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“Oh,” Jon breathes, burned hand reaching for Elias and - no. However many lines they’ve crossed to come to this point, perching topless on the edge of Elias’s bed, they haven’t touched yet, and whatever evidence Jon had demanded earlier that afternoon is bare before his eyes now. He doesn’t need to feel the eyes beading Elias’s clavicle to know they’re real, a matching, odd-numbered mirror of the ones that had peeled open his wrist.
He wants to, though. Not for the first time, he wallows in sick comfort that he isn’t alone in this. Whatever is happening to his body and mind, Elias knows and cares and, in this way, empathizes. Their eyes, their gifts, their god.
It’s revolting. Worse, it’s curious. Jon bares his wrist, a tit for tat offering, but Elias’s steady gaze never leaves his face. Nor has Jon glanced away from Elias’s, he realizes, throat clenching shut. He hasn’t broken their mutual stare, but he can still see so clearly the growing swarm of eyes blinking open down Elias’s sternum, and then the quiet horror pinching his own face. His own eyes. Good lord. His eyes, all of his eyes.
“Each one is a gift,” Elias says apropos of the screaming questions ping-ponging around Jon’s skull.
“It’s not,” Jon snaps and covers his forearm with his other hand. He can feel the eyes blinking against his palm, though, and pulls away with a shudder. “They’re revolting, and I need them gone if I’m going to maintain order in the archives. Melanie won’t - If she sees these -“
“Keep your sleeves pulled down. Presumably, she won’t see them under other circumstances.”
“She - I can’t,” Jon insists instead, cradling his arm as best he can without touching the eyes. “I - I need them gone. They’re spreading. Just this morning, I had the one, and now I - I - Well, they’re -“
Elias ignores Jon’s flinch when he offers his hand. “Gifts. And, although you’re unlikely to be comforted by it, they're thoroughly spread long before now. May I?”
No. The answer ought to be a resounding, snarling no. Jon lends Elias his arm, and they both look down into the swollen bulbs peering back up at them. They’re all sorts of sizes, small as a spider’s and large as a man’s, different colors and states of dilation.
“Spread where?” Jon asks with trepidation - and exhales harshly when Elias’s wandering, spindly fingers dance over his eyelids.
He knows where. Elias’s thumb presses down on the inside of Jon’s elbow and so gently parts the skin of a swollen green eye. Jon’s breath is quick and stuttering and however tightly he closes his eyes, he can still see the small, pleased smile curving Elias’s mouth - the ravenous drag of his - of his? His eyes? Elias’s eyes? They are all locked, staring up and down and Jon can’t focus, can’t tell which are his and which are ones he’s borrowed until he wrenches his arm away and flees to the adjoining bathroom.
Jon throws the door closed and slams his back against it, his breathing loud in the quiet dark. He lifts his arm and meets his own piercing eyes, each one bright in the black engulfing them. Only dim are the ones yet to hatch beneath his skin. Thousands. They jostle inside when he sinks to the tile floor.