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The water was beyond freezing, and James was holding his parabatai’s hand, both shivering and trying hard to take the last bits of heat from his body and give them to him. They were looking at each other in the eyes, their weak gazes intertwined.
James spoke. “M-Math… please, don’t leave me just yet. I-I’m trying to give you all my strength here, I don’t know if it’s enough, but please, take it all and stay here– s-stay with me. I swear to the Angel if you ever left me, my heart would split in half like this goddamn ship did and could never be mended again. I would die here, too. And if I didn’t, I would still spend the rest of my days with half a heart, half a body, half a soul.”
“J-James…” Matthew stuttered, almost unable to move his lips anymore because of the cold. He only managed to say three more words. “I-I love y-you.”
James was still holding his hand tight, and then he moved closer to him, so that their bodies were lying against each other on the wide wooden board they had retrieved from the wreck, and James’ other arm surrounded the body of his now so vulnerable parabatai. “Always, Mathew. I will always love you, too.”
He moved his lips closer to Matthew's, and stayed like that for a few seconds. He gently stroked his wet blonde locks, before finally crushing their lips together. It was soft, at first– but sharp at the same time, and cold. They were like two ice sheets colliding, binding, melting into each other, becoming one. Their whole bodies were shivering, as they cautiously deepened the kiss, holding tighter onto each other. It was one last desperate act of life, the hope of survival and a promise of eternal love whispered on their numb and aching lips. In that moment, all that James could feel was his love for Matthew, and all that Matthew could feel was his love for James.
James was married– he had a family he loved deeply, and that would never change. In addition to that, parabatai could be bound to each other by philia and agape, but not eros. They could never be lovers: it was strictly forbidden, the punishment for any Shadowhunter guilty of it being them to be stripped of their marks, or even be sentenced to death. Many had wondered why a law against such a pure thing like love was ever enacted. Those reasons had always been a dark and dangerous secret; eventually, everybody had given up on their curiosity and just stuck to what the law said. Dura lex, sed lex. The law is hard, but it is the law.
Nevertheless, the love the Matthew and James shared went beyond that law and beyond everything else. Cordelia knew how deep their bond was, and was never jealous of it– instead, she encouraged it and enforced it with her own, endless love towards the two men. No one truly understood the power of the tether which held them together – except perhaps for Lucie – but they didn't care, they were alright with it: they kept the truth of their feelings to theirselves, away from the eyes of the law and the strict social mores; it was enough, because it simply worked for them: they didn't need to explain theirselves to each other, even less to the others.
And that was why, in that moment in which they were both so close to death, there was nothing better to do than to unfold the desperate affection they felt for each other in that indisputable way.
James was dying, and he was more than happy to do so while kissing Matthew.
Where thou diest, will I die. And there will I be buried:
The Angel do so to me, and more also, If aught but death part thee and me.
Matthew, for his part, had never yet experienced true love: he'd only loved James, Cordelia, his friends and family– but this love was the thing that had kept him alive until that very moment, even in the utmost state of desperation he was currently in. He began to forget the cold, the wounds, the people’s screams, all of it– the only thing he knew then were James’ lips and hands all over him, in the middle of Atlantic Ocean, on the edge between life and death.
They forgot about everything else until, all of a sudden, they stopped being cold. It was like their senses had gone numb. Their parabatai runes were glimmering in the darkness of that moonless, starry night, and then the numbness soon started to feel like actual heat. A stream of light spread in a circle around them and around the board they were lying on. No, they thought, simultaneously breaking the kiss. It was not just simple light.
It was fire.