to be trusted - he finds himself relaxing anyway.
Jon snaps his teeth at him again but there’s no intent behind the gesture any more. His bark always has been worse than his bite.
Elias must catch that thought as well because he laughs then, and the sound is pleasant to Jon’s ears. He tries, but can’t quite hold back a huff of his own.
Elias leans forwards again, and Jon feels abruptly aware of just how close to his face Elias is.
“You are a thing of beauty, aren’t you Archivist?” Jon looks away, all of his eyes turning down towards Elias’ shoes. He polishes them himself with an old bristle brush in his garden, whilsting to himself as he does it. Elias sighs. The shoes move half a step closer. “Even now, you’d rather deny your nature than embrace it.”
Jon feels exhausted, so he doesn’t even pretend to fight it as a hand reaches out to stroke along his face. Elias’ hand sweeps along the contours of his furred snout in rythmic, almost hypnotic motions.
Of course Jon would rather deny what he’s becoming - what he already is. He knows it’s wrong, knows he shouldn’t like it or enjoy it as much as he does.
But.
Some small, teacherous, soft part of himself can’t help but wonder. Surely the world won’t end if he allows himself this one moment of peace?
He’ll hate himself for it later, he’s already quite sure of that. But it feels almost impossible to move when exhaustion and relief loosen all the muscles in his strange, familiar body and Elias is looking at him with such a terrible fondness in his eyes as he gently combs shards of glass free from Jon’s fur.
Yes, Jon decides. For just this moment, he will allow himself to accept the things he denies himself the most.