Chapter Text
Hands move across Jon’s bare waist, trailing up the sides of his body. The touch is soft but the grip is always firm. Jon knows these hands, and craves this feeling. The feeling he’d never experience again. The delicate fingers move up to Jon’s neck, trailing the scar from the silver blade he’d received when fighting for his life to save his sire.
All for him.
Jon’s on his back– breathing heavy. His eyes are closed as the sensation continues– near over stimulation. To be this wanted and seen causes shivers down Jon’s spine. No one’s mapped Jon’s body out like this since him.
“Do it, Jon.” the voice of his sire rings loudly through his ears. Jonah’s commanding tone– the one he uses that means Jon can’t say no. Why would Jon say no? He belongs to him, and has for centuries. Even while apart Jon’s heart doesn’t stray.
“Jonah–” Jon moans. He’s pulled up to sit, Jonah’s neck cocked as he puts his hands around Jon’s– wanting Jon’s teeth on his skin.
“Drink.” The order comes again, just as strong as Jon remembers. The words ring throughout his entire body and all he wants is the taste of Jonah’s blood in his mouth.
Jon extends his fangs and in a quick motion his body is pulled up, bare chest pressing onto Jonah’s. But something’s off.
The smell is off.
Drink.
The blood smells– human. But Jon’s fangs are already sinking into the bare skin. This is not the blood of his sire, but of a man.
–
“Mr. Sims? Uh– Jon?” The man sitting across from him asks, pulling Jon out of his very very vivid daydream. He’s back in his office, not on a bed sheet drinking human blood. Jon doesn’t drink human blood. Jonah is dead. .
Jon blinks. Remembering that there’s a man sitting right across from him. Right. The Archivist position. The applicant. Martin Blackwood.
“My apologies Martin,” Jon clears his throat. “Please uh, do continue–”
“Oh uh– of course,” Martin says with a nod, looking back into his lap as he speaks. “Well I uh have about three years previously in uh–”
He's lying on his CV.
The information pours into Jon’s head and he looks across at the other man stammering through a fabricated resume. Not very well fabricated even, Jon would probably have called the bluff if Beholding hadn’t told him. He watches Martin speak– he’s taller than Jon– larger. Most people are since Jon’s diet of animal blood only when necessary hardly sustains him. And with Gertrude’s disappearance no one has been by the Archives to properly make a statement.
And Jon knows what happens when he takes live statements.
Martin is still going on about a fake research position in paranormal studies. Jon finally interrupts.
“Please tell me why you really want this position? Your qualifications… they're false.”
Martin's mouth opens then he immediately snaps it shut trying to keep a calm face. Jon isn't looking at him with judgment– but he knows his stare is intimidating.
“Wh– what?” Martin finally chokes out. Jon sighs, resting his chin on his hand.
“I’m not mad, necessarily,” Jon tells him, “I just …don’t know why you’re here.” He fights the urge to pull the information out of the man, hoping Martin will just tell him. The man is avoiding Jon’s gaze again, looking around the room before finally taking in a deep breath.
“Fine,” he nods, agreeing. “I’m sorry for wasting your time. I needed a job. My uh– mother just passed away and I’m in a bit of a bind. I was looking online and honestly thought that the position wasn’t real but I looked through a reddit thread and–”
“You thought that the posting was false?” Jon interrupts. He’d worked rather diligently on creating that job posting. Martin just shrugs.
“I mean– yeah?” he says with an awkward laugh. “Archivist at the Magnus Institute sounds believable sure but– paranormal background? Research experience on what– ghost hunting? That sounds a little…” Martin trails off and Jon raises an eyebrow.
“A little what?” Jon presses.
“Far– fetched,” the other man finishes, putting his hand behind his head.
“Yet– here you are. With supposed qualifications,” Jon retorts with a bitter tone. Martin nods.
“As I said, I went on reddit and did some digging into this place after you requested a formal interview. And well–” Martin’s hands wave to show here they are.
“Well indeed,” Jon says with a sigh, running his fingers through his hair.
He takes in Martin’s feedback– he was the only person to apply for the job. He knows the reputation of the institute isn’t great given his terrible disposition. And Gertrude Robinsion– the former head Archivist– was a terrifying vampire hunter that no one dared to want to cross paths with. Helpful in keeping unnecessary evils at bay– Jon looks at Martin again. He isn’t sure this man would be exactly the same level of terrifying as the old woman.
But, no other applicants. And Jon spent far too long on that posting.
“Should I just go or–?” Martin asks, breaking Jon’s train of thought. He clears his throat and widens his stance.
“No Martin I uh– I want to offer you the position actually,” Jon admits. Martin’s eyebrows raise.
“You’re serious?” Jon is serious. There’s something about Martin Blackwood that Jon for whatever reason feels that he can trust. Typically he doesn’t trust anyone but a man willing to go through the internet and apply for a position he thought was fake with qualifications that were absolutely fake– well.
Jon’s seen a lot in his nearly three hundred years, this is kind of a first. Jon’s kind of impressed.
“I mean– if you come into this brand new you can’t exactly have bad habits, right?” Jon finally says with a snort.
Martin just keeps staring. Jon sighs, and grabs an employment contract from the drawer.
“Standard salary and time off. Given your well uh– lack of qualifications I don’t expect you to negotiate?” Jon asks, not mentally prepared to argue the salary to a position that he’s likely going to end up doing most of the work for himself.
“No, the salary is perfect, thank you. I uh– well I guess I accept?” He says with a light laugh, taking the paper and signing at the bottom. Jon nods.
“Can you start Monday? I need about a week to get everything together,” He asks, trying to hide the buzz of excitement that people can actually come in and start properly making statements again.
“Absolutely,” Martin says with a polite smile, “I’ll see you then. ”
–
Two days later, Jon’s in the Archives, working late in an attempt to organize what he can before Martin arrives to work there the following week. He has roughly two more days of the work week to get the place together. And of course– Gertrude left the entire place a mess.
Jon laughs for a moment and allows him to think about Jonah would he see his precious institute in such a state. He sighs, placing another unfiled statement folder into the ever growing field of things that are misplaced.
His eyes gravitate toward a loose statement that didn’t have an attached folder. He glances at it and before long, he feels the words pouring out of him, unable to stop.
Statement of Elizabeth McHenry regarding a man drinking blood. Statement dated 1867. Statement Begins. I rarely leave the house at night. Often I wait for Charles to return home in the evenings if we wish to take a stroll but something this particular evening pulled me out while it was already starting to grow dark.
While others consider me a pious woman– I wear the cross around my neck, attend services on Sundays, help the poor when I can. I hate to confess this so openly, but I always have had– doubts. In the afterlife. Certainly with all this suffering a God would intervene?
All this to say, I ended up walking home late one evening, trying my best to avoid any sort of confrontation. I was nearly home, just down the road from my flat. It wasn’t before long however I heard the voice of a man asking for directions. He appeared almost out of nowhere– must have been turning onto the street from the alley but I hardly saw him.
He was a beautiful man– well dressed in fitted new clothing. He stood straight and proper and had a lovely smile. But there was something that wasn’t quite right. His eyes were too wide for his face. He didn’t blink. And I felt those piercing grey eyes dig into my soul. He knew me.
‘Uh, just down the street to the right,’ I answered his question as politely as I could given the chills going down my body. He extended a hand to place on my shoulder and thanked me. My body froze then.
‘You won’t want to scream,’ he spoke with dilated pupils and suddenly he was right. Then I felt another pair of hands on my shoulders while someone from behind me had bitten my neck–
Jon stops, trying his best to fight the statement, to stop wanting to relive the taste of Elizabeth McHenry’s blood. But almost in Jonah’s voice– he felt the allowance in his brain to let go, to continue reading the statement.
To be back there. Hungrily, Jon continues.
I couldn’t scream, my mouth was frozen shut as the– the thing– behind me drank my blood. And the first man– thing. He just watched with the same horrible smile. I felt my vision start to blacken and my body start to fall when the first creature reached out to hold me steady.
‘Don’t drain all of her, love. I’d like my fill–” was what he’d said to the thing that bit me. I remember him slumping my body over to drink from the wound from my neck– I was losing consciousness.
I was then jolted to the floor– the creature had thrown me off of him in a hiss. My cross necklace had burned his flesh. Then by some miracle I heard my Charles screaming for me.
By the time I fully came to, the beasts had gone and I could barely explain to Charles what happened.
But if there are demons– then there has to be a God.
Statement ends.
Jon licks his lips, thinking about the taste of the woman’s blood. He remembers the tale all too well. And when Elizabeth McHenry came to the institute the following week to make the statement–
Jon and Jonah drained her dry.
He folds up the paper and puts it in his pocket. He isn’t ready for Martin to hear something like that in his first few weeks. He sighs, looking around the Archives and thinking about what it used to be when he was the Head Archivist and not in the sorry position of Head of the Institute that he is now.
Jonah’s idea for an institute and Jon as his Archivist made complete sense in the middle of the 19th century– a way to continue feeding their patron. Other’s encounters with the dread powers helped to bring people in and Jon and Jonah could continue feeding off lonely statement givers who were meant to be lost to the powers regardless.Their system worked well in the beginning, once they developed a decent routine and Jon’s connection with The Eye continued to grow. People touched by the fears were drawn to the institute, wanting to share their stories and not even realizing why. Jon loved being an Archivist, soaking in the fear and then sharing the blood of the statement giver with his sire.
What Jon didn’t know is that Jonah had other plans. He didn’t just want to feed The Eye, but wanted to change the world. He worked behind Jon’s back and behind the back of the architect Robert Smirke. Jonah convinced the man to create a panopticon as some sort of ruse for balance for the fears but really just created his attempt at The Watcher’s Crown. Jonah clearly had Beholding on his side because Jon never knew.
And then it was too late. Jonah failed. And Jon was forced to kill his sire.
Jon was empty for a long time after that. He’d never been much for purpose– and he felt used. Both by his God and his maker. He didn’t want to kill humans anymore, the empathy of feeling their fear as he drank their blood became too strong. He was miserable feeding off of them now. But as an Archivist– he was bound to The Eye and had to feed somehow.
Jon moved permanently to London to re-open the Institute. He needed fear, to continue feeding the Eye that he was unfortunately still sworn to. The pull to consume the fear of others was so much more difficult to manage without Jonah but he had to continue taking statements. For a long time he worked alone but the Institute began drawing the attention of those wanting to research the paranormal.
Jon had to develop a small team that led to small departments that lead to an actual research institute. Given the fact that he didn’t often work during the day left many people never meeting him– as Jon preferred. Most individuals in this line of work knew or at least had suspicion that he was something supernatural.
In the 1970’s he met Gertrude Robinson– a vampire hunter somehow bound to a servant of the Desolation by The Web. She tracked Jon down, knowing he was one of the most powerful vampires of the 19th century but went missing after the Watcher’s Crown. Jon hired her on the spot, wanting to continue to protect himself and the institute.
Jon didn’t trust the woman to run the institute, so he kept the role. He also didn’t trust himself around live subjects for statements, so Gertrude was there to handle statements in The Archives. Their system worked for a long time, Jon could record the statements after as his way of feeding The Eye. To feed himself he lived off of a fairly pathetic diet of animal blood from a local butcher. Life wasn’t ideal but nothing ever was without Jonah.
Then, Gertrude went missing. Jon hadn’t heard from her in over a week– they didn’t meet too often but he would sometimes see her around. That following Monday he walked to her office to find dried blood on her desk. He had to report her missing. Despite really not wanting to deal with the police but didn’t have much of a choice. After that he was left without a head Archivist.
Jon thinks again about Martin Blackwood– this man is going to be nothing like Gertrude Robinson.
His train of thought is interrupted by the opening of the stairwell door. “I heard the institute was looking for a head Archivist,” a voice says.
“It was just filled this week,” Jon says, not looking up from the file.
“I see, are there any other vacancies at the institute?” The man asks. Jon sighs, unsure of why Rosie even let someone down there, if she was even still at work. When Jon finally looks up at the man, his entire body freezes.
He knows those eyes looking back. He doesn't know the body, he doesn't recognize the face or the voice.
But those eyes can't belong to anyone else.
“Jonah?”