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“But are you sure this is the only way?”
“We’ve been over this, Martin. Peter Lukas couldn’t have lied to me. Not under compulsion.”
“No, I know that. But maybe he was just… wrong?”
Jon shook his head grimly, his mouth a tight thin line.
“I checked with the… with Beholding. It backed up his story. And even if it could lie to me… I really don’t think it would. It seems to want me to Know. And this way I would. I’d know everything Elias does: all of his plans. It’s our best chance of stopping him.”
“I… I know. It’s just…”
“Yes. I’m not entirely looking forward to it either.”
Martin swallowed, and Jon would have known what he was thinking even if he wasn’t able to read his mind. They’d only just found each other again, and they didn’t even know what they were to each other yet, and now this?
“D’you… do you want me to–”
“No,” Jon said quickly, “God, no, I can’t… I don’t want anybody seeing this. Can you just… maybe stay with Basira, in case he comes back.”
He said the last part louder, for Basira’s benefit, as she rounded the corner following the trail they had left for her to find her way back to the Panopticon.
“No sign of him. Or of…” she fell silent, unable to say Daisy’s name, “Anyway. I’ll be standing guard. This was the best I could find… are you going to tell me what it’s for?”
“Trust me. You really don’t want to know,” Jon muttered, taking the large bottle of cooking oil from her, and there must have been something in his tone that made her take him seriously because she just nodded and began to retreat back out to the tunnel.
“Okay, I guess I’ll just…” Martin swallowed, “I’ll be out there if you need anything. And if you can’t go through with it… I mean, nobody would blame you. We’d find another way.”
Jon wanted to ask Martin to just, please, not think any differently of him for doing this. That the idea of Martin finding him disgusting, monstrous, was actually the main thing that might stop him being able to do this. Aside from that… well, the idea was revolting, but was it really the worst thing he’d done since working at the Institute? At least nobody would actually get hurt.
So. There he was. Jonah Magnus. Jon stepped forwards, onto the dais where the Founder of the Institute sat, so ancient and wizened he almost looked mummified. His skin was pale and shrank back on his skull, the macabre shape of which was only emphasised by his horrifically empty eye sockets. Grey curls lay in clumps, limply hanging from the man’s scalp, and the jaw hung open to reveal a dried, blackened tongue. Lukas had claimed the body was still living in some way, and Jon did believe that must be true in order for Elias to function as he did, and yet… this truly looked like a corpse. Undead at best, although it didn’t exactly seem capable of movement. God, he hoped it wasn’t, at least.
But how did something with no eyes still seem as if it was watching him? Could Elias look out of these sunken voids and see what Jon was doing?
Jon swallowed, and reached out, unwinding the silk neckcloth from the neck of Jonah Magnus and winding it firmly around those gaping eyeholes, tying it tightly over the bridge of the nose and hoping that would suffice. He was not going to undress the body any more than was absolutely necessary, so he left the frock coat and shirt in place, his fingers shaking as they began to unbutton the man’s trousers.
He needed to stop thinking of it as ‘the corpse’, and ‘the body’. He’d never be able to get through this if he kept imagining he was defiling some… cadaver. It wasn’t even completely true. If Jonah, and therefore Elias, could be killed by damaging this body then it must not be truly dead. And didn’t it look like it really had been slowly ageing over the past two centuries? There didn’t seem to be any heartbeat, any other vital signs to show life, but it wasn’t fully dead. Although, really, what meaningful difference did that make to the here and now?
The trousers came down, and a pair of linen underclothes, and Jon blinked as he regarded the man’s privates. Well that was… unexpected. From everything he’d learned about Jonah Magnus, he’d never had the impression… although he supposed he wouldn’t have, just from the man’s letters and a couple of short biographies. These things were regularly a closely guarded secret, only found out after a person’s death. Perhaps Magnus had more than one reason for wanting his body to be kept secure.
A twinge of sympathy that he firmly pushed away– he couldn’t get sidetracked now. He finished pulling the clothes off the man’s lower body, struggling a little to ease them off over the shoes, so that his legs were entirely bare. They were skeletal, the skin dry as paper and clinging close to the atrophied muscles, but the joints remained supple enough for him to manage to bend them without anything snapping– which was a small mercy. He felt like the horror of that might truly have been too much.
God, he was really doing this. Jon took a deep breath, and placed his hands on Jonah’s thighs, pushing them apart.
He gasped as an image flashed unasked for through his mind. A young, handsome man, laughing, lounging back in his seat, drinking languorously from a crystal glass of wine. His grey eyes on Jon, fixing him in place, catching him through time. Jonah.
Jon shook his head to dislodge the… memory? Projection? He needed to focus. Who knew how long they had?
The bottle of oil sloshed in his hands as he poured it over Jonah’s lap, letting it flow between his legs. Grimacing, Jon reached in and touched, massaging it emotionlessly into the not-actually-dead man’s wizened labia until it no longer felt like dry leather. It did still feel a bit like leather. He couldn’t believe he was actually about to do this. Would it even be possible? His fingers slid experimentally further until he found the tight entrance he was searching for, and fuck, tight was an understatement.
And the world tilted and he was watching Jonah bite his lip and slide his hand up the large thigh of a man with an expression like thunder, who didn’t even look in his direction as he dragged Jonah’s head to him by the curls and pushed his mouth onto his cock. Jon looked on in horrified fascination as Jonah held his breath and bobbed his head obediently, even as his eyes watered so much the tears ran down his cheeks.
“Did you give any more thought to your investment, Mordechai?” he asked finally, after he was let up for air, and the big man laughed, and pushed Jonah off the couch onto the rug.
“Hands and knees, boy. And then we’ll talk business.”
Jon shuddered, nausea making him light headed, but he’d somehow got up to the knuckle in Jonah’s cunt, rotating to spread the oil up and down the fibrous tissue. He supposed he had to be grateful that nothing had rotted away. Everything was perfectly preserved. Air dried. Like a raisin that he now had to fuck if he wanted to save the world.
More oil. Was he actually successfully loosening anything up? He automatically reached to Beholding for help, and received nothing but a sort of buzzing wordless encouragement: whatever he was doing, his patron seemed to think it was a good idea, and he didn’t know how to feel about that. He managed to wriggle a second finger inside, feeling the muscles seem to give just a little, as though they truly had become less tense, and he began to slowly piston his fingers, drizzling more oil on whenever his fingers emerged until the liquid was sloshing and dripping onto the stone. Jon wasn’t entirely the most experienced in these matters but it didn’t feel like fingering a person. It felt like trying to force two fingers into one hole of a leather glove that had begun to crack and disintegrate.
So far his entire focus had been on preparing the body– on preparing Jonah. It felt mechanical at best, and horrific at worst. He had deliberately not been looking at that skull-like face, but there was hardly anything to look at here that wasn’t truly awful. Meanwhile there was that oppressive sensation of being watched from all angles– here in the centre of the Panopticon, the core of the Watcher’s power, directly under the Eye… or so it felt.
He had barely given any thought to his own stimulation until this moment, and Christ, how was he meant to get himself hard when faced with this?
His oiled fingers fumbled with the fastening to his own trousers, opening them just enough to fish out his flaccid cock. He needed to think about something, anything else. His thoughts settled on Martin and he guiltily pushed that away. Not that, not now. Not here.
But he’d always had trouble with… getting himself there, particularly alone. Pornography had no appeal to him whatsoever and he had little interest in faceless fantasies about the body parts of strangers. He gripped his dick and stroked himself, trying to focus on the feeling of it, the slide of tight fingers around his sensitive glans, infuriatingly still completely soft. How had he not foreseen this as an issue? It was difficult enough at the best of times– and this was the absolute worst of times.
His other hand was still inside Jonah, and he viciously crammed in a third finger, feeling the tight squeezing channel around him just about accommodate it, and yet it had already loosened up so much, and wasn’t it just so fucking perfect that an almost-corpse was having an easier job getting aroused than he was?
When another vision from the past slid into his mind he went with it, desperate for anything at this point. Going with him, a silent voyeur in a not-dead man’s memories.
Him, a wicked look in those grey eyes, pulling a man along by the hand into a secluded chamber: a man with a flushed face and nervous smile who cast an anxious look around him even as he drew Jonah to him with a shaking hand, sliding his hand down the front of his breeches to find him wet and wanting.
“I’m a married man, you wicked creature,” the man hissed, even as he curled his fingers inside Jonah and mouthed hungry kisses down his neck.
“Do you fuck your wife like this, Mr Smirke?” Jonah purred, palming his cock through his breeches until the man, apparently the Robert Smirke, cursed and bent him over the nearest table and entered him in one rough thrust.
The slaps of skin against skin, the squelch of wet sex, so intense that Jon felt like he could smell their sweat through hundreds of years of distance; he felt he could feel Jonah beneath him, so warm, so alive, until he found himself reluctantly thrown back into himself, dizzy and fully hard– and his fingers had been fucking Jonah’s silent body all this time.
He should be grateful that he’d actually be able to perform, but he couldn’t help himself from feeling a wave of intense self-loathing as he removed his fingers and slicked himself with oil, lining up his cock with the desiccated remains of Jonah’s genitals and pushing in. Even with the preparation, it felt like a vice. No soft plush give of living flesh but taut, the inelastic texture of perished rubber. As he sank in deep, he felt Jonah’s pelvis creak beneath him and had to fight back the same sick feeling.
It was just to get through this, he told himself, as he deliberately imagined this shrivelled figure beneath him was the man from his visions: supple and seductive. Those dried lips were once soft and smiling, and the eyes… well, he knew the eyes all too well. They would be giving him that look Elias gave him when he was particularly pleased with Jon’s ongoing development. He groaned and gripped onto Jonah’s hips, fucking into him with rapid stabbing thrusts, not needing to concern himself about his partner’s pleasure when his partner was unable to feel a thing he did to him.
His mind grasped out for more and something, whether Beholding or Jonah Magnus’ lingering spirit, obliged. An older Jonah, hair short and impeccably styled, reclining on a bench in a garden, slowly fingering himself with his eyes fixed on a man who Jon just Knew was the same Barnabas Bennett who would one day meet his end by Jonah’s inaction, but here was seated on a blanket with paper and charcoals, carefully sketching out a nude form with one hand while the other was pressed against his prick, stroking it through layers of fabric.
Jon braced himself on the stone seat where Jonah’s body slumped down, then flopped forwards as the action of Jon’s thrusts unbalanced the old bones, and he shoved it back impatiently, purely for practicality, but his hand was around the thin throat and he squeezed as though it had breath to halt, slamming his hips into it like it was nothing but a doll for him to use, and he could hear his own pants ragged and echoing in the chamber of his god: their god. Was this the union Peter had referred to? Was this what would bring him all of Jonah’s secrets?
An old man with milky eyes, dressed in darkness, chuckling as he traced threatening fingers around Jonah’s eyes, pressing his thumbs lightly over his eyelids as Jonah stroked his cock with a confidence he didn’t really possess. But curiosity always overcame his fear, and the thirst for knowledge was worth a little risk. Jon watched Maxwell Rayner climax over Jonah’s knuckles, despite the oppressive darkness that should have hampered his sight, and felt his own orgasm building, twisting, deep in his gut.
Had Jonah fucked every single person in his acquaintance, or just those that might have been some use to him? Jon couldn’t help wondering how far that extended through the bodies he later inhabited. Was that how he’d secured an alliance with Peter Lukas?
And why had he never tried anything with Jon?
He’d lost himself too far in this fantasy if he was starting to feel jealous that Elias had never touched him like that. He needed to finish this.
Jonah’s teeth clacked and rattled as Jon pinned his body down with his, brutally pounding into him. The oil was no longer as effective as it had been at the start and the friction hurt. He wasn’t sure if he was eroding Jonah away from the inside or if it was him being rubbed raw. But it felt right. This should hurt. He felt like the veil was being painfully peeled from his eyes and he suddenly knew what was missing.
He wasn’t gentle as he ripped the silk from Jonah’s face, leaving those staring vacant sockets upturned to the roof of Smirke’s architectural triumph.
“Jonah Magnus,” Jon said, his voice laced with force, “Give yourself to me.”
For a split second he truly saw Jonah, as he had been, head thrown back and gasping with pleasure, his eyes dark and intense and fixed directly on Jon: felt the wet heat of his body as he took his cock. Jon groaned as he felt the knowledge flood through him from Jonah’s wide eyes and greedily reached out with his mind to grasp it and draw it into him, his thumbs penetrating the sockets of the skull in his hands, plunging knuckle-deep. It felt warm and fuzzy and filled him up, fizzing through his blood like he was getting drunk on it. He gasped as the image disappeared, and he slammed the remains of Jonah Magnus down on the stone: Knowing him, Knowing all, his heart leaping in excitement up into his throat, and he realised he was mid-orgasm, pumping the cold limp body beneath him with spurt after spurt of his red hot release.
He was panting as he painfully dragged himself out. Thankfully he was healing fast enough that the chafing issue was already beginning to reverse itself. Painfully, he shoved his cock back into his pants, with a long shuddering sigh.
“You know, if you wanted to do a unification ritual, you could have just asked me.”
“Elias,” Jon didn’t have it in him to be surprised to see him, just wearily turning his head to take in the sight of him lounging against a nearby pillar, “You could have just offered. I didn’t even know you were here.”
It was absolutely zero surprise that he had been watching. Jon might have been able to tell if it wasn’t for the all-encompassing presence of the Eye in here, making it very difficult to separate the gaze of Elias from that of their god.
“Oh, but you seemed to be having so much fun. Did you get everything you wanted?”
“Yes,” Jon set his jaw, “I needed the answers you wouldn’t give me. And now I have them. I know every single one of your secrets, and I know how to stop you.”
Elias smiled widely, taking a step towards him. Those cold grey eyes fixed on Jon.
“Oh, absolutely. You know me completely. But it’s more than that. You’ve joined with me. We’re one under the Eye, Jon. Do you still want to spoil all my plans?”
“Yes,” Jon growled, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember exactly why, his hand shooting out to seize Elias by the tie and dragging him closer.
“So stop me,” Elias breathed, voice hitching as Jon got him close enough to get his fingers around his throat and squeezed.
For a long moment they stared at each other, eye to eye, as Jon desperately tried to remember exactly what he had done all this for in the first place. He was furious at Elias for misleading him this entire time, for using him, for sending him into danger deliberately again and again to form him into some physical representation of fear. He truly felt he’d never hated anybody more.
His patron had told him everything he needed to know, and he could feel the power to do it pulsing through his veins. He could end him once and for all. It would be so easy. He held Elias’ fate in the palm of his hand.
“On your knees,” he said roughly, shoving Elias onto the ground.
Elias landed on all fours, and smiled, that infernal smile, crawling on his hands and knees to Jon in his pristine three piece suit, through the dirt and dust that smeared over the tailored fabric. He knelt in front of Jon, gazing up at him in silence. Like he already knew what Jon had decided. That smug prick.
Jon backhanded Elias round the face, and jerkily yanked his own trousers back open. He was already half hard again. Briefly, he thought of Martin, and really felt as though this was something that, for whatever reason, he shouldn’t be doing. Well, this barely counted. Elias was Jonah, after all. It was all the same thing as he’d already been doing.
“Go on then. Clean your own rotting pussy off my cock.”
“Jon. I was watching through your eyes the entire time. There wasn’t any rot,” Elias smirked up at him, but leaned in to wrap a hand around him without complaint, lowering his lips to kiss and lick his way along Jon’s shaft until it was fully hard and he could slide it over his tongue.
He groaned, gripping a handful of Elias’ hair to force his head down, pushing into his throat. Just like he knew Elias liked to take it. Maybe he’d even let Elias fuck him like he knew he’d always fantasised about. It was just the two of them here, in their Panopticon, in the centre of their power. It would be the perfect setting to reshape their new world.
And all around them, the Ceaseless Watcher silently approved.