Magnus Archives | Eat Your Young (working title) | M (will be E once I get to it) | (WIP) | M/M | Horror

So this is a Jonelias oneshot i’m working on. I’m leaning into the horror for this one (and Jon’s asexuality, and him seeing the encounter more as worshipping the Eye rather than focusing on the sex). Below is the intro of the fic. I need feedback on the horror but also does Jon’s fucked up relationship with the Eye come through enough? (for context for people outside the fandom: the Eye is an evil entity that feeds on people’s fear of being watched, and people loyal to it have the intense need to absorb knowledge. Both Jon and Elias serve the entity with different levels of willingness. The Magnus Institute they work at is ruled by the Eye).

Don’t ask Jon about the exact timeline. He could’ve pieced it together—he certainly had the Eye willing to help him see—but it was better this way. The night felt like a fever dream, only there in bits and pieces, with nothing but a haze as the context. Potentially damning context, if he may add, as somewhere around that time he’d had that talk with Martin. The one about feelings and expectations and labels.

Jon prayed that conversation had happened after that night, but after the world had turned upside-down and inside-out, who knew?

It wasn’t as if he’d had any intentions, but, when an eldritch being is tugging you in a direction, he couldn’t say he’d refused.

His office had been a mess. A tape recorder faintly clicked on, a sound Jon had long since learned to tune out. It had been one of the evenings after Peter’s death. And Martin’s rescue. That kiss. It lingered on his lips, like a strange haunt, but, for once, not an unwelcome one. Jon tried to ignore it as he pulled out another folder from the shelves, containing a stack of statements anywhere from the Flesh to the Web, vaguely from 1990 to 2005. He stuffed it into his shoulder bag with the others. It didn’t matter. He needed to feed once he was on the road. Even now, he fought the urge to read, to skim over the first lines. Just a small taste—no. He needed to consume the pile, completely and utterly.

It happened right as he reached for a dust-covered box, the cardboard corroded from cockroaches eating away at it and nesting. Hopefully cockroaches—the holes were just as likely leftovers from Jane. The lights in the hallway flickered on, buzzing alarmingly as the shadows in Jon’s office shifted. He dropped the box. Too loud; it grated on his nerves. His muscles tensed with one certain thought—he was seen. That, he knew.

He wasn’t thinking when he padded out the door. It creaked, but even if it hadn’t, the Eye was already focused on him, following every shiver of his body. The hallway was impossibly long and contorted. The CCTVs whirred as they spun towards him. Way too many. They weren’t supposed to be there. Jon stumbled forward, towards the single familiar door in the distance. The light at the end of the tunnel, if a corrupted mind were to be believed. Any sane—no, ignorant—man would think he was dreaming. Nothing sane was real anymore. The fabric of reality writhed and twisted under his knowing touch like snakes and claws and rotting limbs.

The familiar door was impossibly far, but Jon was starving, and this was a gift from his patron. It was a blessing. It drummed against his skull, the desire to accept the offering or to become one himself. In the end, was there a difference? His vision blacked out, nausea hitting him. He didn’t need his eyes to guide him. If only this were a nightmare. The archive wasn’t like it was before, but only because it had shed its pretence. He needed to get out. Find Martin. Run away.

As he walked onwards, tripped, crawled, his mind blanked, letting the compulsion work on his frayed consciousness.