Chapter Text
When Peter steps back into Elias’ office, having just disembarked from the Tundra that morning, he doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. The door creaks on its hinges as always, and his steps are muffled by the same overbearing thick carpet. The air is thick with the scent of old paper and ink, the weight of the past hanging in every corner of the room. It feels pristine yet oppressive, every object meticulously placed.
Elias is seated behind his desk, one finger tapping against the wooden surface as reads over a document that Peter could care less about. He doesn’t look up, not immediately. He knows Peter is there, of course, but he lets the silence stretch just long enough to bring an irritated twitch to Peter’s brow.
“I’m back.”
“Peter.”
His name, so casually uttered, sends a spark down his spine.
Peter sharply exhales through his nose. This kind of greeting can only mean trouble. Still, it’s nothing out of the expected from his husband.
At that, Elias finally looks up, his eyes glinting with a secret. There’s something different about him. Peter can’t place it immediately, but it’s there, lingering in his gaze, in the curve of his smirk. It’s unsettling.
“Four months,” Elias muses, tilting his head. “Nearly five. I was beginning to think you had forgotten about me.”
Ha. Liar. Peter scoffs, crossing the room with measured steps. “I doubt you’d ever let me.”
“Hm. No, I wouldn’t.”
“How much have I missed?”
Elias hums, tracing a long finger over his wedding band. He’s wearing one of their first rings today. The one from their second wedding, if Peter isn’t mistaken.
“Oh, this and that. Things that amuse me and things that wouldn’t amuse you.” His gaze flickers over Peter’s frame, assessing. “You look well, for someone who’s spent months in the bitter cold. Beard could use a trim.”
“It’s fine,” Peter answers gruffly, but does not move away when Elias rises to his feet to inspect said beard. “And you…”
He trails off, things finally clicking into place as he gets to see Elias in his entirety. He looks fuller. Not drastically so, but enough that Peter notices how his sharp features are subtly rounder, the way his waistcoat strains around a–
Oh.
Oh, no.
Elias smiles. “Go on. Say what you’re thinking.”
Peter almost turns speechless, but the command prompts him to speak. “Elias, what is that?”
“Hm? What is what?”
“That.”
“Do use your words, Peter. I know you have them somewhere in that water-logged head of yours.”
“Do not make me say it. You know what I’m talking about.”
Elias grins. “I’m afraid I do not.”
Bastard.
Peter takes a step forward, his hand trembling as he gestures toward the gentle curve straining under Elias’ shirt. “You…you’re pregnant?”
For just a moment, Elias’ grin falters. It’s only a flicker, the kind that occurs when one is reminded of the existence of something particularly annoying. Like a stain on a favoured coat or a particularly persistent insect. “Oh, right. That. Yes, Peter, I am.”
That makes Peter’s heart lurch in his chest. The numbness that has lived there for years is suddenly nowhere to be found as a surge of wild emotion hits him like a moving truck. Dread. Anger. Disbelief. Something else, something too tangled to name. He wants to shout, to scream, to demand answers, but the words catch in his throat. Only half a syllable manages to slip past his lips before the pair plunge into silence. A suffocating silence, worse than any fog as Peter’s mind races, unable to process the absurdity of it all.
Elias quickly loses interest in his stunned shock. Or perhaps he is only pretending to. It’s hard to tell with the little shit, sometimes. Regardless, he huffs with indifference and returns to sorting through the papers on his desk, sitting down once more while Peter keeps himself standing. His movements are different. Less controlled. The bump is out of sight now, but the vision of it burns in Peter’s mind like a fresh scar.
“How long…?” Peter inevitably chokes out.
“Long enough that I should get it taken care of, really. I’m not usually this careless,” Elias answers. “But I suppose that’s not the real question, is it?”
It isn’t. Peter already knows the answer to that question, but he has to make it anyway.
“Mine?”
The smile on Elias’ face is sly as it curls his lips, twisting his expression into one of disgusting amusement. He has not been careless, Peter learns. This has very much been done on purpose.
“Yours.”
Peter’s breath leaves him in a rough exhale, as if Elias has just reached into his chest and squeezed the air from his lungs with those deft, scheming fingers of his. His pulse roars in his ears, drowning out every rational thought that might have guided him through this moment.
He should have expected this. He really really should have. Elias never does anything without a plan coiled around his every move like a serpent ready to strike. And yet, despite all the years he has spent trying to keep himself out of those plans, Peter finds himself caught in one yet again.
“Why?” The word is barely more than a rasp, his voice strangled by a thousand different emotions.
Elias is still wearing that obnoxious smirk, fingers steepled beneath his chin, watching Peter with the lazy satisfaction of a cat toying with its prey. “Does it matter?”
Yes. No. Peter supposes it doesn’t really matter. It’s done now. A seed planted the night before he’d departed on the Tundra, now gestating and growing upon his return. A part of himself, nestled inside Elias like a parasite in its host.
“You need to get rid of it,” Peter says, and Elias laughs.
“Oh, Peter,” he says, tilting his head as if the suggestion is as absurd as setting fire to his own archives. “You really are funny when you pretend you have a say in things.”
Peter clenches his fists, nails biting into his palms. The room is starting to feel smaller. Tighter. “You said yourself that this was a mistake–”
“I said I was careless. Not that it was a mistake.” Elias’ gaze gleams with something unreadable. He leans back in his seat, enough that it’s perfectly visible how he rests a taunting hand on the swell of his stomach. The gesture is possessive and territorial. A cruel mockery of something tender. “Besides, I find I’ve rather changed my mind.”
“Elias,” Peter warns.
“Peter.”
“Jonah.”
Elias’ smirk deepens at the sound of his old name. He drums his fingers against his stomach in an almost thoughtful gesture, though Peter knows better than to believe it’s anything but calculated.
“You should be excited , Peter. We are to be parents to a wonderful bundle of terror. Your family will be thrilled.”
A horrible sinking feeling settles into Peter’s gut, like an anchor dragging him down into the depths of the dark and inescapable. He can already imagine their faces, their scorn sharpening into knives. He swallows hard, tasting bile, and forces himself to meet Elias’ gaze.
“You’re doing this to spite me.” It isn’t a question. It’s a fact and an accusation and also a plea for Elias to deny it.
He doesn’t, of course. Elias simply chuckles to himself, fully aware of exactly how thrilled the Lukas family would be with one of their own procreating with a servant of the Eye.
“I’m doing this for my own reasons. But watching you squirm is a delightful little bonus. It’s been a while since I got a reaction like this from you.”
Peter’s mind reels, grasping for some foothold in the sheer absurdity of the situation. He can barely comprehend it. Elias has always been the one with control, always the one to dictate the terms of their relationship. The one to proclaim that he’d be on birth control to make sure this wouldn’t happen. The one to pull away and leave Peter in the ruins of what could have been, over and over again.
And yet here they are. Elias has shackled them together in a way Peter never even considered.
“And what…” Peter exhales sharply through his nose, fog mixing with his breath as the Lonely calls for his solitude. “What exactly do you expect me to do with this?”
“Why, Peter, darling . I expect you to be a father.”