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“Elias?” The name comes out hoarse and pointless when he knows exactly who it is. Can feel his presence like a phantom limb, a mind pressed just at the borders of his own. It’s a constant reassuring promise of more; an effective lure to be sure, and Jon has to concede that it is working.
“Yes Jon?” Elias comes into view and stands near the bed, looking down at him. Jon drinks in the sight of him. The suit trousers hand on his hips, unfastened for now, and he’s shirtless, showing off a body that has aged remarkably well, still strong. It isn’t lust that Jon feels looking on him, although objectively he knows Elias is attractive. But it’s something akin to it. There is a pleasure in seeing that body, in seeing Elias and Knowing him and feeling that devotion that binds them together.
“Nothing,” he mumbles, and turns his gaze away.
Elias laughs softly and grips his chin between firm fingers and turns his head back. He is very close and how can Jon do anything but meet his gaze?
“You know I don’t mind you staring Jon,” he says, and then kisses him firmly.
He’s gone again too soon, moving about the dark room with a confidence that Jon can only dream of. Jon pushes himself up into a sitting position and watches as he dresses. Skin disappears beneath his pristine white shirt and charcoal trousers, hiding away the monster beneath a veneer of respectable humanity. Shoes next; black, shiny Oxfords, and those Jon does lust over. They’re the kind that you get custom made for you, and Jon will never be able to afford them even on the Institute’s generous salary.
It’s idle observation because he can’t quite bring himself to slip out from under the duvet yet; even though Elias has seen all of him, laid him bare in every way, he’s still uncomfortable being casually naked in front of him. In front of anyone honestly. Always has been. Elias inhabits his body like it’s a fine suit, supremely confident. Jon has never quite felt like his own body fit him right, gangly and awkward and now scarred up.
It’s only when the waistcoat is brought out that Jon pays more than cursory attention. There’s something off about the garment. It doesn’t move right, too stiff and solid.
He leans towards Elias, and watches as he pulls it on. Elias undoubtedly notices, but he doesn’t say anything, just fastens it and then turns a little so Jon can see the laces all the way up the back of it. What the hell?
“You can ask,” Elias says, and Jon feels a faint flush creep up his neck. He doesn’t have to bring attention to Jon’s staring like that.
“What are you wearing?”
Elias reaches behind himself and grasps the laces in the middle of his back, and pulls them tight. “It’s a corset, Jon.”
He grasps the cross of laces at the top and pulls them as well, and Jon watches as he works his way down, fingers deftly tightening the laces, pulling it tighter around his body. It’s obvious he’s worn one before, knows exactly what he’s doing.
“But why?” Jon asks, face screwing up in confusion. “Corsets are hardly something you just wear.”
“People used to wear them every day Jon,” Elias replies, and gives the laces another sharp tug. Jon can’t tear his gaze away as the criss-cross tightens across his back.
“Yes, but that’s not now.”
Elias’s fingers are so deft as he works the corset closed. Jon tilts his head, focuses on the way his hands move with confidence born of long practice. The laces pull tight, and slowly the form is revealed. it isn’t the figure that Jon would have expected from the mention of corsets, which brings to mind women with hourglass waists and chests made prominent. But it tightens up Elias’s body, smoothing out the inevitable softness that comes with a lifetime of bureaucracy, no matter how well Elias maintained himself.
Finally he is done, and he ties the laces off before he turns back to Jon. The light falls over the lines of the corset, the bones and the cloth. It’s rather mundane in a strange way, suit material that Jon would expect to see making up a jacket, rather than a corset.
“I don’t see any reason to give up what works well,” Elias says. He turns and approaches the bed, and Jon watches the way he moves; the perfectly straight back, the control in each movement, and he thinks that Elias is beautiful.
He lets Jon rake his gaze over him, taking in the full picture, with the perfectly creased trousers and crisp white shirt, the deep green tie which seems to have an eye pattern when it catches the light in the right way. Jon has never been able to figure out if it’s really there, or if it’s his mind making him see it everywhere.
“Do I meet your approval, Archivist?” His voice is dry, with an undercurrent of teasing to it that Jon has come to appreciate.
“I suppose you’ll do,” Jon replies.
Elias chuckles and leans down to kiss him again. He has to bend at the waist to do it because of the corset, and that adds new context to the formality of his movements in the Institute. It’s another little piece of the puzzle that is Elias Bouchard that slips into place.
“Shall I see you at work?” Elias asks after he’s pulled away, leaving Jon, as ever, wanting. “Or will you join me for breakfast?”
Jon considers for a moment. The bed is very soft and very warm, but he’ll have to drag himself out eventually unless he wants to answer questions about why he’s arriving late.
“I’ll join you,” he agrees. “I’ll be downstairs soon.”
“Very good,” Elias says, and his fingers curl through Jon’s hair for a moment before he leaves. Jon watches the way that he moves, the tight lines of the corset, as he heads out of the door.
—————
It preys on his mind over the next few days which draw on into weeks. Every meeting he has with Elias, every dinner with him, every late night spent learning, feeling out the edges of this new existence and his own nature… his mind and eyes are drawn inexorably to Elias’ waist, to the spot where it curves inwards more than he’d expected, to where he knows steel bones and laces lie.
He Elias must notice. He always does after all. It’s a rare day when Jon does not feel the brush of his gaze against the back of his neck.
It doesn’t stop him looking.
“I have something for you,” Elias says one evening.
Jon is curled up in the large armchair that he’s claimed as his own in Elias’s living room. He looks up and raises an eyebrow, even as he slides his finger between the pages of the book that he’s been reading. It’s a treatise on the nature of the dread powers, something from the early 1900s. Parts of it are woefully dated, verging on laughably incorrect, but there are some bits that pique Jon’s interest, and there is always value in learning new ways of looking at the things that they serve.
“What is it?”
Elias smiles, a serpent with prey, and Jon does not want to escape its coils.
“Let me show you,” Elias says, and he beckons to Jon, who puts the book aside and stands up.
His feet sink into the carpet as he crosses the room to Elias’s side, and Elias curls an arm around him, his palm pressing against the small of his back, possessive and warm. He leads him out into the hallway, with the muted blue wallpaper, and up the stairs which creak due to the age of the house. The bedroom is the first door on the left and it is there that Elias leads him. The door closes behind them with a soft click, and Elias switches on the lights.
There’s a box on the bed, flat and square and silver, with no insignia or name on it to give away what it contains. Jon turns to give Elias a curious look.
“Why would I tell you when you can open it and find out for yourself?”
“It isn’t something from Artefact Storage is it?” Jon asks warily. That wariness doesn’t stop him approaching the bed and the box. He reaches out to touch it, but there’s nothing special about the box.
“You know it wouldn’t make a difference even if it was, Jon,” Elias says, and he sounds infuriatingly confident about that. “You’d open it anyway.:
He’s right, damn him. The bastard is always right about that, and Jon already has his fingers under the lid of the box. He flips it up and reveals sheets of neatly folded black tissue paper. He carefully unfurls the paper to reveal material. Dark charcoal cloth, and a familiar shape, metal bones running down through it.
“It’s a corset,” he says, and his fingers rub over the cloth, eyes tracing the lines of it.
“You seemed so very taken with mine,” Elias says. “I thought you might like to try one yourself.”
“I-“ Jon begins and breaks off, but his mind is racing over the thought of how it might feel, how it might look on him, those lovely lines and rigid posture, when he knows he has the tendency to slump and hunch until his back aches and his shoulders are knotted tight. “I’d like that.”
He doesn’t need to look around to know that Elias is smiling. He can feel the expression in the hand on his shoulder, the way it squeezes. “Let’s get you into it then.”
Jon strips off his jumper and drops it onto the bed. Elias’s gaze rakes over him, hard enough that it feel like a physical touch, assessing the hills and hollows of his body. “Do I need to take my shirt off?”
“No,” Elias says. “Leave it on.”
And somehow that feels more intimate than being naked.
Elias guides him over to where the full length mirror stands. Jon tends to avoid it these days; he doesn’t like looking at himself, at eyes that stare too deeply and see too much. His white shirt hangs too loosely on him, and he probably needs a haircut.
He can see Elias behind him, picking up the corset from the box and then approaching. Elias presses up against his back, a line of warmth which spreads through Jon’s skin. He reaches around Jon’s body to wrap the corset around his waist, and fastens up the clasps at the front of it. Jon can feel his hands working with each faint snap.
“It looks ridiculous,” Jon says when Elias finally pulls away. It feels odd too; still, like a starched collar and it digs into the undersides of his arms.
“I haven’t laced you up yet,” Elias replies, amused. “It will look quite different then.”
“Get on with it then,” Jon says.
It makes Elias chuckle. He presses his face against Jon’s shoulder, kisses it through the material. “Patience, Archivist.”
“I’ll be patient when I’m not waiting for you to truss me up.”
Another laugh, Elias’ breath puffing against his neck, and then the first tug at the laces comes. It startles Jon; he’d expected it to start at the middle, but it comes from the base of his spine. It’s followed by another tug, then another, and the bottom of the corset tightens around him. It presses against his stomach and his hips, the steel bones flexing to hug his figure. Or lack of figure as the case may be.
The next tug comes to the top and Jon sucks in a breath instinctively as the corset tightens around his chest. Elias taps sharply against the front of the corset. “None of that, Jon.”
“Fine,” Jon says. He slowly releases the held breath and tries to breathe normally. It’s more difficult than expected, like now that he’s considered the act of breathing, he’s forgotten how to do it.
Elias kisses the back of his neck, and then continues, tugging and pulling, fingers moving confidently over the laces. Jon’s gaze is fixed on his own image in the mirror, the way it tugs his waist in, contracts against the base of his ribs. It drags him further upright, forcing his spine straight. It lifts his shoulders too, and his head, making him look taller and broader. Maybe even more confident.
“How do you feel?” Elias asks, when the laces are tied. His hands come to rest against Jon’s waist, cupping where it’s cinched in. Gently, he turns Jon from side to side so he can see himself.
“I feel… I thought it would hurt more, that I’d struggle to breathe.”
Elias chuckles softly. “A common misconception. They can if made or laced improperly, but they’re quite comfortable when the fit is right.”
Jon hums his agreement and smooths a hand down over his form, feeling the places where steel runs perpendicular to the bone of his own ribs. He likes the feeling, the stiff material beneath his fingers and the shape that he can feel.
“I like it,” he says finally. He looks up to meet Elias’s gaze in the mirror.
Elias smiles at him, warm and satisfied. “I’m glad. Why don’t we head downstairs so you can see how it feels?”
Jon nods, and keeps his eyes on the mirror for a second longer before he tears his gaze away. He thinks that he looks beautiful.