Chapter Text
Melanie abandons the leash the moment he's over the threshold of his office, and Jon scrambles to shut the door and lean against it without even bothering to get to his feet. His hands and knees are chafed from the rough carpet, and his brain is rapidly reassembling the last hour.
His face burns remembering the festival atmosphere that spread through Research once they saw Melanie leading him in, crawling at her the end of a leash like a dog. Worse is remembering how desperate he'd been, how utterly shameless. Knowing that he had no choice, had to beg for it, doesn't make the memory any less sour.
He allows himself ten deep breaths before forcing his body off the floor, fumbling his shirt closed as he walks to the desk. Wiggling the mouse to return to what he'd been working on reveals an email from Elias. He forces himself to swallow the tears that want to rise and goes before the collar can make him, even though he's barely had a minute of respite.
Elias beams when he walks in. "Ah, Jon. Come here." He stops in front of Elias' desk, pretending he doesn't know what Elias actually meant. The other man doesn't show even a flicker of annoyance. "Over here, please, Jon."
He stops just within arm's reach of Elias, unwilling to move any closer but equally unwilling to be punished for insubordination. Elias just snags his elbow and pulls him in, entirely comfortable with manipulating Jon like a doll. Far too soon, he leans back, satisfied with his handiwork: Jon on his knees under the desk, hands cuffed behind him, shirt unbuttoned to show off his bra, knees kept at their widest possible angle thanks to a spreader bar, vibrator buzzing away in his cunt. It's no less humiliating for being a familiar predicament.
Elias undoes his trousers and frees his cock, pulling his desk chair in close so that Jon's face is in his crotch. Grudgingly, he wraps his lips around Elias' cock without being asked, automatically starting to suck.
He suspects that, on some level, this is a deliberate cruelty beyond the norm. If Elias didn't deliberately construct the scenario that way, he must know Jon is thinking it, has thought it every time he's been put here.
Elias pets his hair as he comes down Jon's throat, waiting until he's finished before saying, "Just hold it, now."
Sasha used to delight in situations like this, leaving Jon bound, usually blindfolded and gagged as well but always with at least one vibrator, for someone else to come across and use, freeing him or putting him back the way they found him at their leisure. It was the very first thing she did to him after the move to the Archives; he knows that that memory is real.
He had thought that the change after Prentiss was in deference to his injuries. Being bound was painful, both for the scabbing skin that it pulled and chafed and the deeper damage to his muscles, no longer quite as able to hold positions for an extended period. Kneeling on a cushion under her desk keeping her pussy warm with his mouth was a comparatively comfortable situation.
Elias didn't start having Jon come up to warm his cock until after he came back to the Institute after being on the run. Jon's fairly sure he knows Elias' cruelty well enough to know that the fact his new favorite way to use Jon combines the approach of both the real and replacement Sasha is no coincidence.
A crowd of people comes into Elias' office, and it takes Jon a minute to realize that it's all the other department heads. He realizes abruptly that he hasn't received a notification for this month's interdepartmental meeting. He's sure they all know exactly where he is, and remaining silent against the ongoing onslaught of the vibrator becomes a matter of more than whatever scraps of dignity he can summon.
If he's silent, there's plausible deniability that he isn't there, and no one will ruin the game by saying otherwise. If he makes a sound, the other department heads will "discover" him, and the meeting will screech to a halt until they've all taken a turn using him. Once he's back under Elias' desk and the meeting resumes, the game begins again.
He leans forward, hoping that every extra millimeter he can take down his throat makes him that much less likely to be heard, and Elias starts to stroke his hair while he starts the meeting, seemingly unaffected.
-
He hears the faint friendly bickering in the next aisle before he sees them, but initially he's just glad that whoever it is, they might be too occupied with each other to notice him. He's tired; Elias' egg vibrator has been his constant companion for a week and a half and he's hardly sleeping. He knows it must have some sort of remote control, because at night it quiets barely enough that he's more or less able to sleep, and wakes up with soaked pants. It isn't good sleep, though, and every time he has to ask Elias to change the batteries he sets it to a different rhythm. Right now long unbroken periods of vibration are occasionally interrupted by a minute or two of short, sharp pulses, and it makes him want to bang his head against the wall. So he isn't at his best, which is what he blames for his failure to realize that that isn't just any soft bantering, it's Basira and Daisy's soft bantering, until he's already partway down the aisle.
They're at the other end, and thus far too absorbed in each other to notice him. He starts to edge back to the end of the aisle, moving as slow as he can, feeling frozen like a rabbit with a hawk overhead but knowing it's too dangerous to remain, and pretending to examine the books on the shelf he came down this aisle for. He can come back; he'd rather hide somewhere else in the library and deal with whoever might find him than see what Basira and Daisy would do to him.
They may not be able to take their frustrations out on Elias, but the times when he's failed to avoid them have shown that they consider him a perfectly acceptable stand-in.
"Have you seen a step stool?" Basira asks. He knows if they know- or suspect- that he's been eavesdropping it'll just be worse, but he needs to know if they've noticed him. Or, like now, he needs to know to move faster, because they'll be looking his way.
He's almost made it past the end of the shelf to safety when Daisy says, "Oi, Sims. C'mere."
He's sure they can see the way his heart sinks as his body turns on a dime and walks toward them, his gaze fixed on his shoes.
As soon as she can, Daisy grabs his shoulders and steers him into the place she wants. "Get down on all fours."
He does, of course, he has no choice, but speaking up to ask what the hell they're doing is looking more and more appealing. He keeps his eyes forward, not looking at either of them, and just as his mouth opens to ask what she's playing at Daisy says, "Don't move." He freezes with his mouth slightly agape, an expression that on him is exclusively categorized as "whorish" (Martin's habitual favorite) and assorted synonyms. Daisy adjusts him slightly, bending his arms and straightening the bow of his spine so his back is parallel to the floor.
"Daisy," Basira says, technically chiding but mostly sounding deeply fond.
"You wanted a step stool. Here you go."
He's sure even with his hair falling forward and obscuring his face somewhat they can see him going red. Whatever nonverbal conversation follows, Basira is evidently convinced. The foot on his back catches a few strands of hair painfully, and he's sure she's getting footprints on the back of his shirt.
He waits expectantly to be told he's allowed to move again. Basira steps off, but no such permission comes. Of course not. Daisy hates him.
For a while, he's just a silent set piece as they go back to chatting and teasing. He's almost starting to hope they've forgotten him, and he'll be left embarrassed and uncomfortable for someone else to find, but also as unharmed as anyone ever leaves him. But Basira finds another book on a high shelf- does she? Jon's a bit shorter than her, and he doesn't think he's ever had such a high percentage of his reading list turn out to be shelved out of reach without taking an entire section down- and Daisy gallantly retraces their steps and picks Jon up. The collar holds him perfectly stiff despite the arm around his middle. He really does feel like he's just a piece of the furniture.
Basira is evidently more confident, either in what they're doing or in Jon's structural integrity, because this time she puts both feet squarely on his back rather that letting one hover behind her ready to catch her if she falls.
After that the game is cemented, Daisy toting him along as they work their way through the library. He's a step stool, a table for Basira's growing stack of tomes, a seat when Daisy gets tired of standing. Anything but a person.
Basira is sitting on his back, toying absently with his skirt while she takes a break. Flipping it back down, her hand grazes against his panties, and she makes a disgusted sound.
"What?" Daisy asks.
Basira wipes her hand down the side of his ribcage. "He's soaking."
Of course he is! He knows word of the vibrator has made the full rounds of the Institute gossip mill. He's never anything else these days, entirely exceeding previous baselines.
Apparently the Institute gossip mill isn't good enough for Detective Tonner's finely honed investigative instincts, though, because she walks over to see. She laughs, and flicks a finger against the wet spot that takes up the entire gusset of his panties. With his mouth still frozen open, he can't do anything to muffle the sound that elicits.
Daisy tuts. "This is a library, Sims." Then, to Basira, she adds, "Get his tie off."
Basira doesn't even bother to ask why or stop sitting on him, just leans over and starts fiddling at his tie. He doesn't even wear ties much anymore, for the same reason he doesn't wear belts, but of course he would don it on autopilot the one day he runs into these two all alone. He couldn't even take it off and hide it away- by the time he realized people had already seen it wearing it, and a hidden tie is even more likely to lead to something regrettable. The worst thing an Indent can have is something they're trying to keep patrons from doing.
All thoughts of the tie are immediately banished when he hears the distinctive sound of someone flicking a knife open. All at once he isn't kneeling on the floor of the Institute's library, he's pinned to a tree in the woods and he knows he's going to die.
He probably makes more noises as he struggles to breath until he's out of the momentary flashback, but neither woman comments. A finger lifts up the side of his waistband and the cool metal of the knife rests against his hip.
Daisy's knife must be far sharper than his little pocket knife was, because it makes quick work of first that side, then the other, rapidly reducing the panties to so much scrap fabric, his cunt bared to anyone who cares to look.
Daisy walks around to squat in front of his face, laying the still-open knife on the floor. He couldn't escape for all the money in the world, for his own life, but his jaw opens the rest of the way easily under her touch. He gags as the panties are stuffed, gusset first, into his mouth, coating his tongue in the taste of his own fluids. Daisy shifts his jaw very slightly more closed, takes the tie from Basira, and ties it around his mouth, holding the makeshift gag in place. She smirks and pats his head condescendingly. "Slut."
They carry him around and browse a while longer before Basira is finally finished and they leave him, frozen, gagged, cunt twitching at the cool air and the insistent motion of the vibrator, for the next person to find.
-
Elias has meetings all afternoon. It isn't so bad; Jon only loses the game once, when Elias catches him off guard by grinding the toe of his impeccably shiny shoe hard into Jon's crotch. It's during a one on one, at least, so he only has to be used by one person- he's spun around and bent over the desk before he can see their face, and Elias' meetings are so boring he has no idea who it is- and then lick the smudge of his slick off of Elias' shoe before he's set back into place.
He's done this enough times by now that he knows the sounds of Elias packing up for the day, and he knows that it doesn't mean his own workday is finished.
Elias could simply retract the order to hold his cock without sucking and Jon would have no choice but to suck cock like it's his job (which, he supposes, it is). That was for the beginning of the session, though. He knows the moment Elias finishes putting things away, because the hand that's been absently playing with his hair all afternoon becomes a fist, pulling his head back with a pop as Elias shoves his chair back from the desk so he'll have enough room to maneuver.
Jon keeps his mouth open, because closing it would anger Elias, which he tries to do as little as possible and only when really, truly, deeply necessary. He can tell from Elias' smirk that he's thinking about how slutty it makes Jon look, still panting and drooling for cock after hours warming his boss's.
Then the grip on his hair drives him forward with brain-rattling force and all Jon can think about is keeping his jaw loose and trying not to sprain something or gag as he's pulled up and down Elias' length, fucking his throat hard. Jon's input isn't needed or wanted, this time. He's here to be a human fleshlight, nothing more.
Elias already made Jon swallow his cum today, so this time he pulls out just before he finishes. Jon knows his job, keeps his mouth open, tongue hanging partially out, and catches cum all across his face.
Elias doesn't even say anything afterward, doesn't gloat or degrade Jon any more. He just quickly undoes all of Jon's binds and tosses a last order over his shoulder as he walks out the door and Jon is trying to stand on numb legs: "Hurry home."
He knows why, of course. Elias wants him to start his commute as quickly as possible because he isn't allowed to tidy up, and he likes making Jon ride the Tube with fresh cum still dripping down his face.
-
As exhausting and terrifying as traveling has been, it's been a relief, too. He spent a single afternoon in the Pu Songling Research Centre (he might've spent more, but Elias, the bastard, had given him a truly unwelcome surprise and set his collar to turn on whenever he visited a facility belonging to their academic partners/eldritch allies) and managed to avoid the Usher Foundation almost entirely. He's worn trousers for more days in a row on this trip than he has since he was staying with Georgie. He's worn trousers while working for longer than he has since becoming the Archivist.
So all in all, it's a deeply unpleasant reminder when he tells the ghost of Gerard Keay that he's the Archivist and the other man's eyes immediately flick to the collar with a faint expression of doubt.
His stomach sinks, and he thinks he might actually feel his heart break. He'd... he'd liked Gerard. At least as much as you can like someone you've only heard about secondhand. He'd admired him. The Gerard that pops up in statements is exactly the sort of person he'd spent his childhood wishing had found him with A Guest for Mr Spider instead of his bully, back when he was naive enough to think that there was someone out there who really could get rid of monsters instead of just diverting them. "Our Gerard" from the statements did beat up one of Jon's monsters, chased Leitner back into his warren of tunnels with his tail between his legs.
"He- he- Elias- he- it was the same contract. He- it was hidden in the papers I signed when I was promoted," he stammers, desperate to gain back any shred of respect in Gerard's eyes. His face must be flaming. His throat is too tight to explain any further.
Gerard's eyes dart back up, expression frozen. "Bastard," he spits after a moment. He plops down on the ground and looks up expectantly at Jon. Of course he does; he expects exactly what other people expect of Indents: obedience. Why wouldn't he?
Jon does sit, because he needs to convince Gerard to talk to him and besides that it's awkward to talk to someone that's sitting on the floor while you stand. At the very least, as the attempt at a cigarette showed, Gerard isn't corporeal enough to do anything more than sitting, and the collar is off, so he can't be forced to do anything to himself for Gerard's amusement.
When Jon is settled across from Gerard, the other man ducks his head, staring down at his lap as he slowly and deliberately begins to unwind the gauzy black scarf around his neck.
Jon's breath freezes in his lungs.
Jon had taken the scarf to be as unremarkable an accessory as Gerard's fingerless gloves.
When he sets the scarf aside Gerard's shoulders hunch in like he's still trying to hide the collar. "My mum made me sign the papers as soon as I turned eighteen."
He glances at Jon from under his lashes, gauging his response, and must see the confusion there. One of the few things that Indent collars won't force the wearer to do is sign legal documents, including a contract for indenture. On top of that, you can't hold a blood relative's indenture until you're far more distantly related than mother and son.
"She used a Leitner. It wasn't convenient for prolonged use, so she got someone to do up the papers somehow; bribed them, probably, but knowing her she could have just threatened them. She mainly wanted to keep me under her thumb, so she wasn't very careful about the details."
"I'm sorry," Jon says. It's completely inadequate, he's extremely aware of that, but he doesn't know what else to say. What is there to say?
Gerard shrugs. "It wasn't so bad. I'm sure you have it worse; took her years before she realized she could use me to butter up business partners, and even that wasn't very often. It was more inconvenient than anything, the parameters aren't very well defined so sometimes it goes on at random in public. Or it did, I guess. When I was alive."
"It doesn't matter who has it worse," Jon says, and he means it. At least he got time to be an adult, to find out who he was before people started dictating that for him.
Gerard shrugs again. "If you say so... You following in Gertrude's footsteps?"
And even though Gerard seems as reluctant to share anything useful as he was at the beginning of the conversation, Jon can't help but think that while it may not avert the end of the world, this was enough for him to have gained more than he'd ever thought to hope from the interaction.
-
Finally, after desperately pretending not to notice the looks and snickers he received on the train, Jon makes it through his own door and can finally feel somewhat safe.
People expect that an Indent's life must be all about sex. It is, but not for the reasons they think. Jon doesn't spend his off hours daydreaming about when he gets to start all over again, but he does spend much of them preparing.
The first stop is the loo. He strips as fast as he can, and spends a minute at the sink scrubbing hard with his hands at the worst stains, to be dangled over the curtain rail to drip dry once he's clean. Then, blessedly, the shower, and scrubbing at his skin like he wants to take it off (but not too hard; if he comes in chafed from this Elias will do something nasty. One week of being barred from cleaning up even at home was more than enough, thank you. He hadn't been able to stomach keeping the sheets and pillow cases he slept on through it all, even after putting them through the wash three times, and he'd really liked that set. They were soft). He thought of the detachable shower head as, if anything, a negative when he got the flat, but he's grateful for it now. It means he can hold it between his legs without having to touch the mess there, for as long as the collar lets him. It takes several goes, because the water pressure is decent enough to edge his permanently-sensitive body towards a prohibited at-home orgasm rather quickly.
When he feels clean and vaguely human again, he changes into one of the sets of pajamas that he keeps strictly separate from anything remotely related to his indenture. His pajamas are the only things he owns that don't have memories of work, or of being leered at while he tries to live his off duty life, attached.
Dinner is either a home-cooked meal or cereal, depending on how tired he is. He doesn't get takeout anymore. Going in person gets him stared at, and he's always afraid that someone will put something nasty in his food because they think it would be funny to feed to a walking sex toy. Delivery was abandoned after he had to use his entire body weight to shut the door against a driver that saw his collar and didn't understand or didn't care that the lights being out meant he was off-limits and categorically unwilling to tip anything but cash. Today is a cereal day.
He's too tired after dinner to do anything but go to bed. First he lays out tomorrow's outfit: short, black pleated skirt, white button-down, black thigh highs, his loafers, turquoise bra and panties. Today's pale blue bra, the only color that's permitted under Elias' "no neutral colors" rule and doesn't show through half of his shirts, should be able to be paired to one of the other pairs of matching panties he owns, but between playing ash tray, the blood he'd gotten on it after Tim's beating, and a wide assortment of cum stains from Melanie's little tour around Research it'll have to go in the wash days early. They usually do.
The dirty bra gets dotted over with stain remover; if it gets too ratty-looking Elias will order him not to wear it again and probably make him spend the day completely topless, because if he won't wear decent clothes to work he doesn't deserve any. He usually throws out the offending article himself, so Jon can't even keep them; when he removes them from rotation himself he's gotten decent at putting his grandmother's sewing lessons to work and Frankensteining suitable parts from multiple old bras of the same color and design into a single acceptable bra.
People figure that the stipend legally required to be paid by the owner of an Indent's contract- his was bundled with the raise from his promotion- is more than enough for a group of people who are viewed as already receiving plenty of compensation of a type they want more than money anyway. In actuality, every bit of that stipend and more than a little of the rest of his paycheck goes to expenses directly caused by his indenture: the lingerie sets he had to buy when he was collared, then again after the milking machine, and again any time Elias confiscates or a patron ruins one; replacements for the longer skirts a patron took a scissor to that he can't re-hem, and the trousers and panties ruined the same way; buttons, thread, and occasionally entire new articles when someone tears his clothes off forcefully enough to start damaging things; bleach pens for stains and extra trips to the laundromat because he can't stand to have too many items in the flat that give off the stink of sex; fresh ingredients if he ever wants a hot dinner, since takeout isn't safe; the multiple pregnancy tests he buys and uses religiously on the first of every month regardless of whether his period's come, because if his IUD fails he needs to know and take care of it before Elias can order him not to; the increase in shampoo and conditioner because of the hair Elias won't let him cut off; regularly having all of his body hair waxed off, extra expensive because all of it grows too dark and thick for Elias' tastes, not just his legs, underarms, and groin; first aid supplies.
People feel similarly, though less passionately, about the extra sick days he's required to have available to him. Too many people get up close and extremely personal with any one Indent. If he went to work contagious most of the Institute would catch it.
He was always something of an insomniac, and the increase in exhaustion doesn't sufficiently counterbalance the extra difficulty turning his brain off because between the effects of the milking machine, the piercings, and pure habit. Lying in bed with nothing to distract him, he's painfully aware of how wet he still is, and how little he's allowed to do anything about it. Eventually, finally, he's asleep.
-
Several of the visitors to the Archivist's dreams hurl insults at him, mocking the collar he wears, even now, venting their fear and anger. Despite this, it's peaceful, in a way; most of them are unable to free themselves from their respective torments enough to act on his body the way they might in the waking world, the way several of them have.
Jude Perry could bar the Archivist if she wanted. She could melt him away and he would never return. She doesn't.
She missed an opportunity; she was in a hurry and already annoyed at his questions. She burned him, sure, but she didn't get to play with him the way she'd like to. Indents are always so susceptible to the Lightless Flame.
In the dream she can turn the tables, turn him from the observer of so many other tortures to the tortured observed, as she burns away his clothes and walks heated fingers up and down his body, systematically singes bits and pieces of him, positioning him so that she can drip her fingertips directly into his cunt. Every place the wax touches draws another kind of heat into his body. Every burn makes his body ever more desperate to be touched, and every touch is agony.
He's just as paralyzed here as in any other dream; he can't even scream. She can see his terror and pain and despair in all those eyes, though.
The Archivist has other dreams to visit, but the Watcher only needs a show. It holds him just as immobile here as elsewhere. He can't even scream.
He can't even scream. He can cry, though, fat drops trailing salt from every eye over his ruined flesh.
An ordinary nightmare like this would send him jolting into consciousness, to pant and rock and eventually crawl out of bed to soothe his nerves with a mug of tea, tamping down the lingering fear by laughing at himself. The Watcher holds him all night.