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jowritesthingss · 4 years ago

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A Fondness for Rabbits

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Pairing(s): n/a

Rating: Teen (for swearing)

Content Warning(s): rabbits, food/drink, mild(ish) swearing, not!Sasha, eldritch beings, spoilers through late s2 / early s3-ish

Length: 3,538 words

Brief Summary: Jon isn’t particularly keen on the Archive’s new rabbit mascot. (It would help if you read this first! But it isn’t required.)

AO3 link in reblogs bc Tumblr is annoying!

If he could, Jonathan Sims would absolutely be firing one Timothy Stoker right about now.

Unfortunately, it seems that for the moment, the both of them are stuck in some sort of limbo, working down there in the Archives.

Them and that damned rabbit Tim brought in to work.

Jon is certain, absolutely certain, that Tim only brought the thing into the Archives to bother him. It happened all too soon after they had their falling out and discovered that none of them can physically quit; there’s no way that it isn’t a coincidence.

Tim swears up and down that it’s only at the Institute because his flat doesn’t allow animals, and that it’ll be gone as soon as he can find a permanent home for it, but naturally Jon is suspicious—and rightfully so, he thinks. Perhaps Tim isn’t the one who murdered Gertrude, but that doesn’t free him from all suspicions. Jon still doesn’t know why he applied to work at the Magnus Institute. For all he knows, the rabbit could be the next step in some horrid plan of some sort.

Regardless of any possible ulterior motives, Jon knows one thing for certain—he does not want this animal in his Archives. He wants it gone, and he wants it gone yesterday.

He stresses as such to a seemingly uncaring Tim: “The moment you find it a different home, it goes. The moment.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Tim agrees placidly, and Jon huffs at that, satisfied enough for the moment.

Oh, but then Martin comes in, and Jon is tasked with the lovely job of explaining to Martin why Tim’s rabbit is allowed to stay when his stray dog wasn’t. And hell, Jon regrets this already.

He stares into the beady red eyes of the rabbit as it slowly, contemplatively munches hay in a corner of the break room. Well.

There’s nothing to do but avoid the break room from then on, yes?

...No. Unfortunately.

As the last person to leave at night, and the first person to get in to the Archives in the morning, Jon becomes the reluctant caretaker to the ridiculously furry animal that has begun to take over his Archives and win over his assistants.

Tim wheedles him solidly for a day, popping in at random times until Jon finally agrees to feed the rabbit every morning when he arrives and every night before he leaves. And Jon would say no, he really would, if it weren’t for Martin, annoying oaf he is with his big pleading doe eyes and his irritatingly effective pout. Jon feels the silent judgement radiating off of him every time he pops in bearing tea.

Of course, even if he can’t avoid the animal in entirety, Jon still tries to make his trips in to care for the thing as quick as possible.

He times it once out of curiosity and boredom while he waits for his laptop to finish a surprise update—he’s managed to get the whole routine down in under five minutes. Considering the routine consists of giving it hay, getting it a scoop of pellets, tossing it lettuce from the fridge, refilling its water, and tidying the litter box, he feels almost a bit proud.

It’s somewhat relieving, honestly, having something normal to express distaste at in between investigating his coworkers on possible murder charges and fighting weird worm people and stabby hand people and other supernatural stuff. It’s kind of nice, actually.

Jon’s not too sure he likes the way the rabbit looks at him, though. It’s a rabbit—it’s not like it’s all that smart, right? But something about it just seems so...so knowing. So otherworldly.

He’ll get the routine down to three minutes, Jon resolves. Anything to avoid the rabbit’s unblinking gaze.

The rabbit becomes Jon Jr, and Jon (now apparently Jon Sr—which, don’t get him started on that bit) becomes irritated. Well, even more irritated than he generally always is nowadays.

And yet...the rabbit seems to sense that it has been named after Jon, almost. It seems to take particular fascination with him, and he cannot for the life of him figure out why.

Whenever Jon is in the break room, the thing follows him everywhere, demanding pets and snuggles and gently nibbling at the tips of his fingers if he lets them drop low enough. So he goes into the break room less and less, expecting for it to lose interest in him or hopefully forget about or ignore him the few moments he does pop in—but the rabbit seems to become even more fiercely attached.

He knows the creature isn’t like this with the others. The rabbit doesn’t particularly like Sasha—it ignores her most of the time—and it outright bit Elias the one time he chanced in on it. It seems to like Tim and Martin a fair amount, but the moment Jon walks through the doorway it bounds over, refusing to leave his side and even trying to follow him out of the break room on a smattering of occasions.

Staring into those empty, beady red eyes, Jon could swear there is something ancient and eternal and knowing. But Tim refuses to get rid of the thing, and Martin would cry, and Sasha or Elias or probably all of them would corner him and lecture him unnecessarily about being too paranoid yet again.

Although, he could always take it to an animal shelter. The rabbit very literally eats into the Archive’s budget—the thing eats an absurdly large amount of hay. Then Martin keeps buying toys for it instead of getting the office supplies Jon has asked for just about twenty times (“what if he gets bored in there, Jon? did you know rabbits can get depression? I can’t let him get depression!”), and Tim’s determined to fatten it up with copious amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables (“only the best organics for my furred son!”).

He’s certain that he could logic it out—that if he reasoned and fought it, Elias would nod neutrally and let him get rid of it. Elias, for all he is suspect in Gertrude’s murder, seems to be the only one with a modicum of sense left in the place. Surely he’ll be on Jon’s side in this.

But when he casually asks Elias his thoughts on the matter, the man adopts an oddly amused expression and says he has no objection to an animal to emotionally support the Archives team (“especially considering the incident involving Jane Prentiss, Jon, it really might help boost employee morale”).

Jon is fairly certain that this is Elias’ stance only so that he doesn’t have to be held accountable for providing his traumatized employees with actual therapeutic aid, but he doesn’t mention it. Instead he angrily bites his tongue and excuses himself from Elias’ office before he says something stupid.

As he goes back down to the Archives and continues about his day, Jon puzzles through his predicament.

The shelter is still sounding like his best option, his coworkers’ opinions be damned. He’s always the last to leave at night and the first to arrive in the morning...perhaps he could wait until everyone is gone and take it to a shelter? Or maybe he could ask around the other departments to see if anyone needs a pet or—well, or snake food.

Although...some very small part of Jon hesitates at the thought of turning Jon Jr over to Artifact Storage or a snake or anything of the sort.

The rabbit seems almost scarily in tune with his emotions—perhaps more in tune than Jon himself—and it doesn’t seem to mean him any harm. Certainly it hasn’t attacked him with parasitic worms or stabbed him with ridiculously long, sharp fingers yet or anything like that. And, well, what could it even do if it did intend harm? Bite him? Pee on his shoes? Steal his lunch?

...Speaking of lunch, Martin keeps spilling chicken from his wrap on his pants. Jon doesn’t have the heart to tell him that the mayonnaise has also started to escape.

Abruptly, Jon stands up from the couch, throwing away his napkin and shooing the rabbit away with a foot as he wriggles his way out of the door to the break room.

It has to be because they named it after him, Jon concludes. That’s why he’s starting to get attached. That must have been their plan, and dammit, it’s working.

He’ll give Tim an ultimatum, Jon ultimately decides as he goes back to his office. Tim doesn’t have to know what Elias thinks about the situation. And he did promise that the rabbit would go when he found it a home. So either Tim finds the rabbit a home by this Friday, or it goes out to a local shelter.

...The rabbit has a home by Friday: Jon’s.

Jon can pinpoint exactly when it happens.

He works himself into a panic when Basira Hussein quits the police force, and he loses any chance he might’ve had at getting the rest of Gertrude’s tapes. And at this point his panic (and his bad luck streak) really isn’t all that surprising, but something about this one particular panic is bad. Really bad.

It’s late at night, and everyone has gone home (except perhaps Elias; Jon has no idea what Elias’ hours look like). Since there’s no one else there to notice him appearing even more frazzled than usual, Jon chances out of his office and into the break room for a glass of water. It ought help his scratchy throat and his shaking limbs and his buzzing head.

Of course, he’s forgotten about the rabbit entirely.

Upon shoving the door open and flicking on the light switch, Jon nearly jumps out of his skin to see the rather unpleasant reminder of the Archives’ pesky little visitor. It’s sitting directly in front of the door, staring expectantly up at him, almost as if it’s been waiting for him.

Unnerving as ‘Jon Jr’ is, the actual Jon’s exhaustion and want for water outweighs his suspicions in the given moment, so he continues forward, shuffling into the break room and very nearly staggering towards the counter.

Once he’s managed to get a cup down from the cupboard, Jon fills it with trembling hands, dropping it into the sink once and nearly dropping it across the counter once too. He turns around and nearly trips on Jon Jr, sloshing even more water out of his cup.

Despite being rained on, though, the rabbit doesn’t seem all that put out; rather, it follows him over to the break room couch, waiting almost patiently for him to sit down and get situated before it hops up and unceremoniously deposits itself in his lap.

“What?” he manages to sourly mutter at it, but he can’t muster up the energy to shoo the thing off of his lap.

So Jon sits there, in silence, drinking his water and attempting to ignore the rabbit.

His attempt does not go well. A few minutes into the stillness, the rabbit shifts, moving to face Jon. It presses its nose towards his torso, wiggling its way under the hem of Jon’s rumpled collared shirt.

Choking on a particularly large gulp of water, Jon makes a startled noise as the rabbit’s wet nose comes into contact with his bare skin.

Coughing violently, Jon tries to flinch away, falling sideways on the couch. His cup flies out of his hands—thank god it’s one of the plastic ones—and water splatters everywhere.

However, the rabbit doesn’t seem to be deterred by the sudden motion and his attempt to get away. It simply follows him, weaseling its way from his lap up towards his face. Its bright red-eyed stare burns into Jon.

Jon flinches as the thing looms in front of his face, sucking in a desperate breath. Oh, god. There’s no one for him to call out to, no help to be had. Oh, god. Is it truly some sort of—of monster—after all? Is this it? Is he about to die?

The rabbit presses forward...

...and begins to lick his nose.

As Jon lies there, frozen into some sort of terrified shock, a vague part of his mind recalls a memory of the rabbits that his grandmother’s neighbor had kept, all those decades ago. Licking someone is a rabbit’s way of kissing them, and licking someone’s nose...that’s one of the ultimate signs of love, isn’t it?

The rabbit continues to lick his nose—nothing more, nothing less. No biting, no clawing, no attacking. Just licks. Just kisses. Just...love?

Jon’s racing heartbeat slowly begins to calm down. He lets out a shaky breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and he allows him to fall back into the couch, relaxing his tense limbs.

The rabbit follows him as he leans into the back of the couch, clambering up onto his chest.

For a moment Jon tenses up again, unsure of what it’s planning to do, but all the rabbit does is settle comfortably onto his chest and resume licking his nose. The weight of the animal on his chest somewhat reminds him of the Admiral, back when he’d lived with his former girlfriend Georgie, and it feels...nice. Calming, almost, soothing and lessening the sheer panic he’s been feeling for the majority of the day.

“You’re not....” Jon’s voice cracks; he inhales a shaky breath before trying again. “You’re not so bad after all, are you?” He licks his lips before he cautiously tries out the rabbit’s name. “...Junior.”

Jon reaches a wobbly hand up towards Jon Jr. He stares intently at the rabbit, waiting for any sign of alarm or ill will. Seeing none, he places his hand hesitantly on Jon Jr’s back. When the animal shows no sign of startling or moving to dislodge his hand, Jon slowly begins to pet him in short, stilted strokes that quickly become more confident as the rabbit kisses his nose more fervently.

“I suppose...I suppose you can stay for...just a bit longer,” Jon murmurs into the rabbit’s warm fur. He cautiously strokes Jon Jr’s cheeks, chancing a small smile when the rabbit closes his eyes in pleasure.

And if he falls asleep there on the break room couch, there with the comforting warmth and weight of the rabbit he’d set out to hate and instead fallen hopelessly in love with—well. Nobody was there in the Archives to see it, now were they?

Too much happens all too fast, in a blur of time and terror. Melanie King limps in on Jon acting much too immature (in his defense, Jon Jr is...difficult to resist when he wants kisses), but the worry over whether she’ll ruin his reputation or not is quickly washed away by the cold terror of realizing that Sasha is not Sasha.

Suddenly there’s an axe in his hand and an oddly swirling tabletop in his sights, and then suddenly Tim and Martin are interrupting him mid-swing, Jon Jr nosing around their ankles.

Then they’re surrounded by splinters of wood and the grotesque, distorted yells of the thing that is not Sasha, the thing that was not ever Sasha, and there’s a yellow door, and a thing with too-many-too-long hands holding out for a deal.

And then they’re running.

Martin gets lost, Jon isn’t entirely sure when—was it back in the twisting halls of Michael’s domain, or down in the twisting tunnels of Smirke’s creation? everything is blurring together at edges tinged with fear—

—and then it’s just him, and Tim, and Jon Jr, and the thing that had been, had been wearing his assistant’s life like some sort of costume, and oh. This is it, isn’t it? They’re about to die, aren’t they.

At least Martin will survive to tell their tale, Jon hopes, feeling a rush of remorse at how abruptly and patronizingly he’s treated his poor assistant. He could’ve been—he could’ve been dead and gone, replaced like Sasha, and Jon never would have known. And now—now Jon is the one about to die. Him and Tim.

God, Tim. He doesn’t particularly like Tim. Tim has been satisfactory enough as an assistant, he supposes—had almost been a friend once, back in their research days—and now....

Now they back into a dead end, practically hugging the wall as not!Sasha slowly approaches them with a look of manic glee on its face. And Jon...he wouldn’t wish this on anyone, regardless of how much he does or doesn’t like them. Certainly he wouldn’t wish this end on Tim...even if a small, selfish part of him is glad that he’s not alone in the end.

It’s just him and Tim. Just like it was back with Prentiss.

Mouth falling slightly open, Jon turns towards the man in question—perhaps to weakly comment as such, he isn’t really sure—only to see Jon Jr leaping out of Tim’s arms.

“Junior!” The word is tugged out of him, unbidden. Dammit, he’s grown attached to the rabbit. And dammit, there are tears prickling at the corners of his eyes as the rabbit obliviously makes his way towards the hungry thing that had pretended to be Sasha. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Only—

Only then, the rabbit isn’t a rabbit.

It happens much too fast for Jon to really get a good glimpse at what their rabbit becomes. But there’s a loud cracking noise, then a monstrous blur of gray and limbs and mouth and teeth, then another crack and then...nothing. Not even not!Sasha remains. Just a smallish white rabbit in the middle of the now-empty tunnel, sitting primly and licking at one paw.

Jon and Tim gape at each other and at the rabbit, but one thing is for certain:

“...We’re keeping the rabbit,” Jon murmurs, light-headed.

“I—yeah.” Tim nods, and he slumps back against the wall and slowly slides down to the floor of the tunnel. A hand reaches out and snags Jon, dragging him down with, and there, leaning against the wall and each other, the two stare at the not-quite-a-rabbit.

“We’re keeping the rabbit.”

The rabbit-but-not-a-rabbit blinks his innocent red eyes up at them before flopping over to rest, and honestly? Jon thinks Junior has rather the right idea there.

And so the rabbit is kept, and Jon and Tim stagger out of the tunnels minus one not!Sasha but still with one not!a rabbit.

Come to think of it, they’re still down one Martin as well, which is admittedly worrisome.

Neither Jon nor Tim is exactly keen to go back in the tunnels so soon after escaping certain death within them. Jon has never been the most athletic of people—he’s an academic, he’s supposed to be sitting behind a desk all day, for christ’s sake—and his legs feel like jelly beneath him as they debate over calling the police.

Tim is of the mind that they should call the police, or at least Basira, whom he stubbornly still refers to as Jon’s “girlfriend” (and Jon is much too tired to dispute that at this point). Jon, on the other hand, doesn’t think even section thirty-one officers would listen to “we went into a door a monster created in a wall and we lost our coworker in a maze of endless passageways.”

Thankfully, it turns out that they needn’t have worried, because Martin turns up not too long after, dizzy and dragging two other people behind him.

One of them is a familiar face—Helen Richardson, whom Martin apparently had picked up while stuck in Michael’s spiralling labyrinth, and who seems quite content to latch onto Martin and sit firmly in one spot in the center of the place, refusing to pass through any doorways whatsoever. But the second person is an unfamiliar face—an aging, gray-haired man who seems impeccably polite, incredibly calm, and increasingly out of place among the dinge of the tunnels and Artifact Storage.

Then the man introduces himself as Jurgen Leitner, and Jon nearly drops Jon Jr.

But Jon is much too tired to deal with that in the moment, so when Martin tentatively suggests a slumber party of sorts in the Archives to ease his, Helen��s, and Leitner’s worries all in one, Jon gives in without the fight he normally would put up.

As the others assemble bedding and piles of pillows and cushions pilfered from the library chairs, Jon manages to snag the break room couch once more for himself...and for Jon Jr.

Jon has absolutely no idea what, exactly, he’s supposed to do now. There are clearly bigger things at play here—or, at least, Leitner seemed to think so, from the little he said before Tim shut him up and sent him to bed—but as he watches Jon Jr nibble on a cucumber peel, Jon feels a bit better, at least, knowing that one of those bigger things might at least be on his side.

(Or, well. Hopefully he can bribe mister “bigger thing” with enough carrots to stay on his side. That is yet to be seen.)

Fin

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I just have so many stupid ideas for this ridiculous AU that I couldn’t just let them live in my head...so I might as well scrawl them out and let y’all enjoy them with me, right? (Or you can tell me to shut tf up if these get too dumb or annoying for you asdhjkl)

But yeah, as you can tell, Jon Jr’s presence will be messing around with canon, because I take any and all opportunities for fix-its. I just really miss my boy Tim and also my wife Sasha ok so sue me

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