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"James?"
Walking into the institute felt strange. Very strange. Like he hadn't been there for years. In all truth, he hadn't, not really. The Tundra had a habit of getting lost; as he had designed it, of course, but sometimes it was a bit of an inconvenience, being trapped in the middle of the sea, not knowing if your husband or his strange little plot to make an oligarchy of the world under the surveillance of Big Brother Beholding was actually still afloat. Still, the feeling of coming back was nice. Every time it felt like returning to a place Peter had never once known, nor cared to. Jamais-vu, James had described it. Nice, though, nonetheless, like... returning home. A home that rejected his very nature, but Peter chose to ignore that.
"James?"
The woman at the desk when he walked in had given him a strange look, almost like she didn't expect to see him there, but he didn't care to know why. He'd been there plenty enough times before to afford to forgo the small talk that came with asking for permission to see his... husband? Sure. Husband.
There were eyes plastered on every wall. Peter often admonished his husband for his poor interior design choices. Perhaps poor was an understatement, actually. Not that Peter would know, all he was aware of was how his skin crawled under the strangely oppressive boot of an inky, black pupil, sitting as smugly inside its iris as James did with his comedically oversized chair. He laughed, though he was never truly certain if it was out of amusement. Besides, his skin still itched like he was being corrupted from his very insides, and he couldn't concentrate on much else.
"I come back, and he's nowhere to be seen. Great. Just my luck, isn't it.." Peter murmurs to himself, revelling in the innate irony of the sentiment.
For such a small room, the echo of the door clicking open from behind Peter was deafening.
"Ah, there you are, my l- ah."
Of course. It was due to happen sooner or later, wasn't it?
"You're not James."
"Well-" Elias retorts, his eyes fixated, unblinking, on the man infront of him. Those eyes... those eyes were always the same. Strangely, Peter never quite felt the oppression he was accustomed to under the chokehold of that gaze. "For what it's worth, I missed you."
Peter chuckled. "I should hope so. I mean, come now, its been, what, a ye-"
"Two hundred and thirteen days," Elias interjects.
"You kept count?"
"I had nothing better to do."
A comfortable silence settled over the pair. To Peter, every silence was comfortable, if he mentally drowned out the tinnitus. Despite himself, he smiled.
"Who are we this time, hm?"
Elias huffs a soft sigh, glancing at his watch. Peter knew he wasn't checking the time, he never did. Hell, he wasn't even convinced the man knew how to read an analogue clock. "Elias Bouchard, I recall." Jonah Magnus was a creature of habit, after all. Routinely checking a watch that would have been more useful were it faceless, carrying himself with that same, I-have-spent-literally-200-years-in-academia, air of arrogance, and, hell, even employing a string of similar looking men to kill and inhabit for the next few decades.
"It almost suits you."
"You say that every time."
He did. If nothing, it was the truth. Peter didn't lie, or at least he tried not to, deciet was far too heavy a companion for his tastes, anyway. He sighs. "I missed you too, Elias," he taunts, purposefully drawing out the name.
"Tsk. Sure, sure, whatever you say, Peter," though, like his husband, Elias smiles despite himself. Maybe Elias was the type of man that smiled. Maybe Elias was the type of man that... stayed married, at least for a little while longer. If anything, Jonah Magnus wanted him to be.