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Peter Lukas sails through dreams and nightmares.
It is really the only thing to call the Lonely; it’s not a physical space, but more of a dream-land, empty and strange. It doesn’t follow logic, there are no real ways in and out, but it wraps and warps and changes, and you are in it all the same, trapped not in delicate particle logic but instead in vicious, hungry dream logic, logic that wants to ruin you and make you shudder with fear and emptiness, logic that wants to break your heart and rip you away from humanity.
And that’s why Elias is here.
He’s not actually here, of course. He’s not even fully corporeal. This is an echo of him, bouncing around the ship with a joyful laugh and a fond smile. This is some false shade, some loving facsimile, a punishment for Peter’s hubris and affection. He should never have taken Elias aboard the Tundra, should never have invited someone who he depends on so completely to his place of isolation and power.
Because of course Elias would leave eventually. And of course the Lonely would prey on his weakness, on how much he misses his husband.
And so he’ll catch memories of Elias, flitting about like he owns the damn place, acting every inch the regal monarch he is so certain he will become, memories of how Peter treated him as such, like a King in this domain that is not his. He’ll catch moments of when Elias’s eyes would widen with joy, and moments of how Peter would clasp the necklaces around his neck, slide rings onto his fingers and bracelets up his arms, place circlets and coronets and crowns on his head, all amber and jade, gold and emerald.
And yet Elias is not there anymore. Elias is gone, gone back to his place of power, wrapped up in his plans and his plots. Peter is left with these phantoms of a honeymoon, grinning at him from the bed and brushing their lips against his. Barely visible. Impossible to hold. Vanishing in a second.
It is so exquisitely lonely.
And so when he comes into port, he calls Elias from the harbor, and holds him when he appears, and uses all the Loneliness and detachment and freedom in his body to kiss his isolation into Elias.
And then when he leaves again, he will hear the sweet, mocking laughter off to starboard, carried by the wind and waves, calling through the water weeds.
Albrecht von Closen walks in the winter.
He walks through frozen landscapes and woods, and he finds himself wishing that Jonah was with him. Lately, he finds himself wishing that Jonah was with him all the time.
He murmurs “my dear” and “my beloved” and “ Jonah ” to the empty, pristine landscape, and he hopes that somehow, Jonah will know he is being thought of, even nearly six hundred miles away.
“Oh, Jonah,” he breathes, and he is almost certain that Jonah is with him. He has such an ability to know when he is being thought of.
He’ll write to Jonah this evening. He’ll imagine him beside him as he writes of all that has happened to him. He’ll imagine him smiling wryly and making a sarcastic comment. He’ll imagine Jonah’s near-perfect German but the way he still slips on his Rs, and the hazy, happy look in his eyes after six glasses of wine, and…
And he’ll still miss him. Albrecht will miss Jonah all the same.
He misses Jonah now. He missed Jonah even when Jonah had been with him. He misses Jonah every moment they spend together and apart, because every moment he is apart from him, they are not together, and every second together is an illusion, a countdown until they must be apart once more.
He misses him now, surrounded by memories of him in this silent, empty forest. He misses the way his eyes light up when he sees something he doesn’t recognize, some flower or tree, some seed or footprint.
The wind blows through the branches and they seem to sing Jonah Jonah Jonah, like a whisper, like a prayer, like Albrecht’s heartbeat.
When he comes across the tomb, he climbs down the steps with his heart still pulsing out that intoxicating rhythm, and he misses Jonah every second.
Barnabas Bennet writes letters.
Not just the one, although Jonah had seen it fitting to include that specific one in his Archives. No, he writes many letters.
He’s still waiting for a reply.
He writes letters every day. All addressed to the man he loves, and who he knows loves him back. Who he hopes loves him back.
Even before the… emptiness, he wrote letters every day. He didn’t send them all, but he would write to Jonah every day since they said goodbye. Now is no different, not really. Now he just wishes that… Jonah would be with him.
He dreams, as much as he can dream, that Jonah is with him. That Jonah will save him. He dreams of their time together.
I wish you were beside me, he writes. We can make it if we try. I’m sorry. I should have listened. But if we try, we can…
Perhaps writing these letters only makes the pain worse. Perhaps seeing Jonah’s name as he writes it out is a twisted form of masochism, meant to draw out the depths of his adoration and longing. He can’t ever forget Jonah, can’t ever forget how much he misses him. Emptiness is relative, after all, and if he loved no one, if he shook Jonah from his memory, then maybe the pain wouldn’t be so bad. If he had never known love, this loneliness surely wouldn’t be so bad.
My dear Jonah, he writes. I love you.
He is still waiting for a reply.
Jonah Magnus, sometimes called Elias Bouchard, sometimes called James Wright, sometimes called any number of names, knows what his partners think of him.
He knows that they think he’s beautiful but untouchable, friendly but uncaring, able to do everything with them but love them.
They’re wrong.
He loves them all. He always has loved them all. He can name every single one of his lovers, and he calls them lovers because that is what they are, and he loves them more than he can say. He loved Mordechai and Albrecht and Jonathan and Robert and Barnabas, his wonderful Barnabas. He loves Peter. He even loves Simon and Maxwell, though they appear in his life less often than the rest.
He loves them all with all of his heart, he loves them all so much it hurts him sometimes, because he knows what happens to his lovers, because he loves himself more.
He loves all of them. He knows all of them, and he loves them all.
He can feel when Nathaniel thinks of him, and he loves him.
He will answer the phone to Raymond Fielding who says something snarky and flirty, and he loves him.
He knows when Jon, even, thinks of him while working on statements, records them for him, speaks follow-ups of ridiculous justifications and reason and logic, and Jonah loves him.
He knows they love him, and he loves them all. He is their sense and their laughter, and they are his weakness, all of them are weaknesses of his, and he loves them so much.
The only problem with loving so much, so fiercely, is that he can’t. Not yet.
He cannot give any of them what they want. They all claim to simply want his love, but that’s not what they want. They want him. They want his ambition, they want his future. They all want him to give up everything he’s ever needed and dreamed of and hoped for for them, they all want to be the one who changed him, who brought him back down to earth and tamed him. They want to grow old with him.
Jonah Magnus grew old exactly once. He wasn’t fond enough of it to ever do it again.
He loves them all so much it hurts, but they don’t love him enough to be satisfied with what he wants, so why should he extend them the same courtesy?
And so they grow old without him. Or they leave him. Or they scream and fight with him. Or they die. Or he… kills them, because he has to, and it doesn’t matter how much he loves them, he loves himself more, and he will win.
Yes, Jonah Magnus knows what they all think of him.
He simply loves them too much to mind.
There is a man who serves blood and senseless violence, who kills and rends and tears for the pure joy of it, and he bleeds and chokes and loses parts of himself and through all this he spares a few unlucky souls and sends them off like little presents to his lover in his ivory tower, little I love you s and thinking of you s and he oozes blood and rips apart and laughs—
There is a man who hunts for justice, whose code of chivalry is findfindfindkillkillkill, who strikes down those who are evil and seeks them out for the thrill of beating them, and he thinks of the closest thing he has to a vassal with his many eyes and loving hands, and he runs through another villain and impales them—
There is a man in a circus that is wrong, and despite everything he loves the knowing presence he should hate—
There is a man who is entirely normal, he runs a little sandwich shop and he is quite taken with one of his regular patrons who looks like he does something important, he likes the little dangling eye earring and he has kissed every tattoo, and he doesn’t know anything about power or terror, all he knows is sharp smiles and soft lips—
There is a man who plays the drums in a band that makes you want to rip your ears off, or the ears of the nearest person—
There is a man who dreams of the times he is with—
There are many men, and they love Jonah Magnus, and Jonah Magnus loves them.
Jonah will love them when he Sees them, and he will See them forever.
They try to keep him, and for that sin, they will always lose him. He doesn’t want to hurt them, not much, anyway, but he loves himself more, and he always will.
His heart is full of so much love that it hurts.
(His heart is so full that it is hollow.)