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“Well.” There's a drone to its voice, echoed by the hundreds. “How unfortunate for you. To lose.”
“Yes,” Elias says, leaning in his desk chair and trying to resist the urge to swat at the wasps and hornets and bees lazily crawling over every surface. A particularly large on lands just above Elias' ear, and the buzzing is almost deafening now. “Much more efficient them worms.”
“I've found that to be true.” The Hive brushes some of them off of the corner of Elias' desk, where it sits itself down and even has the audacity to cross its legs and lean. “I do have a few of them too. They've missed you.”
Elias stares where the Hive twists his wrist and shows the cluster of holes filled with the all too familiar filth Jane Prentiss brought into his Archives all those months ago.
“Ah.” He says, and the hornet on his ear crawls over the skin of his cheek, tiny legs brushing the edges of his mouth.
“You understand, we couldn't just let that stand.” The worms move slow, tentative almost, before the man that used to be Jon Sims coaxes them out with a sweet little noise and curl of his thin fingers. They writhe on his desk before finding purpose, seemingly. “After you shot your last archivist, we all thought you'd finally be content to do what you're meant to.”
“Watch-” The hornet's legs press into his mouth and Elias keeps it open.
“You're such a good watcher, aren't you?” The Hive closes the distance between them and plucks the hornet away, setting it to his own lips and letting Elias watch it crawl down Jon's throat. “But then the Flesh Hive got hurt. Why did it get hurt, Watcher?”
“Spiral intervention.” There are more legs on him, more wings beating so fast his skin heats under them.
“And why was the Spiral in any state to intervene in the first place, do remind me?” Elias doesn't say anything. He stares at the Hive, really stares and tries to coax out anything from him, anything other than birth and death by the hundreds in instances, anything other than filth and legs and heat, and finds nothing. “That's rude.”
“You felt that?” Curiosity disgustingly obvious.
“Yes. So many times in one singular moment” A wasp, long and colorful wasp crawls out from the Hive's mouth now, different from the earlier hornet. “Would you like me to return the favor?”
It crawls along Jon's fingers and settles on the back of his hand.
He knows, like he knows everything else, that that bug is for him. The other one wasn't strong enough to infect something like him properly. This one, with it's glistening carapace is.
Elias shakes his head, and Jon moves closer until he's sitting directly in front of him, and Elias has nowhere to run.
“Don't tell me you're not... curious.” Jon cups Elias's face with a porous hand and the wasp scuttles just a few millimeters from his left eye. “What it's like to be infested? What it's like to be a home? Jane wanted to teach your Archivist, but now that I'm sitting here, I think I might want to teach you.”
The wasp nudges at his lips and Elias feels it rattle with the threat of an agonizing sting.
“I-” That's enough, and he feels its wings graze the roof of his mouth.
“Easy.” The Hive says. “Let them in.”
“Them?” The sharp bite of the worms screwing their way into his ankle. He grits his teeth to try and stop the scream. He's sure even more bugs would pour their way into his throat if they did.
“It only hurts at first,” Sims tells him, hands occupied with coaxing a cluster of bees out of his ear. “Then their song gets so loud, so beautiful, you can do so little other than sing along. Wouldn't you love to sing, Watcher?”
Elias tries to shake his head, and Jon just nods, fingers lifting two wasps to Elias' mouth again. When he doesn't open them, the Hive's thumbs push his lips open.
“Try and think of the positives, Watcher.” It says.
Elias thinks he's maybe crying, but it's so hard to tell whats water and whats feather light and multi-winged.
“Think of all your new eyes.”