Chapter Text
The next time Jon sees Mike face-to-face, they end up on the London Eye.
It’s hideously expensive and, quite frankly, a miserable day. But Mike’s wind-cool hand in his seems to make all of Jon’s pettier worries fall away, replaced by a blessed calm that allows him to focus on the city view below.
“You’re not changing your surname?” Mike asks, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“I’m not sure,” Jon admits, giving Mike a wry smile in return. “It hasn’t come up since that first meeting, but— well, I’m half-expecting Simon to appear and hand me a deed poll one day like the whole thing is decided.”
“I’m just saying, Jonathan Fairchild sounds downright Dickensian.”
“I suppose so.” Jon sighs, leaning forwards and peering down at the ant-farm bustle of the crowds below. “But… I’m not opposed to the idea. It might be nice to be a part of a family.”
“Maybe.” Mike sounds more amused than convinced — ever-independent, Jon supposes.
“At any rate,” Jon begins, trailing off as he frantically scrambles for another subject to talk about. “I met Dominic recently. Dominic Swain?” Silently, he curses himself; this subject isn’t any less potentially-fraught than the last one was.
“Huh.” Mike seems uninterested, and Jon feels a spark of annoyance.
“He’d stumbled across Ex Altiora himself.”
At that, Mike goes still, his brows slowly raising.
“Wow,” he says at last, laughing quietly to himself. “Small world.”
“I…” Jon tries to find the words to describe what he’d done to Dominic, the look of horror on Dominic’s face and the exhilaration that had lifted Jon to the heavens. But he chokes on the shame of it, and the worst part is that he knows Mike will understand it. Michael’s smile softens.
“I know, Jon. I can— sort of tell?”
“You can?” Jon’s stomach twists unpleasantly. He doesn’t like to think of himself as visibly different, visibly other from what he was, but he’s more and more certain that’s the case.
“Mm. You’re… more, I suppose. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Jon admits, remembering that lurching moment when he saw Mike again for the first time in years. The obvious ways he’d changed, and the subtler ones too. “I do.”
“It suits you, if that makes you feel better. I never thought I’d go for windswept academic, but…”
“I’m not windswept.”
“Better than drenched, isn’t it?” Mike smiles, all easy affection.
“I suppose, when you put it that way…” Jon finds so much of what he can do fascinating, and the connection to the ocean is no exception, but he’s never been fond of getting wet. “I don’t know if I enjoyed doing it, but— it was satisfying. Like research.”
Mike hums, nodding as he caresses the curve of Jon’s fingers, a cool breeze against his skin.
The London Eye reaches the peak of its rotation and in near-unison, they both turn back to stare through the glass at the insignificance of the city below them.
“I can see the Institute from here,” Jon mutters, wry, “or I could, if the weather cleared up.”
Mike glances around the pod with a conspiratorial air, his fingers pressed to Jon’s pulse.
“Do you want to?”
Jon stares at him, feeling a slow smile spread across his face as he considers the possibilities.
“Let me try,” Jon says, with rather more arrogance than he feels. It’s worth it for the uninhibited grin it brings to Mike’s face, as if Jon is the most amazing thing he’s ever seen — which simply can’t be true, given what Mike is and what he can do.
Jon turns his gaze back to the sprawl of London before he gets more distracted, reaching for the endless abyss that runs through his veins. He stares at the line of the horizon, somewhere between focused and self-conscious; he’s never been very skilled at relying on his instincts.
Come on, he thinks in annoyance, and inhales sharply when the horizon seems to— shift. One blink, then another, and soon it feels like he can see all the way to the stubborn green at the edges of the London suburbs. A little more, and Jon fancies he can see all of England from this vantage point, and every mile of it is just as insignificant as the rest.
“Christ,” Mike breathes, awed and almost worshipful.
Jon comes back to his body all at once, normality snapping into place like a rubber band. His breathing is heavy, like he’s just run five marathons in a row, and he has to stumble to the seat in the centre of the pod.
(There are other people in the pod with them, and all of them have gone pale and shaking, but it hardly registers as Jon tries to ground himself in his own body again.)
Mike follows him, light hands resting on Jon’s shoulders as he kisses the breathless feeling from Jon’s mouth. Exhaustion is replaced by a now-familiar plummeting exhilaration, and Jon lets his eyes fall shut, drowning in the feeling of Mike’s lips against his.
“Sorry,” Mike says when he pulls away, though the gleam in his eyes is the opposite of repentant. “I just— I couldn’t resist.”
“It’s alright.” Jon pauses, surprised by the fact that he isn’t lying. Kissing has always held a fairly mixed appeal for him, messy and complicated and not worth the bother, but that— that was something different, almost transcendental. Not that he’ll admit that to Mike any time soon.
“It’s just, this is why I love you,” Mike continues. Jon goes still against him. “You’re curious for curiosity’s sake. It’s always been a means to an end for me, but for you it’s more.”
“I…” Jon pauses, catching his breath and considering Mike’s words. “I suppose it is.”
He wants to ask about that confession, those three words that feel too large for what they are. How can Mike possibly be so sure about something like that, to say it without any hesitation like it’s nothing at all? But Jon can’t bring the question to his lips, so he leans forward and kisses Mike on his own terms, precise and experimental.
I love you too, Jon thinks, but he can’t speak the words without further consideration.
They descend slowly. They don’t kiss again, but Mike’s hands caress Jon’s face, bitingly gentle.
“Did good old Dominic mention what happened to Ex Altiora?” Mike asks, once they’re back on solid ground, the romantic mood faded from the air. “Sometimes I regret leaving it behind.”
“Destroyed, I believe. A man— ah, Gerard Keay — burned it.”
“Right,” Mike mutters, something almost like grief crossing his face. “Sensible, I guess, if it didn’t appeal to him.” He glances up at the grey sky like he’s half-expecting lightning to pour out with the rain, that fractal finally back on his scent. But there’s nothing.
“We’re free,” Jon reminds him. “That’s what this is. We’re free.”
Mike smiles, pressing his lips to Jon’s once more.
“We’re free,” he agrees.