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"What is it like?"
Elias has been, for at least one hundred years, aware of the existence of ghosts. Lukases, powerful and prolific as they have been, are not the only Lonely avatars to have ever existed, and in his time, under many different names, the man who had once been Jonah Magnus has encountered a good deal of people touched by the fog who can suddenly see wailing spirits, displaced in time and isolated in death, praying for the companionship of afterlife and never quite reaching it.
But Peter, insufferable and smarmy Peter, is the first person Elias has been on proper speaking terms with ( and he's oddly grateful for that, given the long silence that had followed the whole disaster with Gertrude and the apartment complex ) who has told him, plain as can be, that he can actually see ghosts. And Elias has found himself in the perfect situation, just the right amount of peckish to want to know more without actually expending the power it takes to Know, and Peter's being relatively cooperative, pleased as he is with some recent developments on the newest venture he's started with Simon and Rayner. He's stretched out on the couch in Elias's office, feet on the cushions because no one bothered to raise him properly, but with his head tipped back, eyes closed and limbs lax. He's relaxed here, today, almost approaching on comfortable, or as comfortable as anyone in that family could be in the company of others, and the rush of something that makes Elias feel, in the hollow of his chest, is not entirely welcome right now.
So he deflects, and when Peter mentions the ghosts, he pounces, lights on the subject and presses for information. Peter will either give it to him, or tell him to fuck off, but things will steer elsewhere and Elias can ignore the flickers of humanity that try to alight on him once every few decades.
"Seeing ghosts," he continues. "What is it like?"
Peter opens his eyes at the question, but fixes his blue gaze on the the beams above his head, rather than on Elias's face. "I mean, normal, I suppose," he says, waving a hand idly in the air. "It doesn't feel odd or anything. It's just what it is."
"Insightful," Elias mutters. Peter's laugh is harsh in his throat.
"Either pry the information out of me or be more specific in your questions, darling," he drawls at the ceiling. "I don't divulge information of my own free will."
"God forbid," Elias answers, but he still stands and makes his way over to sit on the armrest just above Peter's head. Peter decides to be childish and stick his tongue out and straight up at him. "Fine, let's start with something simple. What do they look like?"
"Like an oval white sheet with holes cut out for the eyes," Peter says instantly. "And they float two feet off the ground and make 'wooooooo' noises every time they move." Elias decides to schedule a meeting with Nathaniel to urge him on the merits of using corporal punishment on children. It can be a very isolating experience and Peter would be much less irritating if someone had actually ever been invested enough to smack him at least once as a child. "Honestly Elias, they look like themselves. It's just the atmosphere."
"The atmosphere?"
Peter twists his mouth for a moment, the way he always does when Elias asks him a question and he's reminded that he's engaging in a communal act simply by answering. "It's all tied to The One Alone," he says slowly. "They're very...translucent. And foggy. Partially obscured and sometimes invisible if they're in my periphery. But other than that, they look like themselves."
Elias thinks of all the times he's seen Peter fade in and out of the fog himself, the mist swirling and hiding parts of his body, the way he's still half fuzzed out of reality before he settles down and bothers Elias for the hundredth time. He imagines seeing others like that, and being the only person who can see them. It doesn't move him in a particular way, but he can still feel how it might make one lonely.
"I assume they talk," he says. Peter glances up at him again and shrugs.
"The vast majority of them don't," he says, settling against the cushions. Elias knows, and it's knowing not Knowing, that Peter has a tendency to get stiff shoulders if he's in one position too long whilst laying on anything that isn't the most luxurious featherbed. In the back of his mind, beyond the mocking thoughts about how the Lukases raise absolute babies, the fact that he knows all he does about Peter, without even trying to look into his head, is almost terrifying. When Peter meets his gaze, Elias wonders if he can tell what he's thinking.
"Why don't they talk?" he asks, pushing the ideas from his head.
"Have you ever met someone affiliated with The Lonely who likes to talk?" Peter retorts.
"I've dealt with you." Peter sticks his tongue out again. "But you're an oddity, and I imagine the rest of them aren't so inclined, as you've hinted at."
"How deeply isolating, to be one of a kind," Peter says contentedly. "But no, most of them don't talk. Just as well, I don't think anyone who can actually see them would bother to reply, and certainly wouldn't want to. Most of the ones I've seen are either too sad or too traumatized to actually tell me anything."
"Fascinating," Elias answers.
Peter hums, closing his eyes again and tipping his head back ever so slightly, the way he does when he's about to settle into sleep. "Is it?" he asks. He doesn't sound particularly curious, or invested in Elias's potential response.
"Indeed it is," Elias says. "The implications this could have, if one were able to actually communicate with one of these ghosts, or study them. To figure out how they function, why they chose this over a potential afterlife, if they had a choice at all. To even figure out how your god works in and of itself, through one of them-"
"Ha!" It's more of a bark than a laugh. "Good luck with that one. Half of the ones I've ever encountered are people who've been sent away by members of the family over the years. They're probably too cautious to do anything that would continue to get them on the collective bad side, especially something like divulging important religious secrets."
Elias rolls his eyes and allows himself a brief flit through Peter's mind. It's shallow, Peter has the Lukas tendency to fill his head with fog and static and trying to get past that leaves Elias with a dizzying headache at best, to say nothing of what the at worst tends to be, especially where Peter and his attitude are concerned. He Sees a few figures, amorphous and wailing in their misery. There's a blond woman and a young redheaded boy and then a man with soft brown hair in an all too familiar brocade waistcoat and Elias feels as if someone just someone punched him in his solar plexus.
"Do you ever recognize any of them?" he asks, almost without thinking. Peter sits up at that, blinking his eyes in confusion and a bit of annoyance, as if he'd already been napping and not merely entertaining the idea.
"What?" He's staring at Elias, still perched on the arm of the sofa, and his eyes have always been a very dark, very deep blue, nowhere near the same shade as-
"These ghosts of your's," Elias says. Don't be a fool, don't be ridiculous. He has no time for childishness, or youthful wanting. "Do you recognize any of them yourself?" He waits for an answer, carefully poised just at the edge of Peter's thoughts, enough that he can Look but nowhere deep enough that Peter could actually sense him of his own volition, and certainly not to an extent that any mental blocks wouldn't be able to keep him out. So he sits on his perch and waits.
And Peter lies. "No," he says, says it slowly as if he has to think on it. But even the quickest of dives lets Elias know that he very much did recognize the mournful looking man in the corner of the library of this very Institute, and that he'd felt a mixture of delight and genuine curiosity when he realized that Barnabas Bennett's spirit was still kicking about. That Peter obviously knew who Barnabas was, that he, like his relatives before him, found a perverse pleasure in the story they'd passed down like religious lore, of an example of the ways the Lukas family, powerful and terrifying even to others of their ilk, have done things and all the rest of them could do was sit back and just let it happen until they grew bored.
Peter knew exactly who Barnabas was from the moment he set eyes on him. And Peter knew the entire sodding story of why Barnabas was an important enough name to recognize at all.
"Anyone I'd recognize?" Elias asks, faux casual. He wants to push, just a little bit, just to see what Peter will do. Even beyond the sudden shock of Barnabas in Peter's thoughts on its own, to see Peter lie rather than be cruelly honest, the way he's seen Peter be when he gets hungry and goes looking for some poor lonely soul out by their lonesome, it's an interesting development.
"No." Peter is just as casual, and lying all the same even as he shrugs his shoulders in a feign of ignorance.
Elias is hit with a thought. A thought that Peter, Peter Lukas, who tortures people before he vanishes them just because he can, because he enjoyed it, Peter who'd been nearly delirious with happiness at the idea of killing an entire building of people to bring The One Alone into the world, Peter who forces his crew to pick which one of them has to die on every voyage without so much as blinking, Peter who he knows has condemned even members of his own family to death in the service of his god and his powers, that Peter Lukas has decided to lie to spare Elias.
To spare the heart that had, a very long time ago, beat in the body of Jonah Magnus, and that had, at one point, known what it was to love Barnabas Bennett, before Mordechai had taken him and Jonah himself had made the decision to let him rot. And Mordechai's grandson however many times over, somehow, for whatever reason, appears to have taken it upon himself to protect whatever was left of that.
Simon had called Peter strange, once, when he'd been conversing with James Wright, telling him about a strange boy in the Lukas family, as devout and isolationist and sadistic as the rest of them, but still with a spark of life that should have been stamped out by his age, as it had with all the others. Elias finds Peter strange now, strange and confusing, enough that he simply reaches forward and takes Peter's hand for a moment, squeezes it. The poor lad looks confused enough that Elias almost laughs, if he weren't confused himself.
It's when Peter says "Good!", vicious and satisfied, that Elias realizes he's trying to make them late on purpose, and runs out of patience.
Peter has been acting like a little boy ever since Elias told him that they had reservations, first whinging about how he despised Valentine's Day and also restaurants in general when he didn't get to pick where they went ( and it was always the same five places with the same type of layout that allowed Peter to hide and not interact with anyone, and Elias was completely sick of them all ), and then sulking on the couch and refusing to even change for dinner until Elias threatened to make a very public toast during dessert. He could have just as easily pointed out that Peter would attract a great deal of attention in jeans and a thick cableknit jumper, especially at a fine dining establishment with patrons that probably only think of boat captains whenever they eat their lobster, but it was funnier to watch Peter's eyes widen in horror at the idea of Elias deliberately drawing attention.
And now, Peter is trying to make them late, to spite him. Because Peter is a giant baby.
"You are such a child," Elias moans, after he wheedles enough and manages to crowd Peter into the car at a somewhat respectable time. "It's one night, it won't kill you."
"It might kill you," Peter mumbles.
"You're not going to kill me Peter," Elias says with a roll of his eyes.
"I could," Peter insists, slinking lower into his seat. "I very well could. If I end this night without having tried to stab you in the head, I should find my way down to the Vatican and demand a sainthood. I'll have earned it."
"Melodrama doesn't suit you Peter," Elias says. "We're having one dinner-"
"On Valentine's Day," Peter seethes, glaring at him with such force and fire that Elias finds himself grateful he decided to remain loyal to the family rather than take up with something like The Desolation. "I know what you're doing Elias, and if you're determined to be annoying about it, I'm going to annoy you right back."
"What a spirited appreciation of the holiday," Elias mutters. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees some wisps of fog start to curl dangerously around Peter's shoulders. "Besides, maybe you'll like it."
"Doubtful," Peter says, and pointedly turns to stare out the window. Doubtless, he's hoping to see someone walking by their lonesome, visibly despondent at their lack of companionship on this particular day. If he weren't concerned about poking the bear, he might delve into Peter's head and tell him exactly what every solitary figure on the street is thinking at that exact moment, but Elias has a suspicion doing so might make Peter vanish from the car itself. And he's spent too much time planning the evening for Peter to spoil it by literally going up in smoke.
It's a lovely restaurant, with very friendly staff members who smile and say hello if you so much as make the briefest eye contact. Elias almost feels sorry for the man who attempts to take Peter's coat from his shoulders; Peter's eyes, though a fetching color in Elias's own view, are sharp enough to cut glass and as freezing cold as an iceberg. The temperature drops a further five degrees when they are seated, as per Elias's request, at a table as close to being in the center of the room as possible. Peter, of course, decides to be dramatic and immediately grip the handle of his butter knife as if he got tossed off his boat and this was the lifeline. Or because he wants to use it as a weapon.
"Isn't this place lovely?" Elias asks brightly.
"No," Peter grinds out, somehow both sullen and full of rage. "There are people."
Elias decides to ignore that and smile widely at their somewhat confused waiter, and tells him that he mustn't be afraid to come back, should they have any questions. The lad beams, until Peter makes a sound low in his throat that sounds suspiciously close to a growl, and he ends up scurrying away.
"Behave," Elias chides.
"Shut it."
"Do you have any preferences for what we might drink tonight?" Elias says, choosing to ignore Peter's rudeness and opening the drinks menu. "I'll want a proper glass of something for dinner, but you know my penchant for cocktails. Though I assume you won't want anything of the sort."
"Ugh," Peter says with a small shudder. On another time Elias had dragged him out into public, he'd ordered something alarmingly pink and Peter had made certain to tell him it looked ghastly every two minutes of the entire evening
Elias takes his time deciding what he wants for the meal, while Peter stares determinedly in the middle distance and makes no eye contact with anyone. It's delicious, watching his discomfort, especially after he made Elias squirm for weeks, dodging his phone calls during his latest sojourn on the Tundra when there were very important business matters to attend to and Elias needed to know how much money he had to allocate on the latest archival misadventure. The payback is his own Valentine's Day present to himself, seeing as he's certainly not getting anything nice from the man sitting across from him.
He makes Peter take at least a cursory glance at the menu, and when the waiter returns, waits patiently until Peter himself places his own order, and the wine besides. "A very good choice," the waiter says happily, and Peter responds by actually waving a hand to dismiss him. Elias stifles a laugh.
"I do wonder sometimes whether you'd be more polite if you'd been raised without money," he says, leaning his elbows on the table.
Peter raises an eyebrow at him. "I wasn't raised at all, the money had nothing to do with it."
"You'd be such a wonderful specimen for the right therapist," Elias replies dreamily, and already he imagines the information that could be extracted, if Peter had been more like his wayward siblings and bucked family tradition rather than embracing it wholeheartedly. All that trauma and complicated emotion to dissect, he'd be feasting for days.
"God forbid," Peter says.
"Anyway." Elias folds his fingers together and leans closer. Peter decides it's appropriate to get that cornered animal look in his eye that he does whenever he thinks Elias is being too intrusive. It's almost rude. "Now that we've ordered the meal, might I suggest we begin the appetizer course?"
Peter's eyebrow climbs higher. "And what might that be?"
"Take a look around," Elias says, nodding his head to their fellow diners.
"What? Why?" You'd have thought he'd asked the man to perform a striptease, with how confused Peter is. Elias sighs heavily, and Peter immediately rolls his eyes.
"Honestly, must I hold your hand all the time?"
"Please don't," Peter shoots back, and Elias resists the urge to stick his tongue out at him.
"This is making me feel very underappreciated in my efforts," he informs his dinner guest. "Look around, Peter, and then, shall we say, take a whiff, if you are so inclined."
The crease of confusion between Peter's eyes deepens for a moment, before he cocks his head, the way a carnivore does when it hears the whine of prey off in the distance, begging to be eaten. So Peter does look around, and Elias gives himself his second present by drinking it all in. It's as rare as anything in the world, being able to watch Peter actually interact with The Forsaken, and Elias adores whenever he can actually indulge. It's unlike anything Elias can see anywhere else, not with the cults of The Dark or The Desolation, not with the solitary figures of The Corruption or The Slaughter, not with the families of The Vast or The Web, not even within the walls of Elias's own Institute. Peter's relationship with The Lonely is deeply physical; he interacts with it as if it were more of a living thing than any of their acquaintances view their own gods.
He tilts his head as if he can hear it, and his eyes are keen as he looks around, as if there's something he can actually see in the air. His breathing deepens somewhat, as if he is both smelling and tasting something Elias can never even touch, and when his fingers twitch, the air briefly thickens and cools around them both. It's the perfect symbiotic relationship, almost a tale of two dance partners, and Elias nearly forgets the entire purpose of this entire outing as he watches him.
But Peter is seeing the very thing Elias wants him to see. A restaurant that doesn't have nearly as many couples as it should, so much as it has solitary figures at the tables, and all of them looking very morose for the kind of day it is. When Peter meets his eyes again, he is more bemused than anything else.
"Yes?" he urges on.
The waiter returns with a glass of the Bordeaux Peter ordered, and the cocktail Elias had asked for. It's a testament to how well he's done that Peter doesn't even make some snide comment about how ostentatious and gaudy what he ordered was, because Peter, old money brat that he is, likes to remind Elias at every given opportunity that his family still considers Elias to be nouveau riche despite the fact that his own personal fortune has been around longer than Peter himself. Instead, Peter just waits for him to take a sip and talk.
"Well, what did you think of the bouquet?" Elias asks.
"Very cold," Peter answers carefully.
Elias hums. "You see," he begins. "I went to a few dating sites, and set up some fake profiles, and made a few matches, and set up a few dates. It's the perfect time of year for it, tis the season and all that."
"This is a day long holiday, the season we're in is winter," Peter cuts in, but with far less bite than would be expected for a Valentine's Day outing. Elias shrugs delicately.
"Point being, I set up a good many dates at this very restaurant," he continues. He takes a glance for himself, at all the various tables in their view with only one person seated at them. "We are veritably surrounded by people being stood up on Valentine's Day."
"Elias.." Peter has an unreadable look on his face, and this is going to do him much good at least in terms of his finance budget for at least the next six months, to say nothing of any extracurricular activities, so Elias presses on.
"That woman to your right has been thinking for the past ten minutes about how this always happens to her, because she is so unlucky and destined to be alone," he explains. "The man behind you is not only two seconds away from weeping, but has been stood up three times now. He feels very isolated." Elias permits himself a smile. "And as an extra treat, I have it on very good authority," and here Elias taps the side of his head, just at the corner of his eye, "That it turns out our waiter is so very chatty because he lives alone, hasn't been on a date in months, hence why he's available to work tonight, and feels that he only gets his true chance at human interaction at this very job, where it's forced."
And now, he can relax and enjoy his third present to himself: the look of absolute astonishment on Peter's face, voided of all other emotions other than just true and genuine surprise. Peter blinks a few times, and has an odd look in his eyes.
"You did this?" he asks softly.
Elias scoffs. "You disdain me so that you think juggling a few fake romantic prospects was actually difficult-"
"Shut up," Peter says, but it is so toothless and distracted as to not have even been said at all. He's still staring straight at Elias. A rarity, considering how much Peter hates eye contact most of the time. "You did this." It's more a statement this time, but Elias answers nonetheless.
"Yes," he says.
"You did this me?"
"Yes," Elias says again. "Happy Valentine's Day."
There are times, infinitesimal and fleeting, where Elias catches a glimpse of who Peter Lukas would have been had he not been born into his family. This is one of those times. Peter's face breaks out into a great wide smile. The kind of smile that cannot be described as anything other than a grin or a beam, one that a person only has when they are purely and utterly delighted, happy in the fullest and most marvelous of ways, with dimples and small lines around the eyes and even the small huff of a laugh within it. It's not a look Elias expects on Peter's face, because Peter is a Lukas. It softens something inside of him, just below where his ribcage splits off into two.
Is this what Peter would be, if they'd lived in a more merciful world where he'd been born into a different family that would have allowed this of him, rather than neglected and beaten it out of their children's systems? Would he have smiled larger, brighter, in the ways that made the blue in his eyes sparkle, softened the gaunt, harsh lines of his thin face? Would Elias have even known him? Would they have still been here, at a restaurant on a romantic holiday? In that world, would Elias reach out to tuck a messy flyaway behind Peter's ear, cup his cheek as he ducks his head?
"You did this for me," Peter says again, and his voice sounds almost soft as he twists his mouth and appears to regain control of his facial expression.
"As I said already," Elias tells him. "Yes I did."
"Well, I do hope you're not expecting any public displays of affection for it," Peter warns, though it's more teasing than anything he's said all night.
Elias shakes his head. "Oh no, I'd hate for us to become predictable," he says with a wink. Peter rolls his eyes, but when he sips his wine, his lips are still quirked up.
It's a good meal, though Peter doesn't make for very good conversation, and disappears for a self professed smoke break as soon as he's done eating. Elias is accommodating, more than content to peruse the minds of his fellow patrons for entertainment, and then flag down another member of staff to give him his check, as it appears their waiter mysteriously vanished shortly after Peter bumped into him on his way out.
Peter is indeed smoking when Elias steps out, and as much as Elias despises the filthy habit, he will admit that he likes to watch Peter doing it, that Peter looks good doing it, long and skinny as he is, head tipped back to release the smoke and his hair slightly damp from the drizzle that's started. The look Peter gives him when he stubs out the cigarette lets Elias know that Peter is very aware he's been ogling, and appears to have decided to let him indulge for once without pitching a fit. Instead, Peter lets him approach, and make a crack about how fortunate it is that the street has gotten less busy as the night wore on, before quickly pressing a kiss to Elias's astonished lips.
"I won't say it, because I hate this fucking holiday," Peter says when they part. "But nevertheless."
"Indeed," Elias answers, now with a smile of his own, before he goes to pay the valet for their car and leave Peter to a few more seconds of his precious lonesome.
Elias is in the middle of some last minute budgeting when the music starts blasting in his head. As a matter of principle, he always keeps a peripheral gaze turned on important locations, such as the Archives, and one of those locations is his flat. It's not technically his flat, it's actually Peter's, but Peter spends as much time as he possibly can on his boat and barely any time on land, and what time he does is most often spent at Moorland House, with his creepy cabal of relatives, so Elias tends to make use of the place and has, in his own way, dubbed it his. And he keeps an eye on it, which means he's been dimly aware of the fact that Peter is, for once, back in London, and has decided to play music, when he absolutely knows that Elias is keeping an eye on the place. Very loud, very obnoxious music.
Elias decides he's going to force Peter to attend the next meeting he holds with all the department heads. He also decides he's going to hold that meeting at a very public restaurant, that's frequented often. On a busy street. That's frequented by a lot of tourists.
He closes his eyes and focuses all the attention on the flat, if only to make sure that Peter hasn't decided to start burning things down. He's been in a strange, almost giddily unpredictable sort of mood ever since his project near Aldgate East started getting well and truly underway, and if there is one thing Elias despises, it's feeling as if he's about to be caught unawares. But no. Peter is, of all things, making dinner while listening to his loud music, and a dinner that actually appears to require some cooking for a change rather than just vanishing whoever shows up with the takeaway. It's very modern music though, and Elias decides that it'll be two department head meetings he forces Peter to attend, for making him feel his age as much as distracting him.
He manages to finish what he needs to finish, before gathering up his things and heading home. At the very least, if Peter is cooking, that means he'll have something to needle him about if he gets there fast enough. It feels almost paranoid to check on Peter again, like he's some sort of suspicious lover or nosy neighbor, but Peter's enough of a wild card that Elias would rather be on top of him than caught off guard.
But no, he's just listening to his loud music, which doesn't even sound that obnoxious on its own, Peter just has it a ridiculous volume, and doing basic cooking things. Looks to be some sort of stew. Elias hopes it's not something odd or Norwegian that he picked up during his travels and sacrifices all about the ocean.
At the very least, Peter's Lukas heritage has bred determination to be as isolated as possible, and they have no immediate neighbors who can glare at Elias as he makes his way to the door. Elias doesn't mind attention as much as Peter does, but he does so hate to be embarrassed.
Peter has a preternatural ability to tell when he's got company, and even with the noise he's made for himself, turns when Elias walks through the door. He has to be in a good mood, considering that his face is pleasantly neutral, rather than actively disappointed. And at least it smells aromatic when he makes his way over to the kitchen island.
Turn it down, Elias mouths. Peter decides to be cheeky and give him a simple No along with a two fingered wave of hello.
Kids these days.
Thank God Peter is analogue to the extreme, and appears to just be using a CD player from the time before Moses came down from the Mount. Elias is half a mind to go and just turn it off himself, before Peter reaches out and kisses him. It's surprising enough that Elias finds himself actually frozen for a moment before he kisses back. Damn Peter Lukas and his ability to catch him off guard.
It's that Peter is not one to initiate. He tolerates, even reciprocates if he's feeling charitable. But rarely does he ever take the first step. The most memorable time that he did was the night James Wright died, when Peter had been so determined to prove that there was nothing of consequence between them that he'd kissed Elias just to show it and they'd nearly gotten quite inappropriate next to poor James's still warm body. This is different than that; Elias thinks he can feel something like a smile on Peter's mouth.
The song fades away, and appears to be the end of a track or something similar, as nothing follows. Just silence, and the sound of their breathing.
"You seem cheerful," Elias says, pulling away.
Peter makes a face at him, and moves away, turning a knob on the stove off. "What gave it away?" he says sarcastically.
"The stress headache your accompaniment gave me," Elias fires back.
Peter gives a slanted grin, a smile full of shark teeth. "Oh Elias, that's entirely your fault for spying on me," he says.
"I think I prefer you lonely and morose," Elias responds, leaning his back against the island. "This isn't a good look on you."
Peter sticks out his tongue, as if his mood is too buoyant to be moved by their regular sniping. "Perhaps I have a reason for my good mood," he says.
"Do you?"
Peter grins, shining and brilliant, not in his more typical sneering way, but actually happy. It makes the blue of his eyes stand out. "I do," he says, like he's barely holding back real, genuine laughter.
Elias is more mildly curious than apprehensive, and for once, when he stares, Peter actually appears to meet his eyes. "Why?" he asks.
Astonishingly, Peter comes up to him and puts his hands on his face. "It's working, Elias," he says. "The building, the plan, all of it's doing exactly what it needs to do." Elias doesn't need to ask which building, or which plan. It's been buzzing through the usual channels for months now. More than anything, he's just surprised it's gone as well as it has without falling apart yet. "It's going to succeed."
Peter's eyes have an almost frenetic glow to him, and there are two hectic spots of excited red, high on his thin cheeks. It's almost akin to a religious devotee seeing a miracle and basking in it, and it's an emotion so alien on Peter's face that Elias, for a moment, is struck dumb.
"You're going to love it," Peter continues, no less ecstatic. "Think about it Elias, all that pain and misery and loneliness and fear in this great new world, and not only do I get to fill myself to my heart's content on it, you'll get to Watch it all happen. It's going to be marvelous, for all of us."
He's not the first one of them all to be elated at the prospect of their desired outcome so close to fruition. He is, however, the first one in a long time who's had this good of an idea ( Elias still remembers Simon's whole mess with the aquariums ) and who's going to come this close to winning. Somewhere under the Institute, the calcified heart of Jonah Magnus can still remember that feeling, and feels it echo now, in the beating of his pulse.
Elias reaches up and pushes a strand of dark hair away from Peter's face, stroking a finger along the razor edge of his cheekbone. It's an uncharacteristically tender gesture of intimacy, and Peter, though recoiling on instinct, doesn't quite jerk away.
"I can almost taste it," Elias says dryly. Peter rolls his eyes, but gives him another quick kiss anyway before pulling away.
Elias takes the moment to relish in it.
"Speaking of taste," he says, nodding to the pot on the stove. "What's cooking?"
Peter shrugs. "Just beef stew," he says. "I had some time, now that the building's about to be sealed away." His eyes gleam again at the thought. "And I didn't particularly feel like dealing with the interaction and people that come from getting takeaway, so here we are."
"And you made all that yourself?" Elias asks. Peter nods as if that's something normal. It's not. "I didn't even know you could." Now, Peter seems happy that there's something about him Elias didn't know. It's very close to being annoying. Or endearing.
"Well, apparently it's an incredibly isolating feeling to not have anyone bother to make food for you sometimes, and I've never liked being hungry, so learning how was somewhat of a necessity at one point in my youth," he says with a wave of his hand.
Elias marvels again at the fortuitousness of the Lukases to have been growing their wealth since well before Mordechai's day. Any poorer and their childrearing techniques would have a veritable army of the proper authorities descending on Moorland House to rescue the children from their myriad ways of torture. It's a miracle more of them haven't flat out died, even the ones like Peter who love it.
"I made enough food to have leftovers tomorrow, so if you wanna grab something for yourself, it won't be the worst thing ever," he continues, half distracted. Elias knows that this is Peter's uniquely Lonely way of saying that he made enough food for two. What an oddity, that he can know these things about Peter Lukas, and that Peter Lukas has allowed him to know them at all. It almost makes Elias regret letting Gertrude Robinson go about her business without stopping her or warning anyone.
Almost.
The next day, on his way to work, he sees an article in the Guardian entitled 'The Loneliest Building in Britain'. The day is filled with phone calls placating angry Lukases, and Peter ends up vanishing from the face of the Earth for seven months. It's at least another year before Elias himself sees him after that.
Peter tumbles into bed at what appears to be three in the morning, smelling like the sea and the rain.
Elias has been sleeping, sleeping ever since ten thirty at night like a reasonable adult with a normal job and a bank account. He hadn't even bothered to try and cast a line out and See where the Tundra was, the thing is terribly well cloaked and most importantly, he's half convinced that Peter would fling him into The Lonely for a solid month if he so much as tried. Besides, Elias has lost count of which divorce they're on this time. So no, he does not expect to be awoken by the feeling of the bed dipping on Peter's side, and a rush of cold air as he lays down in it. And when he glances at the clock, Elias can see the blinking three. If he weren't still groggy, he'd tear Peter's head off for that.
"Stop this," he mumbles, flinging an arm over his eyes.
"I've only just lain down," Peter snaps. As is his wont, he's at the farthest edge of the mattress as he feasibly can be without outright falling off. The room's big enough for one of those gigantic beds that can fit a family of four comfortably, and if Peter had his way, Elias has no doubt that is exactly the kind of bed he'd want. But for now, he must make do.
If Peter weren't always so freezing cold, especially when he comes back from the Tundra, Elias would worm his way closer, just to annoy him. But he's more interested in getting his rest back that engaging in antics, so instead he simply turns his body in Peter's direction. There's the clean scent of brine, of the waves, and the drizzle going on outside, with the sharp cold that accompanies it, and Elias breathes it in deep.
"You smell nice," he tells him. Even with his eyes closed, he can hear Peter's grimace of confusion. "Must have been nice for you, to make port during some bad weather."
"It was lovely," Peter says softly. "Barely a soul in sight."
"Sounds ghastly," Elias responds. Peter makes a soft, tired, huffing sound that might actually be an attempt at a laugh. He reaches out and briefly pats Elias's shoulder, before swiftly withdrawing his hand.
"Well, now that you got the prying out of your system," he says. "I've been awake for two bloody days straight, and I want to sleep."
Elias decides to let himself yawn rather than respond in kind, and simply sighs out, long and deep, sinking back into unconsciousness until the next morning. When he wakes, Peter is still sleeping at his side.
That's new. Peter despises doing that, he despises spending the night. He prefers to be vanished well before Elias even opens his eyes, to let Elias feel the acute loneliness that comes from being abandoned in the morning by the previous night's lover. It's one of the ways Peter allows himself to keep this going, finding the ways that this can feed him, sustain him, keep him at his pinnacle of power even as he indulges in that which, by all rights, he should not.
And this morning, Peter is still sleeping. Even men who sustain themselves on sacrificing their subordinates to their gods need to get in a good eight hours on occasion, it seems.
Elias takes this opportunity to get a good look at him. Peter's rarely around, and he always cloaks himself so often in his fog that it makes it annoyingly hard to both see and See. At least now, with Peter virtually comatose in the bed, Elias can actually look and not deal with any kind of whining about it. So he looks, if only for a moment. It's strangely fascinating, the ways Peter does and doesn't look like some of his more consequential ancestors. The Lukases have always had a tendency towards being thin and pale, the better to not be noticed, and Peter is no exception, no wider than a twig ever since Elias had met him, and practically the same color as the white pillowcase. Sometimes he's basically translucent. But Mordechai's hair was lighter, his eyes a cool grey, as if the color was leeching out of him from the second he found The Forsaken, while Peter...Peter appears to have gotten his mother's genes. Elias never met the woman, but he'd met Jakob, and Jakob was the sallowest, most colorless man Elias had ever had to deal with, and ridiculously short to boot.
But Peter is taller than most of his forefathers had been, and has very strikingly dark hair and quite vibrant blue eyes, even if they're currently closed, and he actually is capable of things like basic emotional expression. But right now, as he's being watched, what Peter looks like is someone young. Even with the grey streaking through his hair, and the start of an equally greying beard from his time on the Tundra, he looks young, curled up on his side and face relaxed in repose. For the first time in a good years, Jonah Magnus feels his age. Because Peter Lukas is young, to him, and even if Peter decides to go the way of him or Simon or Rayner and keep himself living past his natural life, Elias knows, even without Knowing, that some part of him will stay that way.
He's got an strange energy, Peter Lukas, and sometimes it makes Elias feel strange just to look at him.
He decides he won't Look into Peter's head. He looks peaceful, and whatever Peter can dream that would make him happy has got to be terrifying for the rest of the general populace. Elias decides instead that he's going to shake the cobwebs and maudlin thoughts from his head with coffee. He lets Peter sleep, and goes about his morning as quietly as he can, sips his drink and stares out the window at the blanket of white that's descended upon London, like wisps of smoke. He'd used to hate the mist, until that whole business with the Great Smog. At least bad weather doesn't wreak havoc on his respiratory tract.
He's engrossed in the passing drama of the poor young woman trying desperately and futilely to hail a cab below the window, her mind a whirl of concern about whether or not she's about to be sacked ( she is, and given that the cause appears to be some sort of fit involving a spider in the break room, Elias makes a note to worm some thoughts into her dreams about trying to exorcise her demons with a nice statement ) that he almost doesn't hear Peter padding into the kitchen. When Elias turns to look at him, he's still rubbing his eyes blearily and stifling a yawn. Funny, this might be the first time he's seen Peter wake up, or spent a morning with him. Peter seems to realize that, and over the circles under his eyes, his gaze is sharp.
"Not a word," Peter says preemptively, holding up a finger at him.
"I wasn't going to say anything," Elias says. A crabby Peter is one that has a tendency to flick people into the clutches of The One Alone at the most random provocation, and Elias is not dressed for a stint like that.
"Do we still have dark roast?" Peter asks.
Elias nods. "Second cupboard to the right," he tells him. "Though I don't know why you want that stuff. Did you know light roast actually contains more caffeine in it?"
"I don't care," Peter says bluntly, pushing some hair off his forehead. "Caffeine has nothing to do with it."
"Really?"
"I like the taste," Peter explains.
Elias splutters. "What, the taste?" Peter raises an eyebrow at him. "You don't even put anything in it, how can it taste remotely appetizing?"
"That doesn't bother me, and I don't need ten thousand little froofy things just to enjoy a beverage," Peter responds, preparing his cup. "The plain flavor works fine for me."
"The plain flavor tastes like diesel fuel," Elias mumbles, and Peter makes another huffing laugh sound.
"You are such a wilting little flower, Elias," Peter says, in that tone he has when he's more amused than anything else.
Elias almost finds it odd that he knows the minutia of things like Peter's food preferences, or the different tones of his voice, and then finds it ridiculous that he finds it odd. Perhaps it's the foggy morning that's making him introspective, he thinks as he takes another sip of his own beverage. After all, the situation with Peter Lukas, what they've kept on coming back to over the years, it's not anything he had expected. Their's has been one of the more interesting developments in his long life. For all his prowess, it wasn't anything he saw coming until it happened, and it appears to have stuck. So he knows things about Peter that he learned without Knowing, and if Peter weren't so bloody stubborn about being lonely, he'd probably admit that he knows things about Jonah too. What a life they've led.
"You should shave," Elias says, as Peter sits down next to him. As far away as he can manage, but still next to him. Elias still scoots closer, and enjoys the frisson Peter gives as a response. This has all the makings of a once in a lifetime ( even for him ) occurrence, and Elias wants to at least get the most out of that he can.
Peter looks almost horrified at the suggestion. "Absolutely not," he says emphatically.
"Why?" Elias asks.
"Because I don't want to, Elias," he tells him. "Whether or not you think it looks 'horrid'," he adds, as if already sensing what Elias was going to say. It was, in fact, what he was going to say.
"Well I do think that, and I may have to bother you about it until you acquiesce," Elias tells him.
Peter reaches out to pat his hand, sharp and with something of a grimace on his face. "Feel free not to."
Another barb is on the tip of his tongue, but Elias decides to swallow it for the time being. The retort can wait. They might as well enjoy the morning before Peter vanishes. So they drink, and stare out the window, Elias reading the strangers below like his newspaper, and Peter basking in the loneliness of the fog.