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“Come on Elias, ” Lukas says like it’s something to be ashamed of, yet he pulls at Jonah’s hand with insistence. His hands are solid and calloused and Jonah can see right through them; he can’t feel their temperature but he knows they’d be as cold as the ocean that surrounds them. The ship sways below his feet and the silence is as disorentating as always, and yet, in this moment, Jonah feels as grounded as he would be in London, where thousands of souls cry out their fear and begs to be learnt.
Lukas pulls him above deck, below the stars that blink down at him like so many great eyes. Jonah for a second lets himself imagine this to be the world his master would bring, where everyone would be known and not know. Then the stars are gone and in their place a great expanse of Nothing lingers. Lukas laughs at Jonah’s affronted expression, made on a face that is still foreign to him, and pulls him in closer. They almost meet in a kiss but Lukas turns his face away at the last moment, “Coward,” Jonah accuses with a grin.
“I distinctly remember someone screaming their head off and clinging to me not a fortnight before,” Lukas drawls in his most punchable voice with his most punchable expression, and
Jonah
Elias has never been one to turn down a challenge. So he slugs Lukas, right in his dumb, punchable face.
Lukas just laughs it off, not even slightly phased, and looks at Jonah with one eyebrow raised.
“Still giving you trouble?”
“Shut up Peter.”
“My, what an Elias thing to say!”
Jonah punches him again.
More laughter.
Jonah curses his lack of strength, and in the future, no one will be able to mock him again. In the future he will create, he will be an infallible god.
But in this moment, Jonah Magnus laughs along with Peter Lukas and does not think of the grand, beautiful world he will create. For a moment, they’re just two people out a sea, far away from the fates they’re bound to. They’re just two people, tangentially in love and facing each other under a starless night sky.
Lukas bends down to press their foreheads and Jonah takes the opportunity to grab his (shitty, arrogant) scarf and drag him down even further for a kiss. He feels Lukas gasp against his lips and his hands jerk up to hang between their bodies, not sure of what to do. Jonah takes the hesitation as permission and reaches up to grab Lukas’ face, his guards are down, and Jonah can taste his shock and uncertainty. Vulnerable, for a moment.
Then Lukas holds his face and kisses back, and the moment is gone. Jonah pulls back and frowns, “It’s less fun when you decide that kissing me is somehow the loneliest thing of all.”
“Am I wrong?” Lukas lets go of Jonah and steps back.
“You’re right but you shouldn’t say it.”
“I thought the Eye was all for saying things.”
“I thought the Lonely was against intimacy and being known.”
Lukas presses a hand to his heart in mock offence, but says nothing. Jonah, uncharacteristically, doesn’t push the matter. They fall back into silence until the ship goes over a particularly large wave, and Jonah stumbles, his feet go out from beneath him as he is caught by Lukas. Who, of course, is laughing hysterically at him, but he doesn’t let Jonah fall.
“You’re a mess on your feet Jonah.”
“Watch your mouth Lukas.”
“Or what, you’ll punch me again?”
Jonah presses his mouth into a hard line, for all his knowing unable to come up with a good retort. He ends up kissing Lukas again, if only to shut him up.
Somehow this night ends with Jonah singing an old sailing song, just to prove he can, and spinning Lukas around in a waltz completely unfitting of the song.
A step forward and a step back. Two bodies pressed close yet so, oh so, far apart. Like parallel feet, parallel lives, written in their destiny to never touch. As incompatible as a ballroom dance with a sea shanty. The most ordinary night of Jonah Magnus and Peter Lukas’ long, long lives.