Chapter Text
There is blood on his hands.
There is quite a lot of blood.
In fact, his hands are potentially the least bloody thing in this room. What is this room again? Oh yeah, the saferoom underneath Jonah's office, which he uses for the eye transfers. How long has Peter's family been doing this for? Actually, how many of Jonah's "close male associates" have done this for him before? Perhaps Peter should take it as a good omen that he himself has done this more than once. Perhaps it means that Jonah cannot discard him quite as easily as he's discarded the rest of his dreadful little polycule.
Jonah himself, now in the body of the weed-smoking receptionist that happened to be closest when "James Wright" had "sadly passed away, we're very sorry Mister Lukas, but why do you need the eyes, you'll pay us how much!?" was still adjusting to this new vessel, mercifully unconscious as his mind replaced... what was that twink's name? Elias? Yes, while his sharp mind replaced the haze of Elias's, neither was awake to bother Peter while they wrestled for control. Much unlike the transfer to James's body, where there was quite a lot more screaming.
Although, without that terrible noise, it is dreadfully quiet. Peter revels in the quiet, at first, until it becomes less Lonely and more boring. How much longer is the transfer going to take? Surely Elias can't be putting up that much of a fight. He'd been very inebriated when Peter kidnapped him, and Jonah is, rather unfortunately, one of the strongest-willed people Peter knows.
"Hurry up," Peter mumbles, poking at the unconscious body that was soon to belong to his... acquaintance. "You're just being lazy now."
It occurs to Peter, then, that perhaps he should not be in this small room full of blood. The scent of iron is beginning to drown out that of his beloved ocean. In fact, the red tinge is beginning to interfere with his all-consuming fog. That thought is what finally gets him off his arse, hauling the body through the Lonely (thank goodness the dream logic of this place counts unconscious people as carry-on) and to the rather lovely house that he had paid for, which Jonah is simply living in and decorating with a truly abhorrent number of "hidden" eyes. The Beholding has never been one for subtlety, Peter thinks, as he sets Jonah's new body on the expensive couch. The one he's never allowed to sit on after months at sea, that couch. In fact, Jonah is quite rude to him after his trips. He doesn't get one moment of reprieve before Jonah is herding him into the bathroom like a rather small sheepdog.
The shower. For all Peter despises Jonah's strange fastidiousness (really, how can you possibly be this concerned with cleanliness when your eyes are 200 years old), the shower suddenly seems like a rather lovely idea. It would distract him from waiting for Jonah to shove Elias back in the deepest recesses of the mind, and it would feel very nice to get the now-dried blood off of his hands, face, and... how did that get into his hair? Elias must've fought back more than he thought. It didn't matter in the end, of course; the only thing that had changed was that now, Peter has to deal with the sensory hell of dried blood crusted onto him. Eugh. See, this is why he's with the Lonely. You don't get nearly as much literal blood on your hands with the Lonely.
After he's done his business in the very expensive shower that he once again paid for, Peter is feeling rather chipper. He always keeps some spare clothes in Jonah's house, for occasions just like this one, and he's only just emerged from the guest bedroom, humming some lonely ocean tune, when he sees the eyes.
Not the ones "hidden" all around the house, in paintings, in shadows, in the shapes of plants. The eyes that he is seeing are human, not a pattern, and they're a rather striking shade of green that Peter is so unfond of, and they're staring so intensely that, were Peter a younger man, he would be inclined to call the expression a "blue-eyed stare." How Jonah manages that without blue eyes, Peter will never know, but that doesn't matter right now, because those horrifyingly focused green eyes are absolutely surrounded by blood.
"You've gotten sloppy, Peter."
The new voice is strange; much younger than James's, of course, with the very likely haze of drugs curling around Jonah's precise, clipped tone.
"Good morning to you too, love," Peter drawls. "Always a pleasure to have you back."
Jonah -- now Elias -- merely hums in acknowledgement as one hand comes up (he'd claim the motion was smooth, but it actually happens rather clumsily) to prod at the blood coating his new face. "This body better not have lost too much blood, Peter. I can't afford to postpone my plans for something so pedestrian as anemia."
"You're so welcome," is Peter's only reply, as he retreats back into the washroom. Jonah is rather tempted to follow after him, but finds that he cannot actually stand. Even after all these body hops, it still somehow shocks him that he must get used to a body before he can use it properly, and it annoys him to no end. He does not, in fact, fall backwards onto the couch, and he's just about to root around in Peter's mind and say something cutting, when the lonely captain emerges from the restroom holding a damp cloth.
Both are silent as Peter wipes the blood from Elias's face, something that could almost be construed as care in his eyes. If Jonah didn't know any better, he'd say that Peter was wiping the blood from him tenderly. And oh, how they both despise it.
Yet, if both of them hate this facsimile of care, why do they lean into each other's touch so lovingly? Why, if they resent each other, do they banter with such familiarity? And why, later in the night, does Jonah, struggling to adjust to this new body, curl up so comfortably against Peter?
It cannot possibly be love.