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Peter’s list of ‘friends’ has always been small. It changes, ebbs and flows like the tide. Sometimes a friend becomes an enemy, sometimes an enemy sparks his interest and moves away from that fate. Sometimes a bet becomes a drink, as most people want a companion. And bets for them are breaking the ice instead of staving it off, as Peter does.
Peter indulges those people, sometimes. Lets them talk to him, vent to him, sit close to him. His smiles include teeth, and he asks all of the right questions. Leading. Caring. Pointed fog that drips from his tongue and invades their minds slowly until they’re stuck on him. And then, once they want him to show up, need him to show up, he ends it. Not in a way that would allow them to heal quickly, no. With excuses of “sorry, next time?” or “how about next week?” Stringing them along until they stop missing him.
If they stop missing him. Not everyone does, of course, and those are the dangerous ones. The persistent ones.
One of these earned the cold ring that sits heavily on his left hand.
Another has cheerfully told him he’d drop him to the bottom of the sea. Not because he hates him. Just for fun.
Peter’s trappings didn’t work on either of them. He became trapped by them instead, like stepping into quicksand and not realizing until it’s to your waist.
Simon visits him on the Tundra, sometimes. He’d started these visits when Peter was younger, but they’ve gotten more often over the years.
Simon’s more tolerable. He has the same bright cheer Peter does, and the shallow conversations bounce back and forth off those cheerful exteriors like a tennis match. Simon rarely tries to go much deeper than that. Peter suspects Simon just wants someone to talk to sometimes. Spill gossip he’d learned, exchange information he’d heard about other fears’ projects, talk about the sea. He’d asked Peter if he wanted in on the Daedalus, once. Peter directed him to Nathaniel instead. Space wasn’t really his thing. He'd shown up when the project kicked off, though. Simon was far too excited to do it alone.
Simon understands. He knows the ocean is where he’d get the most answers out of Peter, so he sometimes turns the conversation to that.
Simon is bearable, if a bit insistent. He’s one of the two contacts in his phone, and though he sends a lot of messages, Peter never feels much pressure to answer them.
The other one, with a pale gold ring to match Peter’s silver one. Elias. Elias is complicated.
Elias is a low lit fire of passion, and Peter is cold, icy, water. Incompatible, quite able to kill each other, but danger is always intoxicating, isn’t it? They both flare up sometimes, arguing until one of them storms away.
It’s usually Peter that retreats the rest of the way, though. Running to the sea, and he can feel those cold, pretty eyes follow him.
Elias is handsome to the point of unfair. Strong, capable, and well spoken. He makes Peter feel immature. He makes Peter, though the latter towers at least a good half a foot over him, feel small. And that low-lit passionate and ambitious fire behind his digging gaze always threatens to burn if Peter gets too close. He knows the more he gives Elias, the more Elias can use against him later. He knows that because he also gathers what Elias gives, for the same purpose.
At least the sex is nice. Sometimes it’s a fight, exactly what they need. Sometimes it’s not. It’s just been a half a year. Peter’s always sore afterwards, either way. He wonders, a few times, if Elias tries to hurt him worse when it’s the absence than when it’s the fights. Peter’s usually the opposite.
They’re incompatible that way. To the point where it balances back out to compatibility.
But their relationship aside, they always have to stay “friends”. Their entities are aligned, entwined to the point where it doesn’t matter how either of them really feel. They have to play nice.
Peter wants to pull away.
Peter wants to break these relationships away from himself and curl back into the ice. He doesn’t want Simon’s chipping away, nudging further into his life. He doesn’t want Elias’ melting touches. The warm murmurs against his skin, the arms around him when the sun goes down. That lingering tight feeling in his chest even when Peter leaves before the sun rises again.
He wants the cold. He wants the fear and the hurt and the numbing frigid ice of the Lonely. The agony, brought to a dull ache as he wades into the Lonely. As if barefoot in the winter ocean, toes stinging and burning and then numbing as the shivers wrack his body. Knowing what warmth was and choosing to throw it away would always end like this. It's satisfying, it feelsright.
When he pulls back, though, they both fall around him. Combined warmth that makes him feel his fingers again. Thaws the ice and fills him with heat from the chest out.
It’s cruel of both of them.