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"Would you ever want this?" Elias asks one morning, gesturing to himself. Based on the look Peter gives him, one would think Elias had just asked him if he ever wanted to get stuck on a Ferris Wheel with a large family.
"If this is meant to be a very odd proposal, no. We're not getting married for at least another six months," Peter says simply.
Elias raises an eyebrow. "Six months?"
"I need to preserve my cash for this venture I'm working on with with Simon and Rayner," he says plainly. "So I simply will not have the money for wherever the Hell you'd want to go for honeymoon. Therefore, no."
"You are completely unromantic and I don't know why I put up with you," Elias says with a grimace.
Peter responds to the deep cut with a curt nod and a deliberate slide away of the eyes. They're standing at the edge of the endless sea, the Tundra shifting lazily just beyond, and the fog rolling thick as if drawn by Peter's very presence. Even thicker than the mist is the thought reverberating out of Peter's head with such intensity that it's easy pickings even for Elias, who dares so rarely to tread in the head of a Lukas. Not that Peter has ever been subtle when he wants Elias to leave him alone, but this is a feeling of particular clarity, to the point where Elias has absolutely no intention of leaving him alone at all, if only to prevent him from getting a win. Besides, if Peter doesn't want whatever he's waiting for Salesa to present to him, Elias can always nab it for Artefact Storage.
"But," he continues, tugging his scarf tighter around his neck. "I was not, in fact, proposing."
"Well, then you're more than free to take your leave," Peter grumbles.
Elias ignores him. "I was being quite literal. Would you ever want this?"
Peter looks him up and down, and his mouth twists into a parody of a smile. "Not that one, no," he says. "Too short for my liking, and dresses far too garishly."
"You're intolerable," Elias mutters, shaking his head. "Fine, I'll speak to you like you are a child. Would you ever want to live this kind of life?"
It was more of a question to pass the time than anything, before Peter started acting difficult and deliberately obtuse, but Elias is still curious. Peter is only in his thirties and already the darkness of hair and beard are streaked with grey, and Elias is starting to reach that age where the concept of a decade is much smaller than it might have seemed when he thought he'd die before reaching his triple digits. And while Rayner and Simon are more in line with him in this regard, Peter is the only one of them he's any sort of close to who doesn't seem to talk one way or another about when, or even if, he intends to die.
Peter's gaze is inscrutable as he considers his answer. "Your specific version might have its merits," he says after a while. "The transience of it, the need to start over from scratch and lose everything twice with each body, abandoning both the loves of old and new," Elias makes a face at the characterization, and Peter shrugs, "It might be appealing, though I doubt whatever process you use would work for me, not when it seems so 'eye' specific."
"Your doubts would be correct," Elias tells him. He can't imagine what he does being possible on anyone other than himself. He almost wants to add in that Peter's eyes, reminiscent of French ultramarine not dissimilar to something on an artist's palette, would be too distinctive to not get him noticed for who he really was immediately, but there's no need to be mean and point out that there's anything about Peter that could draw the attention of another. Besides, Elias enjoys his own color fine, so there's no need to either exasperate Peter or stroke his ego at the expense of himself. "But you have issues with just extending your life in general?"
"My, you're peckish today," Peter says, tucking his hands into the pockets of his coat. "But yes, or at the very least, I've never felt the desire you or Simon or the rest have to keep on keeping on far beyond what's natural. I know, I know," he says as soon as he sees Elias open his mouth. "Simon is just being naturally rewarded for good behavior more than participating in any active plot the way you are, he's told me, and I'm sure there's something something blah blah about how Forsaken might give me some extra years if I keep the faith, but I don't see that happening."
"No?" Elias isn't sure why exactly he finds Peter's cavalier attitude towards his eventual mortality as disconcerting as he does. But still, it sends a frisson of something up his borrowed spine.
"It's not in our nature," Peter responds. "We don't need eternity, not when the family is what it is, and when we've able to do what we do with such ease for centuries."
"Perhaps it would be easier if there was a permanent head at the table," Elias offers, but Peter's already shaking his head.
"What's the saying about things that aren't broken and whether they should be tinkered with?" he asks mockingly, and Elias huffs. "I'll live a natural life, which considering the way the age of death keeps rising, will actually be rather long, and I'll fade into the fog all on my own in quiet bliss at the end of it. It's the thing that keeps me warm at night, hypothetically speaking."
"My God, you're dull," Elias says. Peter looks at him askance, and Elias has a feeling not dissimilar to when one accidentally positions themselves perfectly to be checkmated.
"Does that bother you?" he asks, soft and slow, and Elias snaps his head to him with a glare.
"Why would it?" Peter wants to live for another few decades, die at one hundred and one like every other boring little human currently puttering around the world? Fine. His life will be a puddle compared to what Elias has planned, Elias who views his years as the grey, rocking sea spread out before him, seemingly endless to any eye that looks at it. Nothing to be bothered by, when he has so much more ahead of him than he would ever have behind.
"Because you'll watch me die," Peter says with quiet bluntness, neither gentle nor deliberately unkind. Elias clenches his jaw. "And isn't that so very lonely for you, to know that there's a very final expiration date, and that you'll have to keep on living in a world long after I'm gone?"
"You assume that means I'll remember you long after you're gone," Elias points out. "Perhaps I'll simply forget you."
"You could," Peter concedes. "Either option would work out for me and mine, in the long run. But unfortunately, I am aware of your track record, Mr. Magnus."
Elias has nothing to say to that. The memories of old friends, long dead and buried, still burn a hole in his skin, and he'd realized a while ago, with an almost sinking feeling of dread, that he will no doubt be adding Peter to the list of ghosts tapping at the door of his sleeping mind once Peter finally dies. It doesn't mean he needs to tell Peter he's actually being quite correct in his assessments.
"Besides," Peter adds. "If I thought you, or anyone, could keep me from dying, keep me around people longer than I wanted to be, I'd never spend a second with any of you ever again. Odds are you wouldn't even see me in person from that point onward."
"How generous of you to give me the warning," Elias says, and Peter shrugs.
"In either case, you've got some time before you need to grapple with your myriad emotions on my eventually imminent demise," he says, light and teasing. "Perhaps we'll revisit this in another six months."
"If I feel inclined to see you in six months," Elias shoots back, even though he most likely will be. He's felt a hankering to try and visit the Maldives while there's a lull in Gertrude's constant scheming. Peter's response is to give him a mocking captain's salute and promptly walk off, heading towards the nebulous shadow that Elias already knows is Salesa, accompanied by two heavyweights lugging a great wooden crate between them.
Instead of following, Elias turns on his heel and heads back to his car. It's cold, and Artefact Storage can wait another day to be fed. Talking with Peter can sometimes make Elias feel drained, make him want to spend some time by his lonesome. He imagines Peter would love to hear that, if Elias ever told him. Perhaps that'll be his gift to him the next time he needs him buttered up. But for now, he'll keep his thoughts to himself, and tuck the entire conversation into a corner of his mind, to revisit many decades later when Peter finally does kick it.
( Elias will revisit this conversation far sooner than he'd ever care to admit he wanted, in just a few short years, when he gets Peter killed far before his time and far before he was expecting it or ready for it. But he doesn't know that yet. )