Archival Assistant!Jon Chapter 1 WIP
Originally posted: 26th February 2026
Characters: Sasha James, Jonathan Sims, Elias Bouchard
Relationships: Sasha James & Jonathan Sims
Additional notes: Head archivist Sasha James, archival assistant Jon Sims, honestly just kind of set up, meant to be a bit eerie but idk.
Summary: Chapter 1 wip of my AA!Jon Au where we follow Sasha through her first morning as Head Archivist and her first meeting with her suprise assistant, Jon Sims. Plus some additional notes are at the bottom.
Unfinished, Archival Assistant!Jon Au, word count: 2,539~.Sasha walks into the Archives for the first time in her new career as Head Archivist and nearly walks back out right away. She knew that it was a mess, she's seen it before, but she somehow misremembered just how much of a horrifying mess it really was. There's boxes, half-opened and scruffy, piled wherever there seemed to be space. Folders flutter open as she opens the door, looking to have been thrown at random. The glimpses of the shelves that she can see through the piles are overflowing with loose pages and folders shoved in any way they could fit. There's a small corridor to her left with a door that she thinks is probably her new office and… there's three desks for the assistants? She had only put in two recommendations when Elias asked but maybe Gertrude had more than that. She supposes it would be difficult to drag a desk back up the stairs to the Institute proper so they must have just left it here. It'll be useful regardless, somewhere to put statements that isn't the floor. She meanders forward, glancing at the desks. She cringes at the mess stacked there, random piles and trinkets placed wherever. Quickly looking away, she's drawn to the rest of the mess covering the Archives. She skims through some of the piles, curious to see what exactly is hidden away in those stuffy towers but aware of everything else she wants to get done on her first day. Just a handful of quick moments to prepare herself for the challenge ahead of her. Reluctantly, she pulls herself away from the stacks when she doesn't find anything more interesting than pages of smudged writing. Sasha takes a deep breath as she moves back towards her probable office, only to choke on a musty smell, like damp paper and mold. Coughing her lungs up, she decides that {figuring out how to air this place out will have to moved up the priority list. look up archive and fresh air stuff cause i dont know if thats okay to do} Now, she wanders into her office, grinning at the glinting plaque reading 'Head Archivist Sasha James' on the heavy door. Dust flares up as the door swings on, it looks like no one had been in there for months. The desk inside is the same as Gertrude's, she's pretty sure. The office is in a similar state as the rest of the Archives, the air itching in her lungs. She drops herself into the desk chair and her bag onto the floor, sighing as she does. Finally, after all her work, she's climbed the goddamn ladder. {From the way Mr. Bouchard had acted during the interview, she had half expected for someone else to be promoted instead of her and yet here she is. Head Archivist. is this necessary now and can i make it fit better?} "Look at me now, Mum," she mutters, "Is my degree useless now?" She laughs out loud and spins in her new desk chair, braids hitting her face as she does. Even though this place looks like a storm ran through it right before she stepped in, she's got a good feeling about this promotion. It's not even just the money, or the fact that she's finally working in the field she got a Masters in, but that, despite everything she's seen so far, something about the atmosphere of the Archives alone is still enough to make her feel giddy. There's so much to look at, so many problems to fix. She starts to sort through the piles of documents left on the desk. They seem strangely nonsensical? She doesn't remember Gertrude being that old, she always seemed so sharp and on top of things when she met her. The pages she's looking at, however, are full of barely legible scribbles about circuses and eyes. Maybe they're notes about a statement? She drums her fingers against the desk as she studies some of them before she gives up and shoves them to the side. Clearly, she doesn't have half the context that she would need to understand it. Maybe she'll find whatever statement the notes are about one day. She's just moved on to looking through the drawers attached to the desk when she hears a noise from the main room. {Pausing, she smiles and goes to greet either Tim (unlikely since he usually only shows up right on time), or Martin (whom she only vaguely knows so it's possible). She's really hoping it's not Mr. Bouchard checking in on her. The state of the Archives is nowhere near ready for that kind of check-in. this paragraph reads kind of awkward} She peeks her head out, a greeting for her new assistant on her tongue, and then she sees who's actually standing there. Her words curdle on her tongue as the man she doesn't know drops his messenger bag onto the chair next to one of the assistant desks. She's worked in two different departments so she's familiar with a lot of people in the Institute but she has never seen this man in her life. She creeps forward on silent feet, trying to get closer to him to figure out anything about who he is. As she takes another step forward, he spins around as if he had heard her. {His piercing eyes honed in on her instantly. look up descriptions for eyes that are creepy, jon is gonna be so eerie if i can help it} He's of roughly average height with dark skin and movements like he's carrying someone else's confidence on his shoulders. Black hair, barely long enough to pull back in a short ponytail whirls around with him as he turns to face her, then goes deathly still with the rest of him when he spots Sasha. {Up close she can see that his clothes are professional enough that he's probably an employee. A well pressed white work shirt with loose black slacks, but his boots ruin the look, heavy and half covered with mud. this feels like a little too short and boring idk} The second she looks at his face, her eyes are drawn to his. They're a deep brown that glimmer with a secret knowledge and they weigh heavy on her skin. The longer his eyes rest on her, the more difficult it gets to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth. He doesn't even blink as he studies her with wide eyes. Her heart pounds. They're standing, facing each other in the claustrophobic Archives. He's completely still. Not even a muscle twitch in sight. Her fingers twitch. Leg muscles try to move her forward but she freezes under his ever-lasting gaze. Neither of them move for several minutes. She thinks she's shaking. He doesn't even look like he's breathing. Then it's like someone has hit unpause on the man all of a sudden. He blinks and his expression finally shifts from the bored neutrality of before into something like surprise. {She watches as he manually returns all the miniature shifts of human life to his body. His shoulders loosen purposely and he steps towards her, hand outstretched. i like this part, its one of my fave i think} "Ah, my apologies. I've gotten far too used to working alone down here." He half-smiles apologetically though his entrancing eyes still have a glimmer of shock, "I absolutely forgot that Mr. Bouchard said you would be starting today. Ms. Sasha James, I presume?" Standing right in front of her, offering a hand shake, he seems far less eerie than before. He's shorter than her, she realises, although most people are. "I'm sorry but, who are you? I don't believe we've ever met," she asks, unwilling to relax. His hand drops back to his side when she leaves him hanging and he looks taken aback, eyes wide. "I thought he would have… well, I suppose that was a bit naive to think." He shakes his head, sighing, "I'm Jonathan Sims. I am- I was Gertrude's assistant and I was told that I was to keep my job, that I would simply be working under a different Head Archivist now." "Oh! I'm sorry, I wasn't informed of this. Mr. Bouchard only asked me to recommend new assistants, you weren't mentioned. Let me just-" She pulls out her phone and checks her work email as Mr. Sims hovers awkwardly. There's a brand new email, barely ten minutes old, from Mr. Bouchard talking about the 'previous Archivist's experienced assistant' and how he hopes that he'll 'help her get settled into her new position'. Fantastic. Thank you Mr. Bouchard for that extremely timely email. She sighs and looks up at him, "I'm so sorry, again. Looks like he sent the information very last minute," she smiles, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sims. You were right, I'm Sasha James." He smiles back, very awkwardly, "It's alright, it's clearly not your fault. It's a pleasure to meet you too." He turns around quickly, clearly a little uncomfortable. He walks back around to what she assumes is his desk. When he starts talking, he changes the subject, thankfully. She'd rather not focus on her inability to check her email the morning she starts her new job. Or the fact that she got that badly freaked out by a man who looks like he's trying to make his already wiry frame even smaller. "You have picked out different assistants, then? I'm sorry, if I had known I would have cleared the other desks. Neither Gerr- Gertrude nor I were particularly organised." He moves along and starts looking through the piles of files on the other desks, shoving them aside. Looking more closely, it's far more obvious that…Mr. Sims'? Jonathan's? desk is far more lived in than the other two. The documents there are haphazardly organised in three different piles, and a well worn mug full of stationary guards one corner of the desk while a framed photo sits at the other. She's surprised she hadn't noticed it all sooner. Though, in all fairness, she had been more focused on the stacks than the disastrous desks. {need to reread and edit some of the dialogue in the below section, some parts are clunky} Stepping forward to help him clear the desks, she shrugs, "It's fine, Mr. Sims, let's call it even and forget about all this. It's no worries, really." He stops in the middle of placing a heavy looking box on the ground and looks up at her with a quirked brow, "It's just Jon, please. I hardly think you need be so formal." She laughs, "Just Sasha then! I'm not sure how Ms. Robinson was with such a small department but I don't think formalities are really necessary." "Gertrude was never really a fan of unnecessary formalities either. When it was needed, fine, but day-to-day? She was rather more blunt," his voice is drenched in bittersweetness, "We were similar like that, on occasion." "O-oh. That's… I'm sorry for your loss? I hadn't considered how close you must have been. How long were you…?" She feels terribly awkward even as she's saying it but she can't help prying just a little. "It's alright, I suppose." He narrows his eyes at her, tense as a bowstring about the topic. "Four years. That's how long I worked with her." She almost reaches out to comfort him but he's coiled in on himself so tightly that Sasha is worried he might bite if she does. She settles on an awkward grimace. "I'm so sorr-" "Thank you. However, it's fine. Would you mind if we moved on?" It's blunt but he never claimed he wasn't, she supposes. She nods as he steps around her and takes the last of the piles of pages, dropping them on top of one of the piles on his desk. "So… Mr. Bouchard didn't tell you who I chose for my assistants, right?" She asks instead of any of the other questions she wants to. Her curiosity burns away inside her chest but the need to not antagonise her new coworker outweighs it. "No." He says curtly, "Mr. Bouchard and I have not quite seen eye to eye on certain topics during my tenure here. It's not surprising he would inconvenience us all out of pettiness." She raises her eyebrows at the quiet vitriol in his tone. Whatever Mr. Bouchard had done must have been miles worse than all the minor probably-a-HR-violation-but-he's-the-boss incidents that she's already heard a great deal of. "Yeah, I've heard that he can be a bit passive aggressive sometimes," She leans back against one of the now far emptier desks and Jon drops into his chair, moving his bag to the floor, "I've heard so many stories of just, such bloody bizarre stuff. Not a surprise he'd pick fights with a random archival assistant." He chuckles at that before he looks up at her, those sharp eyes shining. "Would you mind telling me who the other assistants are? Just, before they get here and all." {She startles and smiles nervously, "Sorry, yeah, of course! There's Tim Stoker, we were researchers together, he's really friendly but he knows what he's doing, I promise. The other one is Martin Blackwood. I don't actually really know him but I asked the library head, Deirdre, if she knew anyone that might be interested in a move to the Archives and she pointed me in his direction." if i keep this section do i really need the clunky bracket section earlier?} "The library?" "I thought having someone else around who knows even the bare bones of proper organisation could be helpful." {He laughs politely, "Well, you have me now too. I promise that, for all the bloody rubbish here, I do actually know how to organise an archive. Gertrude never particularly cared about any of this but I'm certain you'll be far better." ??? this doesnt sound right, maybe needs a better excuse? make him a little more harried?} Her dark skin flushes and she smiles at Jon, "Thank you! I'm sure you'll do excellently as well. You'll be my right hand in getting this place sorted, right?" {"Of course," he snorts bemusedly, "I'll be your loyal lieutenant, Captain James." would he joke like this?} He gives a little joking salute as she chuckles. {Checking her watch, she pushes up off the desk hurriedly. Jon's eyes track her as she moves and he grimaces when he checks the time on his phone. bit abrupt of an ending, flesh out the conversation a bit more?} "Well! I should be off, need to at least try and make some space in that office," she gets out as she brushes dust off her trousers. Straightening up, Jon waves her off, "It's not a problem. If you need help with anything, feel free to ask. Lord knows I'm the only person in this Institute who knows what Gertrude was thinking." "I will, thank you!" she calls out as she wanders back to her new office. {A third assistant, who knows what he's doing. Mr. Bouchard was really holding out on her. like the idea, need a better execution}