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“It’s the way it is, Elias. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, really.”
Peter strides into the empty room as he speaks. Elias Bouchard walks in behind him, closing and locking the door in one smooth motion. He always was too prim and proper, too polite to cause a scene or slam a door. Prick.
He turns to Peter, who fixes a bemused expression onto his face, complete with wide, innocent eyes and slight smile. Elias never liked it when he played the fool, and his glare could have melted steel.
“Peter, how many times must I repeat myself? There is ‘the way it is’-“ he uses air quotes without committing to the gesture itself, and yet Peter can always hear the implication clearly in Elias’s voice, “-and then there’s the way you have been behaving for the past six months.”
Peter scoffs, running a hand through his wavy, grey-white hair. “Which is how, exactly?”
“Ask yourself that, because unfortunately I don't know. Would you like to know why I don’t know, Peter?”
Peter looks him over, knowing that Elias was Looking right back at him. The practiced, plastic smile he uses for greeting wealthy donors and dealing with other legal matters is firmly affixed, and as genuine as it appears, it does not reach his eyes. Having learned to see through that particular act years ago, Peter widens his view, takes in the pinch of Elias’s eyebrows, the slight tension in his shoulders, the way his back was ramrod straight in comparison to his usual loose posture. Elias was furious, and Peter had never been able to resist fanning the flames.
“Eye-rectile dysfunction?”
“Fuck you.”
“We could do that right now,” Peter says automatically, “plenty of time and room on that desk.“
Elias scowls in irritation, and Peter has to bite his lip so that another ill-advised comment doesn’t slip through. Best not to call his irate husband “adorable” when he could practically smell the divorce papers being written up again.
“You were gone, Peter. Gone on your damn boat-“
“Ship.”
“-boat, for six months, and I couldn’t See you.” Elias’s face is stone-cold and smooth once more,, and the biting tone in his words is the only indication of any emotion lurking behind his piercing gaze.
Something about the emphasis on ‘See,’ of the capital so clearly implied, makes Peter bristle despite his careless attitude towards why Elias is so irritated. He allows the silence to linger, dwelling in the tension and all the words he’s sure that Elias is refraining from spitting out. Elias watches, and Peter waits.
Finally, he speaks, and immediately regrets the too-cool tone of his words.
“Is that what this is about then? Not being able to See me?”
Elias blows a strand of hair away from his eyes with an irritated huff. “Of course it is, Peter. Don’t be absurd, what else would it be.”
And like always, Peter’s too slow to respond, to defend himself. Too late to collect his thoughts and riposte, give an excuse before Elias’s eyes widen in realization, and his lips curl into a mocking smile.
“You didn’t think I missed you? That I was worried?“
Fuck.
“No, why would I ever think that?” His voice pitches up despite himself, wavering in a near-imperceptible, yet incredibly telling show of his denial. “Elias Bouchard, missing and showing concern for someone, that’ll be the day. Obviously your Sight is the only important thing here, glad we’ve clarified that. If that’s all, well, now you’ve seen me, so! I’ll just be going.”
He wants nothing more than to vanish into the Lonely.
Elias’s damned smirk - a smirk, Peter hadn’t thought people actually did that until he’d met Elias - is still playing on his face, and Peter wants to strangle him when he opens his mouth again. “Sit down, Peter. Goodness, you’re being ridiculous tonight.”
“I’m being ridiculous? Says the prissy arse who marched me in here all huffy, bitching and moaning about who knows what,” Peter replies, affronted.
“You disappeared for months, and I couldn’t see you. How many times will I have to repeat myself before those words penetrate your thick skull?”
He rolls his eyes and sighs loudly. The same old argument. Here we go again, Peter thinks to himself grimly. “Oh, that’s rich. How many times do I have to tell you that, surprise surprise Elias, that’s how it’s always been, how I’ve always been. It’s give and take, I let you see me and then get to fuck off for a few months while you shove your prying arse somewhere else, that’s how it works.”
“Six. Months,” Elias snaps angrily. “Six months, Peter, without a whisper or a letter or a call.”
"You’ve been around for centuries, what’s a few months to you? An hour of a regular man’s life?”
Elias voice pitches up, slight spots of colour on his cheeks. Peter does not find him attractive right now, he absolutely does not. “Peter, we are not regular men.”
"Which is why I don’t understand what’s so unreasonable about me being away for a few months, Elias. That’s how I operate, you know that, and I’ve been gone for longer, so who cares!“
The room is silent, save for the distant sounds of idle conversation happening in another room. Peter is all too rapidly exhausted by his outburst.
Finally, coldly:
“My apologies, Peter.”
He nearly chokes. “Your what?”
“It was my mistake, after all.”
“Your what-“
“And I-“ there is the slightest hitch in Elias’s voice, “-should have remembered myself. You’re entirely correct, neither of us truly care about the other. I overstepped, and I hope you’ll accept my apology.” His expression evens out once more into the emotionless mask that Peter despises.
“Hang on, Elias, I didn’t-“
“I believe it best that we return to the party now that things have been clarified. I assume our absences will be noted, if they haven’t been already.”
Elias is walking back towards the door, walking away from Peter, and he can’t let the conversation end here. No matter how much he loathes confrontation, no matter how much he wants to agree and abandon his husband to his sulking.
“Elias."
He’s faster, always was, and broad strides give him the edge he needs to beat Elias to the door, grabbing him and swinging them both around elegantly until he stands in Elias’s way.
“Let go of me, Peter.” His voice is calm, almost serene, and Peter despises confrontation and arguments and raised voices, but he would pay good money to have Elias in a temper again, because it’s better than the too-quiet apathy that falls from his lips now.
Peter runs his free hand through his hair once more, trying very had to not think about how much of a human habit it’s become. “Look, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Elias raises a single eyebrow in mocking bemusement. “Oh? But I do agree with you, Peter. Your assessment of our relationship was entirely accurate. Ours has never been a marriage steeped in affection, after all.”
“Elias, don’t be like this,” Peter sighs, face twisting into a grimace. “I’m- I do care, I promise.” The words taste bitter on his tongue, because after decades he’s still not sure how true the sentiment is, not sure what caring really is.
It’s clear that Elias picks up on the hesitance in his voice, because he is laughing, the sound clipped and pained. “You don’t care, Peter. That’s perfectly alright, of course, because neither do I.” He smiles, a tight thing, sharp and tinged with hysteria. “I lost my ability to care. You…somehow I have to doubt that you ever learned.”
Peter isn’t sure what it’s like to be hurt, emotionally, doesn’t know what it is to feel heartbreak. All the divorces they’ve gone through have been petty affairs, Elias shouting as Peter waits out the temper tantrum, encases his head in Lonely static and tunes his husband out. This might be the closest he gets to experiencing the pain of loss, and he’s torn between recoiling from the twist of his heart and embracing it
“We’re married, don’t be stupid,” he manages weakly.
“I’d like you to let go of me now, if you would,” is Elias’s cold response.
Impulsively, emotionally: “Say you’ll stay and hear me out first.”
“Peter. Let go.”
“Elias, say you’ll listen for once, or I will hold you down, and you know I can-“
As Elias’s gaze sharpens, Peter finds himself immediately regretting the threat. “Hold me down, yes, but can you do this?”
And then it’s as though a spotlight is shining down on him, like Peter’s been thrust into centre stage for all the world to see, conjuring up images from his past of people and places, suffocating and surrounding, knowing him, seeing him-
Instinctively, he pulls the shroud of Lonely comfort around him, and the high pitched whistling static fades the world into a comfortable, monotonous numbness. He takes precious seconds to recover from Elias’s little spat, then shrugs off the fog again, reforming between Elias and the door once more.
“Elias, you are the most annoyingly immature-“
“Yes, while threatening to hold me down is the height of class and gentlemanlike behaviour.”
“Look, I’m sorry, Elias!” Peter explodes. “Is that what you want to hear, you miserable cunt? You know that I care about you, even if you’re a rotten little bastard, and I never meant to say that I didn’t care, because I do, damn you.”
He such in another breath as humility wars with deep seated resentment. “And I’m sorry I was gone for so long. Happy?”
Somewhere in his blustered, overemotional apology, Peter’s eyes have dropped to the ground, unable as always to meet Elias’s gaze. His head snaps up immediately, however, when he hears the quiet laughter, mocking and yet sugar-sweet, and knows.
“That’s kind of you, Peter. I accept your rather…emotional apology.”
Peter is seconds away from up and vanishing, and has to resist the rare but powerful urge to scream. “Oh, you bloody bastard.“
“Now, now, that’s no way to talk to your husband,” Elias responds smoothly, with mirth (mirth! The nerve of him!) and the faintest chuckle.
“I can’t believe you, you and your Web-like manipulative horseshoe, you overgrown eyeball of a corpse-“
Elias scoffs. “How dare you, I am not affiliated with the Web.”
“-eat my arse, Bouchard.”
“Bouchard-Lukas, actually. My husband is such a delight, I do believe the two of you would get along well.”
Peter’s fingers twitch, and he pushes away the violent image of his hands around Elias’s throat. “Oh, like you hyphenate unless it suits you in our arguments. I should divorce you again, the way you carry on.”
“But you won’t, Elias says, irritatingly, knowingly. "Will you?”
They both know the answer to that.
Sighing heavily, Peter beckons Elias towards him. “Come here, you arse.”
Elias’s smaller frame fits too well in his arms, and the expensive fabric of his suit brushes and catches against the rougher, thick knit of Peter’s sweater.
“I love you, Peter.”
“I loathe you,” Peter responds, placing a kiss atop Elias’s head.
“They say it's a fine line between loving and loathing,” his husband remarks, teasingly. “I'd imagine it to be too much emotion for you either way.”
“You disgust me.”
“My, I wouldn’t have thought a Lukas to be in the habit of kissing disgusting things.”
“Shut up,” Peter says, and deftly pulls Elias into another kiss.