((Warnings for the non-con really picking up from here on out.))
“Elias, your Archivist is not very cooperative, is he?”
The introduction of Nikola’s jagged voice into his night catches him off guard, and Elias almost chokes on his brandy, hastily swallowing. The liquor sears down his throat, burning up the back of it where he’d nearly inhaled it. He sets his glass down on the nightstand and thinks that she probably has a point.
Elias is not fond of surprises. In particular, he has grown to hate Nikola’s brand of surprise, which he suspects is the point of her frequent and irrationally inconsistent interruptions. It’s been a bit less than two weeks – and two weeks, really, is unacceptable, to have an Archivist missing so utterly, wasting so much time that none of them are at the luxury of having – and her voice has managed to find him at work, in his car, in his kitchen, in the middle of a meeting with Peter and, on a singularly memorable occasion, in his shower.
That one continues to be a recursive sort of memory. The kind that bubbles up to the surface level of his thoughts more often than is strictly necessary. The hot water beating down on his back, demanding the tension drain from his shoulders, steam curling up thickly in the air, and Jon’s muffled, quickened breathing, like he was panting against his ear, against his neck, into the crook of his shoulder. A quiet sigh, when Nikola removed his gag that night and then the wet slide of her fingers, again, into his mouth, the now-familiar noises Jon made he tried to choke, and just as Elias was thinking of indulging himself, for once, Jon-
Jon bit down, and his shower was filled with the sound of crunching plastic and the sharp trill of Nikola’s indignant shriek.
A short-lived victory, but one that his Archivist no doubt found deeply satisfying. Elias actually heard him spit – blood, or saliva, perhaps even a bit of her own mannequin pieces – into Nikola’s face. Jon’s snarled but ultimately uninspired fuck you. And a pause, then, as Jon took a deep breath, frustration lending enough force to his question that Elias felt it second-hand, skin pinching into gooseflesh when Jon asked – demanded – when he compelled, where are we.
Nikola turned the bloody tape off. The following night Elias had been given front row seats to Nikola introducing Jon to a few of the many, many ways one could cause pain without leaving marks. Without harming skin. But she hadn’t gone near Jon’s mouth since.
“Honestly, Elias – and I can call you Elias, can’t I? – have you taught him anything at all?”
Elias sets his book on the bed spread beside him and writes off the next hour or so of his night as a loss.
“I’ve had to recruit helping hands. You’re in management, Elias – it’s simply not practical! Be good dears and say hello to the nasty, prying eye!”
“Goodday.”
“Pleasure.”
Wonderful. Elias considers leaving his bed. He’d rather not be there, if Nikola’s intent is to have him listen in on another round of Jon’s punitive sessions. Jon, himself, is being uncharacteristically silent. Even knowing that such a thing is futile, Elias closes his eyes and opens others, flashes of dark streets and dark shapes, the jerking silhouettes of mannequin bodies as they spin round and round on a stage, limbs held at broken-doll angles.
Too much to ask for, at this stage – that Nikola would slip, that those-he-doesn’t-know would make a mistake. They’ve made enough getting to this point at all.
“Does your Archivist get touched much?”
There are wet sounds. The slap of flesh on flesh and a muffled bark of complaint from Jon. Elias knows the answer to her question, of course; he’s quite sure they all do.
“Oh, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I always forget, Elias, that you can’t See what I’m doing, not at all! It must be so uncomfortable for you! So unfamiliar for you! Do you feel powerless, Elias?”
A pause. Jon makes a noise of discomfort, and Nikola’s voice is quieter, almost intimate but no less sharp – as if the voice she’s stolen for herself traded ligaments for garrote wires, lined her throat with broken glass - as she croons, “do you, Archivist?
“Right, let me set the scene for you, Elias. Your Archivist – I mentioned he wasn’t very cooperative, didn’t I? – well! Breekon’s holding his arms, and Hope is holding his legs – you know Breekon and Hope, don’t you?”
“Excuse me-”
“Hate to interrupt, Missus.”
“But he’s Breekon.”
“-And he’s Hope.”
Elias massages his temples.
“You get the idea!” Nikola doesn’t snap. She says it pleasant and chipper as ever, and wastes no time pretending to apologize. “We’re lotioning up his skin today, Elias. It’s so dry, and I’ve told you before – you really should take better care of your Archivists.”
Ah, yes, his Archivist. Elias can’t imagine the backlash he’d face if he tried to take better care of his Archivist. Even the most tenuous branches he extends to Jon are snapped at their bases, and piled up as kindling for his anger. Misplaced and misdirected. It’s growing pains, Elias knows, but it’s no less frustrating for that understanding.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve done this, Elias. Is it, Archivist?”
At that, Elias feels an unexpected surge of annoyance. This is the first he’s heard of it, but considering Nikola’s obsession with Jon’s skin, it can’t be unexpected.
“He’s so- oh, what is the word that I want? Tremulous? Starved? It’s really something, Elias, I do wish you could See – the way he tries not to lean into me every time I touch him. He’s doing his best to pull away, he really, really is, but- what is it? I bet, this is the nicest touch he’s gotten in a long, long while.”
Elias takes in a deep breath, holding it in his chest.
“Which means you haven’t been touching your Archivist! Is that right, dear?”
Jon makes another muffled noise. Elias can imagine his cheeks scorched red, above lips just as red, stretched wide around a gag stuffed deep into his mouth. He can picture, easily, Jon with his limbs held strained and splayed, spine arching even as he tries to bow himself away. The diametric oppositions that seem to be part and parcel of Jon himself, always of two minds about everything, leaving everyone except Elias to wonder where he would go.
Everyone except Elias, who has Seen Jon, his Archivist, who has no doubts as to what he will accomplish, eventually.
“No biting this time!” Nikola says, and Jon’s breath rushes out, unhindered – she’s taken his gag out again. Withdrawn her fingers just as quickly, Elias would imagine. It brings a sharp, satisfied smile to his face. “Why don’t you share with us how you’re feeling, Archivist? Your Master is listening in – he can’t See, but he is listening!”
“Go to hell,” Jon rasps, voice scratched and rough.
Nikola gives a tsking sound, disapproving but with a mockingbird’s mimicry of understanding. “Oh, you poor thing. I’ll treat you right, if your Elias isn’t going to.”
Jon takes in a quick breath, and it might be his imagination, but Elias thinks he can hear the thick sound of Jon swallowing.
“D-Don’t- Don’t touch me,” Jon says. Elias can’t imagine it’s effective.
“Now, that’s not going to do. Really, you should be thanking me!”
“Why the hell would I-” Jon’s question is cut short by a pained cry. What are they doing to him?
“Oh, he doesn’t seem to like that! Ease up, lovelies – we wouldn’t want to leave any permanent disfigurations!” Jon goes quiet, except for his panicked, heaving breaths. “Now, Archivist, we have rules, don’t we?” Silence, and then a pained groan. “Don’t we?”
“Yes,” Jon gasps.
“And? What’s the first rule? The most important rule?”
“No biting?” As ever, Jon chooses the perfect moment to practice his sarcasm. There’s a heavy slap of flesh on flesh, a grunt forced out of Jon.
“Care to have another go at it?”
“No questions,” Jon says, snarling.
“Very good, Archivist! And what should you be doing?”
“…Thank you.” Quiet and loathful, though whether that’s directed more towards himself or his captor is up for debate.
“Look at that, Elias! Oh, that’s right, you can’t look! But your Archivist is capable of learning!”
Jon makes a low sound of irritation, one that is Elias is quite familiar with.
“Now, let’s see, we’re starting with his chest, today, Elias! Have you seen his chest? Hmm? Have you shown your boss all these scars, Archivist? Does he know how many other things – creepy, crawly things, by the looks of it – have left their mark on you?”
Of course Elias knows. He has seen them, too, but Jon hasn’t shown them to him – not yet. He saw them when they were new, the filth of Jane Prentiss’ Hive still hanging limply from Jon’s skin, dead in the act of burrowing into his soft tissues. And he saw them as they healed, turned into pink, oval ridges scattered across Jon’s body – healed more slowly than they should have, Elias knew, because he Watched Jon worry at them. They were thin, silvery things now. Most of them.
And other ones, too. Older ones, that were already dulled bunches of scar tissue by the time Elias knew he should be watching, that had been raw and then sore and then forgotten long before they’d ever met.
“Do you, Elias?”
Yes.
He imagines, sometimes, Jon showing them to him. Would it worry his Archivist, how Elias’ hands and lips would find them all, unerringly? Probably. As if that, somehow – physical exposure – was the worst thing he had to fear. The feeling that he has already been laid bare by their God.
What should worry Jon is the welling tide of desire Elias has, an urging deeper than his own flesh and blood could account for, to cover each and every one of them. To transform every mark and gnarled wind of mangled tissue into sigils for the Eye. To overwrite the claims any one or thing else had dared to try and lay upon his Archivist - their Archivist, Elias amends, because Elias knows well what fuels him, what serves him, what he serves in turn – to warp them with tooth and nail until there is no denying who Jonathan belongs to, scrawled plain across his skin for all to see.
“Maybe I should leave a mark! What do you say, Elias – can I call you Elias? Would you like to see what we do to people’s skin?”
“I thought you just stole them,” Jon sneers. Elias finds himself bracing to hear whatever punishment Nikola so enjoys doling out, but the Dancer just laughs, the sound like crystal straining tight and then cracking under pressure.
“Oh we do much, much more than that, Archivist! Why, just look at this one!”
Jon makes a noise half way between horror and disgust, and Elias’ lips twitch upwards at one corner, wondering what Nikola’s decided to show him.
“W-What- ah, you-” Jon’s talking over himself, thoughts racing faster than his mouth, “wait, just- wait! T-the dance! Uh, wouldn’t- something like, god, like that, it would ruin the- the costume.”
Elias is mildly certain Jon just referred to his own skin as a costume.
“Do you think so?” There’s the wet sound of something fleshy slapping onto a hard surface; Elias assumes Nikola dropped the remains of whatever mutilated creature she’d been holding to the floor. “I think it adds a touch of, let’s say character to the ensemble! We’re not looking for perfection, after all. Well, not from you.”
Jon heaves out a shuddering breath. Elias can hear every one of his frantic inhalations. Nikola had a point, before – Jon makes his emotions too obvious.
“Shall we ask your Master what he thinks? Oh, silly me – he still can’t See! I just keep forgetting!”
“Wonderful idea,” Jon says, “Elias, what do you think? Just a light skinning, or would you like to see your Archivist chewed up a bit first?”
Jon practically spit the word out – sarcastic, bitter; angry with him, no doubt – but it still sends a pleasant shiver down Elias’ spine to hear him say it.
Nikola laughs, delighted. “Careful, Archivist, that mouth is going to get in you trouble! Haven’t you learned that, yet? Oh, Elias, I would say I’d rip his throat out – and what good is an Archivist without that, hmm? – but I think that would be doing you a favor!
Such a pretty throat it is,” she says, and there’s a dull thumping sound, and Jon groaning, low and quiet. “It would look quite fetching all splayed open, wouldn’t it?”
“I-I-I’m partial to it as-is, thanks.” Jon’s voice is shaking.
“Plenty of time for you to change your mind,” she says. “Or is there? Is there time?”
“It’s- hard to say, isn’t it? What time it is. I mean, it’s- it’s dark in here. I-I can only see- wax figures, no windows, no sounds of traffic-”
Details that could have been helpful, if they weren’t dealing with the Stranger. Elias smiles, even as the sound of Jon being slapped again echoes in his room.
“None of that, Archivist,” Nikola says, but she doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Your Master isn’t going to come rescue you, and you haven’t made many other allies, have you? The Eye Watches and it Knows, but what good is any of that if it can’t do anything about it? Your Master is going to Watch- well, not Watch, not really; he’s going to hear me peel every inch of skin from your still screaming meat, and then he’ll watch you Dance, but it won’t be you, will it? It will be me, inside you!
Doesn’t that sound lovely?”
There’s a long moment where Elias can hear only the whirr of the tape recorder. A quiet choking noise, and then Jon gasping for breath. He pictures a slender, painted mannequin with her limbs at subtly wrong angles, her hands wrapped around his Archivist’s throat. The row of interlinked bruises she’s no doubt left like a collar around his neck.
He has to forcibly relax his fists.
“Ah, maybe I’ll be leaving your Archivist with some marks after all, Elias!”
It’s quiet again. Something squelches; Elias wonders if it’s something that used to be a person. Jon’s ragged breathing goes fast again.
“There we are! There’s a good little Archivist!” Jon says nothing, but Elias can picture the withering glare he must be aiming towards Nikola. “Now, before I got all distracted, there was something I wanted to share with you today, Elias – I can call you Elias, can’t I?”
“St-stop,” Jon says, weakly.
“No more interrupting, dear; it’s time to use your manners and let your betters do the talking,” she chides. “Now, Elias – I can call you Elias – I have mentioned that he’s just so reactive to being touched, haven’t I?”
A tight sense of anticipation stirs through his limbs. Elias finds himself straightening in bed.
“Your Archivist tries to put on a brave face, doesn’t he? Play the stoic? He’s no good at it, but he does tries!”
Jon’s making- sounds. Noises. They come through muffled, like he’s biting his lip, or his tongue, quiet literally.
“But there are just these places he can’t stand to be touched! Do you know where they are, Elias? Have you touched them?”
“Stop- stop,” Jon breathes out between heavy gasps of air. “Don’t touch me, damn it.”
“This throat of his, for instance. Why, if I use my nails, just so, down the side there-”
Jon gives a long, drawn out groan, of a spectacularly different quality than the ones that have come before it, though no less pained for it. Elias sucks in a sharp breath.
“But that’s not all, Elias! Oh, what am I saying, you know, don’t you? Don’t you know? Don’t you want to know?”
Elias wants to know. It’s his nature, of course.
And he knows some of them, already. Has Watched Jon bring himself off – sporadically, never nearly as often as Elias would expect – clutch himself harshly, scrape his own nails against the seam of his hip.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Prompt: Nikola/Jon, Elias/Jon (2/3)
Date: 2018-09-02 07:06 pm (UTC)“Elias, your Archivist is not very cooperative, is he?”
The introduction of Nikola’s jagged voice into his night catches him off guard, and Elias almost chokes on his brandy, hastily swallowing. The liquor sears down his throat, burning up the back of it where he’d nearly inhaled it. He sets his glass down on the nightstand and thinks that she probably has a point.
Elias is not fond of surprises. In particular, he has grown to hate Nikola’s brand of surprise, which he suspects is the point of her frequent and irrationally inconsistent interruptions. It’s been a bit less than two weeks – and two weeks, really, is unacceptable, to have an Archivist missing so utterly, wasting so much time that none of them are at the luxury of having – and her voice has managed to find him at work, in his car, in his kitchen, in the middle of a meeting with Peter and, on a singularly memorable occasion, in his shower.
That one continues to be a recursive sort of memory. The kind that bubbles up to the surface level of his thoughts more often than is strictly necessary. The hot water beating down on his back, demanding the tension drain from his shoulders, steam curling up thickly in the air, and Jon’s muffled, quickened breathing, like he was panting against his ear, against his neck, into the crook of his shoulder. A quiet sigh, when Nikola removed his gag that night and then the wet slide of her fingers, again, into his mouth, the now-familiar noises Jon made he tried to choke, and just as Elias was thinking of indulging himself, for once, Jon-
Jon bit down, and his shower was filled with the sound of crunching plastic and the sharp trill of Nikola’s indignant shriek.
A short-lived victory, but one that his Archivist no doubt found deeply satisfying. Elias actually heard him spit – blood, or saliva, perhaps even a bit of her own mannequin pieces – into Nikola’s face. Jon’s snarled but ultimately uninspired fuck you. And a pause, then, as Jon took a deep breath, frustration lending enough force to his question that Elias felt it second-hand, skin pinching into gooseflesh when Jon asked – demanded – when he compelled, where are we.
Nikola turned the bloody tape off. The following night Elias had been given front row seats to Nikola introducing Jon to a few of the many, many ways one could cause pain without leaving marks. Without harming skin. But she hadn’t gone near Jon’s mouth since.
“Honestly, Elias – and I can call you Elias, can’t I? – have you taught him anything at all?”
Elias sets his book on the bed spread beside him and writes off the next hour or so of his night as a loss.
“I’ve had to recruit helping hands. You’re in management, Elias – it’s simply not practical! Be good dears and say hello to the nasty, prying eye!”
“Goodday.”
“Pleasure.”
Wonderful. Elias considers leaving his bed. He’d rather not be there, if Nikola’s intent is to have him listen in on another round of Jon’s punitive sessions. Jon, himself, is being uncharacteristically silent. Even knowing that such a thing is futile, Elias closes his eyes and opens others, flashes of dark streets and dark shapes, the jerking silhouettes of mannequin bodies as they spin round and round on a stage, limbs held at broken-doll angles.
Too much to ask for, at this stage – that Nikola would slip, that those-he-doesn’t-know would make a mistake. They’ve made enough getting to this point at all.
“Does your Archivist get touched much?”
There are wet sounds. The slap of flesh on flesh and a muffled bark of complaint from Jon. Elias knows the answer to her question, of course; he’s quite sure they all do.
“Oh, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I always forget, Elias, that you can’t See what I’m doing, not at all! It must be so uncomfortable for you! So unfamiliar for you! Do you feel powerless, Elias?”
A pause. Jon makes a noise of discomfort, and Nikola’s voice is quieter, almost intimate but no less sharp – as if the voice she’s stolen for herself traded ligaments for garrote wires, lined her throat with broken glass - as she croons, “do you, Archivist?
“Right, let me set the scene for you, Elias. Your Archivist – I mentioned he wasn’t very cooperative, didn’t I? – well! Breekon’s holding his arms, and Hope is holding his legs – you know Breekon and Hope, don’t you?”
“Excuse me-”
“Hate to interrupt, Missus.”
“But he’s Breekon.”
“-And he’s Hope.”
Elias massages his temples.
“You get the idea!” Nikola doesn’t snap. She says it pleasant and chipper as ever, and wastes no time pretending to apologize. “We’re lotioning up his skin today, Elias. It’s so dry, and I’ve told you before – you really should take better care of your Archivists.”
Ah, yes, his Archivist. Elias can’t imagine the backlash he’d face if he tried to take better care of his Archivist. Even the most tenuous branches he extends to Jon are snapped at their bases, and piled up as kindling for his anger. Misplaced and misdirected. It’s growing pains, Elias knows, but it’s no less frustrating for that understanding.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve done this, Elias. Is it, Archivist?”
At that, Elias feels an unexpected surge of annoyance. This is the first he’s heard of it, but considering Nikola’s obsession with Jon’s skin, it can’t be unexpected.
“He’s so- oh, what is the word that I want? Tremulous? Starved? It’s really something, Elias, I do wish you could See – the way he tries not to lean into me every time I touch him. He’s doing his best to pull away, he really, really is, but- what is it? I bet, this is the nicest touch he’s gotten in a long, long while.”
Elias takes in a deep breath, holding it in his chest.
“Which means you haven’t been touching your Archivist! Is that right, dear?”
Jon makes another muffled noise. Elias can imagine his cheeks scorched red, above lips just as red, stretched wide around a gag stuffed deep into his mouth. He can picture, easily, Jon with his limbs held strained and splayed, spine arching even as he tries to bow himself away. The diametric oppositions that seem to be part and parcel of Jon himself, always of two minds about everything, leaving everyone except Elias to wonder where he would go.
Everyone except Elias, who has Seen Jon, his Archivist, who has no doubts as to what he will accomplish, eventually.
“No biting this time!” Nikola says, and Jon’s breath rushes out, unhindered – she’s taken his gag out again. Withdrawn her fingers just as quickly, Elias would imagine. It brings a sharp, satisfied smile to his face. “Why don’t you share with us how you’re feeling, Archivist? Your Master is listening in – he can’t See, but he is listening!”
“Go to hell,” Jon rasps, voice scratched and rough.
Nikola gives a tsking sound, disapproving but with a mockingbird’s mimicry of understanding. “Oh, you poor thing. I’ll treat you right, if your Elias isn’t going to.”
Jon takes in a quick breath, and it might be his imagination, but Elias thinks he can hear the thick sound of Jon swallowing.
“D-Don’t- Don’t touch me,” Jon says. Elias can’t imagine it’s effective.
“Now, that’s not going to do. Really, you should be thanking me!”
“Why the hell would I-” Jon’s question is cut short by a pained cry. What are they doing to him?
“Oh, he doesn’t seem to like that! Ease up, lovelies – we wouldn’t want to leave any permanent disfigurations!” Jon goes quiet, except for his panicked, heaving breaths. “Now, Archivist, we have rules, don’t we?” Silence, and then a pained groan. “Don’t we?”
“Yes,” Jon gasps.
“And? What’s the first rule? The most important rule?”
“No biting?” As ever, Jon chooses the perfect moment to practice his sarcasm. There’s a heavy slap of flesh on flesh, a grunt forced out of Jon.
“Care to have another go at it?”
“No questions,” Jon says, snarling.
“Very good, Archivist! And what should you be doing?”
“…Thank you.” Quiet and loathful, though whether that’s directed more towards himself or his captor is up for debate.
“Look at that, Elias! Oh, that’s right, you can’t look! But your Archivist is capable of learning!”
Jon makes a low sound of irritation, one that is Elias is quite familiar with.
“Now, let’s see, we’re starting with his chest, today, Elias! Have you seen his chest? Hmm? Have you shown your boss all these scars, Archivist? Does he know how many other things – creepy, crawly things, by the looks of it – have left their mark on you?”
Of course Elias knows. He has seen them, too, but Jon hasn’t shown them to him – not yet. He saw them when they were new, the filth of Jane Prentiss’ Hive still hanging limply from Jon’s skin, dead in the act of burrowing into his soft tissues. And he saw them as they healed, turned into pink, oval ridges scattered across Jon’s body – healed more slowly than they should have, Elias knew, because he Watched Jon worry at them. They were thin, silvery things now. Most of them.
And other ones, too. Older ones, that were already dulled bunches of scar tissue by the time Elias knew he should be watching, that had been raw and then sore and then forgotten long before they’d ever met.
“Do you, Elias?”
Yes.
He imagines, sometimes, Jon showing them to him. Would it worry his Archivist, how Elias’ hands and lips would find them all, unerringly? Probably. As if that, somehow – physical exposure – was the worst thing he had to fear. The feeling that he has already been laid bare by their God.
What should worry Jon is the welling tide of desire Elias has, an urging deeper than his own flesh and blood could account for, to cover each and every one of them. To transform every mark and gnarled wind of mangled tissue into sigils for the Eye. To overwrite the claims any one or thing else had dared to try and lay upon his Archivist - their Archivist, Elias amends, because Elias knows well what fuels him, what serves him, what he serves in turn – to warp them with tooth and nail until there is no denying who Jonathan belongs to, scrawled plain across his skin for all to see.
“Maybe I should leave a mark! What do you say, Elias – can I call you Elias? Would you like to see what we do to people’s skin?”
“I thought you just stole them,” Jon sneers. Elias finds himself bracing to hear whatever punishment Nikola so enjoys doling out, but the Dancer just laughs, the sound like crystal straining tight and then cracking under pressure.
“Oh we do much, much more than that, Archivist! Why, just look at this one!”
Jon makes a noise half way between horror and disgust, and Elias’ lips twitch upwards at one corner, wondering what Nikola’s decided to show him.
“W-What- ah, you-” Jon’s talking over himself, thoughts racing faster than his mouth, “wait, just- wait! T-the dance! Uh, wouldn’t- something like, god, like that, it would ruin the- the costume.”
Elias is mildly certain Jon just referred to his own skin as a costume.
“Do you think so?” There’s the wet sound of something fleshy slapping onto a hard surface; Elias assumes Nikola dropped the remains of whatever mutilated creature she’d been holding to the floor. “I think it adds a touch of, let’s say character to the ensemble! We’re not looking for perfection, after all. Well, not from you.”
Jon heaves out a shuddering breath. Elias can hear every one of his frantic inhalations. Nikola had a point, before – Jon makes his emotions too obvious.
“Shall we ask your Master what he thinks? Oh, silly me – he still can’t See! I just keep forgetting!”
“Wonderful idea,” Jon says, “Elias, what do you think? Just a light skinning, or would you like to see your Archivist chewed up a bit first?”
Jon practically spit the word out – sarcastic, bitter; angry with him, no doubt – but it still sends a pleasant shiver down Elias’ spine to hear him say it.
Nikola laughs, delighted. “Careful, Archivist, that mouth is going to get in you trouble! Haven’t you learned that, yet? Oh, Elias, I would say I’d rip his throat out – and what good is an Archivist without that, hmm? – but I think that would be doing you a favor!
Such a pretty throat it is,” she says, and there’s a dull thumping sound, and Jon groaning, low and quiet. “It would look quite fetching all splayed open, wouldn’t it?”
“I-I-I’m partial to it as-is, thanks.” Jon’s voice is shaking.
“Plenty of time for you to change your mind,” she says. “Or is there? Is there time?”
“It’s- hard to say, isn’t it? What time it is. I mean, it’s- it’s dark in here. I-I can only see- wax figures, no windows, no sounds of traffic-”
Details that could have been helpful, if they weren’t dealing with the Stranger. Elias smiles, even as the sound of Jon being slapped again echoes in his room.
“None of that, Archivist,” Nikola says, but she doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Your Master isn’t going to come rescue you, and you haven’t made many other allies, have you? The Eye Watches and it Knows, but what good is any of that if it can’t do anything about it? Your Master is going to Watch- well, not Watch, not really; he’s going to hear me peel every inch of skin from your still screaming meat, and then he’ll watch you Dance, but it won’t be you, will it? It will be me, inside you!
Doesn’t that sound lovely?”
There’s a long moment where Elias can hear only the whirr of the tape recorder. A quiet choking noise, and then Jon gasping for breath. He pictures a slender, painted mannequin with her limbs at subtly wrong angles, her hands wrapped around his Archivist’s throat. The row of interlinked bruises she’s no doubt left like a collar around his neck.
He has to forcibly relax his fists.
“Ah, maybe I’ll be leaving your Archivist with some marks after all, Elias!”
It’s quiet again. Something squelches; Elias wonders if it’s something that used to be a person. Jon’s ragged breathing goes fast again.
“There we are! There’s a good little Archivist!” Jon says nothing, but Elias can picture the withering glare he must be aiming towards Nikola. “Now, before I got all distracted, there was something I wanted to share with you today, Elias – I can call you Elias, can’t I?”
“St-stop,” Jon says, weakly.
“No more interrupting, dear; it’s time to use your manners and let your betters do the talking,” she chides. “Now, Elias – I can call you Elias – I have mentioned that he’s just so reactive to being touched, haven’t I?”
A tight sense of anticipation stirs through his limbs. Elias finds himself straightening in bed.
“Your Archivist tries to put on a brave face, doesn’t he? Play the stoic? He’s no good at it, but he does tries!”
Jon’s making- sounds. Noises. They come through muffled, like he’s biting his lip, or his tongue, quiet literally.
“But there are just these places he can’t stand to be touched! Do you know where they are, Elias? Have you touched them?”
“Stop- stop,” Jon breathes out between heavy gasps of air. “Don’t touch me, damn it.”
“This throat of his, for instance. Why, if I use my nails, just so, down the side there-”
Jon gives a long, drawn out groan, of a spectacularly different quality than the ones that have come before it, though no less pained for it. Elias sucks in a sharp breath.
“But that’s not all, Elias! Oh, what am I saying, you know, don’t you? Don’t you know? Don’t you want to know?”
Elias wants to know. It’s his nature, of course.
And he knows some of them, already. Has Watched Jon bring himself off – sporadically, never nearly as often as Elias would expect – clutch himself harshly, scrape his own nails against the seam of his hip.
“Be a dear and spread his legs, won’t you, Hope?”