Chapter Text
It takes a few seconds, but on the fourth ring, the call finally connects.
“Hello?” a voice says through the receiver, and Mathias’s heart nearly stops. It’s been far too long.
“Lukas!” he shouts, “You did it! You answered a phone!” He can’t help but laugh as he imagines Lukas holding the phone away from his ear. He feels like his mother, for crying out loud, but who can blame him? He’s only reacting the same way she did when he first got in touch with her after everything happened back at the Dump. Okay, maybe he’s not freaking out like she was, but he is definitely over the moon to hear Lukas’s voice again.
“I did,” Lukas responds, just as calm and almost deadpan as always. Four months can’t change a person that quickly. Although in Mathias’s eyes, a couple months can change everything. Upon arrival home in Denmark, he felt like a completely different person. Yeah, he’d been on the road long before he ended up in France, but those few months he spent with Lukas and Emil were the most important, looking back.
“So how are you?!” Mathias asks. “I haven’t talked to you in so long!” Partially true. He hasn’t seen Lukas since he left in December, but they still had contact. They did the old-fashioned thing and wrote each other letters, to keep each other updated with their lives. There was never all that much to say—again, four months is not a significantly long time—but Mathias looked forward to checking his mailbox every day. Lukas had taken over Mathias’s spot at the pizza place, and even Emil found work at a grocery store (not one that they robbed).
He hears Lukas shuffling around on the other end. “I’m perfectly fine. This is weird,” he says. Mathias chuckles. Lukas finally caved and purchased a burner phone of his own, but having sworn to never use one for twenty years, he’s still a bit technologically inept. As for Mathias, his parents very willingly bought him a more…modern cell phone that resembled the one he had before everything he had to his name got stolen. He still has his burner phone, it’s just buried in his bedside drawer.
“You’ll get used to it. But hey, now you can see that technology isn’t all the bad. I mean, you’re not being watched or tracked or anything.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what they want you to think.” There’s a hint of amusement in his voice.
But they laugh together anyways, and Mathias is just so happy to hear his voice that he feels like his heart might burst. He sighs contently into the phone and listens as Lukas reciprocates it, and his smile grows impossible wider.
They talk for hours, probably. Mathias doesn’t make the mental note to ever check the time. They talk about everything that they’ve already exchanged in their letters, and throw in the extra details that they forget to write about. At one point he hears the door creak open and light footsteps, until Emil’s voice is shouting at him about how much they miss him and what’s up with them and everything in between.
Eventually, Lukas asks about his work life—whether he’s at university or has a job—and Mathias slowly sucks in a breath. In their letters, whenever asked about it, he simply writes that it’s a work in progress. To tell the truth, he’s…still thinking about it all. If he goes to school, he’ll probably study geography. Afterwards, who knows what? There’s so much involved with that path of study—there’s cartography, photogrammetry, GIS—but he’s thinking about it. Doing actual research about it. He tells Lukas this much. Plus, he is working as a part-time secretary at his mom’s psychology office. So it’s not as if he’s doing nothing with his life.
Lukas is certainly glad to hear it. “That’s a good start,” he says, “You’ll figure it out one day.” Mathias is partially worried one day won’t be for a very long time, but he tries not to dwell on it. He has no time to freak out over his future when he’s finally talking to his favorite person again.
“Oh! That reminds me,” Mathias says. Sitting at his desk in his bedroom, he fiddles around with his computer and pulls up a website. Purposeless, since Lukas can’t see his computer screen, but that’s alright. “I have a surprise for you.”
“…What?” Lukas asks. His voice is full of suspicion, and Mathias imagines his eyes narrowing into an untrusting glare, not approving of his antics.
“No need to be so judgy!” he laughs, “I just wanted to share with you that in a few weeks I will be on a plane to Paris.”
Lukas goes silent. Mathias sits back and waits for a response, but doesn’t get one. He knows Lukas’s silence isn’t negative; he’s just shocked, or too excited to produce words, yet after a moment, he begins to doubt himself. Finally, Lukas says something. “Really?” he asks, and his voice is tiny and almost disbelieving. Honestly, it’s adorable.
“Yeah, really,” Mathias answers. It’s impossible to keep the grin off his face, and he thinks Lukas is smiling, too.
“For my birthday?” Lukas asks then. Mathias chuckles under his breath. He’ll be turning twenty-one the day before Mathias’s arrival, and Mathias only a few weeks later. He can only stay for a week, what with work and all, but it’ll be a week they’ll both love.
“Yeah,” Mathias says again. “And, my dad hasn’t stopped talking about seeing the Pompidou again since I got back here, so, my parents are coming as well. I promise they won’t bug us, though!”
For a second, Lukas’s laughter cuts in and out, as if the connection is unstable, which it likely is. It brings Mathias back to that night in the downpour, after his and Lukas’s argument over the money that was kept from him—the night he tried telling his mom he wanted to go home. The storm had been bad, both in France and in Denmark, that they just couldn’t hear each other. He wonders if the weather is bad in Paris right now.
Soon enough, the shoddy connection turns much clearer, and he can actually hear Lukas properly. It sounds like he’s merely shuffling around the room, pacing in circles to keep himself occupied, or stimulated, or whatever. It doesn’t matter to him, he doesn’t mind the silence. Just knowing that Lukas is on the other end is enough for now.
“Is that alright with you?” Mathias asks.
“Hm? What? You coming to visit?”
“More like my parents coming alone with me, but yeah. Does that sound good?”
“Yes,” Lukas says, “Very good. I don’t mind that they’re coming, either. You said your dad wanted to go to the Pompidou…maybe we could all go again. If you want.”
He loves the idea. Maybe neither of them are crazy about art the way Mathias’s dad is, but the Pompidou has a special place in his heart, and apparently, Lukas’s as well. He reflects on the last time he was there, that chilling night with Lukas and Emil. The evening had begun so nervously, with Lukas feeling the overwhelming sense of not belonging, and had ended in the greatest way possible. That moment of laying on the floor of the museum’s library, teaching the other two how to read maps, with Lukas pressed so close next to him. It was then and there that Mathias was certain, it’s him. He’s the one.
“I would love that,” he says at last.
“Good,” Lukas tells him. “Because I can’t wait to see you.”
From downstairs, Mathias’s mother calls him to dinner. He glances at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. He didn’t realize it was getting so late. “I can’t wait to see you, too,” he says.
“You have to go, don’t you?”
“How do you know?”
He can almost see Lukas’s smirk through the phone. “I could hear your mom’s voice. I told you, you get it from somewhere.”
Mathias barks with laughter, probably only further proving his point. “I see what you mean,” he sighs, “But yeah, I do have to go.”
“That’s alright. I’ll see you soon enough, right?”
“Right. And, until then, we have wonderful technology that isn’t spying on us to keep us connected.” He just knows Lukas is rolling his eyes right now.
“Uh-huh,” is the sarcastic reply. “Well, you go ahead and go then.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Mathias says. Then he adds, “I love you.”
A pause, and a certain answer: “I love you, too.”
Mathias smiles. “See you soon.”