Archive of Our Own ^beta

Realistically, Juno shouldn’t have taken the case.

“I shouldn’t have taken this case,” he’d told Rita as he left HCPD several hours ago.

“Probably not,” Rita had agreed. “Jewel thieves are exciting though, aren’t they!”

Exciting, Juno thinks now, is not really the word for it. Extremely inconvenient, maybe. Tiresome. Tricky. Overly ambitious and exhausting. Someone has made off with the contents of six safes across the city in the last week and a half, and the net worth of the missing items is up in the really head-spinning. So this banker came storming into the police station demanding that they up security around his vault -- yes, privately operated inside a nondescript warehouse on the other side of town and filled to the brim with high-end security measures that also cost more money than Juno’s ever possessed in his life. The banker had been convinced that the thief was going to strike tonight and in wanting to ensure their capture wanted to hire someone to --

This is where Juno had rolled his eyes.

“He wants me to break into his vault? To -- what. Catch someone else also breaking into his vault. Where does this make any sense?”

“He doesn’t want anything to look amiss,” Khan was reveling in this. “And he wants a test of his security system, I think.” He had grinned, and Juno had slammed his office door on his way out.

There are some weeks where he can afford to pass over inane and irritating jobs, but this isn’t one of them and the thing about rich paranoid bankers with time-consuming tasks is they don’t ask you how much you charge.

And --

So sue him, he can’t help but wonder if the jewel thief in question is somebody he knows.

All of which brings Juno to this moment -- halfway through an attempt to burgle some wealthy maniac’s private bunker in a half an hour while there’s a security shift change and Rita’s dropped the cameras on the complex, in order to catch an actual burglar in the act. So far, it had required navigating a labyrinth of hallways without being spotted, timing his descent down a set of stairs so the guard at the bottom of them would be walking away as he dashed the other direction, and a well-aimed bonk on the back of the guard’s head, for posterity’s sake.

Day in the life of Juno Steel, Private Eye. Oh boy.

“Okay boss,” Rita says in his ear, “the safe should be down at the end of that hallway to your right.”

“I think this guy has a complex,” Juno says. He stops before the hallway and presses his back to the wall, adjusts his blaster in his hand just in case. “I mean, there’s practically a giant flashing arrow pointing this way that says STEAL THINGS HERE. Ever heard of subtlety? Hide that shit under the floorboards like the rest of us.”

“Then you’d be out of work, Mister Steel.”

“Well, thank God for idiots then. Rita!“ Juno has poked his head around the wall to get a look. A limited scope of vision only lets him see half the hallway, one corner of the large grey safe on the far wall at the back, but he can see the long line of a shadow cutting across the hallway floor. “There’s someone here.”

“What?” Rita barks. “Well it ain’t a guard, okay? I checked and double-checked those time tables I pulled. Unless the guard you clonked woke up already.”

“He couldn’t have gotten past me -- “ Juno has a bad feeling about this.

“Maybe it’s your robber!” Rita says, excited. That is maybe the obvious answer, certainly the easiest one, and definitely the whole point of breaking into this place in the middle of the night. But it seems too easy -- stumbling across the culprit mid-break in. The shadow moves a little, crossing and uncrossing its legs. Whoever it is, they’re waiting for someone.

“They’re just standing there,” Juno says. “If it is a guard you’re going to be out for a new job.”

“You always say that,” Rita says. “And it’s not!”

Juno doesn’t waste any more time. He whirls into the hallway blaster-first, shouts out a command to step away from the safe --

“Well,” a voice says. It’s a voice he knows. Of course it is. Of course it fucking is. “To be perfectly honest, detective, I expected you fifteen minutes ago.”

Oh.

For fuck’s sake.  

“What?”

“Try hello, maybe. A solid ‘how are you.’ I suppose you’re going to have to cuff me now?”

Juno, standing splay-legged in the middle of the hallway with his blaster out, feels suddenly ridiculous. He straightens up but doesn’t lower the gun. He coughs. He takes a very deep breath. His heart is up in his throat and every single inch of his body is reminding him, violently and viscerally and all at once, what it thinks about the man standing in the hallway.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. You’re the jewel thief?”

Peter Nureyev is leaning against the wall, dressed all in black, studying his fingernails. He looks exquisitely bored. Juno shifts to scan the rest of the hallway. The safe, a huge, ludicrous grey thing built into the wall at the end, is partially ajar but it looks empty.

“I have, on occasion, stolen jewels,” Peter says, like he isn’t surprised at all to see Juno here, which he probably isn’t, “but not the one who’s been robbing establishments all over Hyperion City, which is what I assume you mean. Whoever they are had come and gone by the time I got here. We probably crossed paths in the parking lot. I really thought you’d be here sooner, what happened?”

“I got lost,” Juno says automatically. “Well, Rita got lost. Upstairs. What?”

“They left this behind, though,” Peter extends a hand in Juno’s direction. It’s got a piece of paper in it, probably identical to the other notes that had been left behind at the other robberies. “It may be of use to you?”

“If you didn’t do this,” Juno says slowly, “then what the fuck are you doing here?” His head’s refusing to put facts in any kind of line and is stubbornly giving him all the details that he’d like to not fixate on right now. The line of Peter’s nose and cheek in the half-lit hallway, his waist and shoulders all in black, his cologne, his smile.

It’s been six months.

Juno’s been monitoring any unsolved thefts, reading police reports for cases he’s not working on late at night when he can’t sleep. A few of them, he’s felt, have been almost deceptively obvious, or maybe he was just getting good at recognizing Peter’s signature on his work. He’d received one postcard, cheekily announcing “Visit the Outer Rim!” in bubble letters on the front, with nothing on the back but a signature in a hand he recognized. No return address, of course, and he might have been able to trace it if he’d wanted to but he thought better of it because there are some decisions you just live with.

He’d been very close, once or twice. Because of the dreams, almost constant since he’d returned to Hyperion City, that good old brain game of “You’ve gone through something hellish, now relive it in living color!” In his head, that goddamn bomb goes off a thousand times and it rips them all to shreds. The whole damn city, sometimes, the whole damn planet. And sometimes just the man on the other side of the door. And Juno, always watching and never able to do anything about it.

And he’d wake up in his empty bed in his tiny apartment knowing that there was no way to know it wasn’t real. It’s not, because that’s not what happened, and Peter wasn’t there because he’d left him behind but --

But, of course, here he is.

Fucking bastard. Somehow always catching Juno off guard. And relief floods through him like sunshine.

“Waiting for you!” Peter says, and Juno drags himself back to the present. “I thought that was obvious. And I thought I might try to, hm, intersect this particular getaway because there was something in that safe that I know a few people might want to buy. You can frisk me, if you like. I promise -- I only arrived on Mars three hours ago and I have the shuttle ticket to prove it.”

“I am not getting paid today, am I,” Juno says, and he lowers the blaster and holsters it, runs his hand down his face.

“Probably not, no. Do you want this or not?” Peter flaps the piece of paper in a self-satisfied kind of way.

Part of Juno doesn’t want to get any closer, because almost all of Juno is thinking about something else - another evening in another hotel room across the city. But he also knows that if he doesn’t leave with something he really won’t get paid, so he stomps across the space between them to snatch the piece of paper out of Peter’s hand. Peter watches him, his eyes dark, and their fingers do not touch.

“I think it’s the same -- “ Juno peers down at the piece of paper, tilting his head. As far as he can tell it’s the same kind of message but he’s not a handwriting expert and his depth perception is what it is these days, which isn’t great. “Wait,” he says suddenly, then looks up at Peter who is still leaning against the wall like he’s waiting for a cab. “How did you know that someone was gonna bust in here?”

Peter shrugs. “I have my ways,” he says, “and I frankly don’t really feel obligated to tell you.”

“So you, what?” Juno stares up at him. “Decided to go out of your way to sneak into a high security vault to tell me you’re pissed at me? I know a lot of petty people but that’s pretty impressive.”

Relief? Irritation. With Peter Nureyev they’re close to the same thing.  

“It’s an art form,” Peter says, and Juno feels guilty. Guilt is like an old friend who won’t leave and doesn’t pick up the dishes when they stay over. It makes him mean.

“Okay,” he starts, “listen -- “

Rita, in his ear, cuts him off before he gets going. “Uh, boss?” She says.

“What?” Juno snaps.

“Don’t yell at me, okay, but there’s a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Juno grits out. Peter is watching him with an expression of vague curiosity on his face.

“This whole screen that I’m looking at,” Rita says, “just turned red and started flashing and -- “

“I can’t see what you’re seeing, Rita, I don’t know what -- “

Somewhere above them, a mechanical sound starts blaring. It’s high-pitched and grating.

“Oh,” Juno says. “Yeah. A problem. I see what you mean now.”

“Unless I’m mistaken, that’s a security alarm,” Peter says.

“Yeah, I think the guard I clobbered woke up. Sturdy fellow. Hard head, I guess. Rita, I need you to get us an escape plan that doesn’t involve just backtracking, because that’s no longer gonna work.”

“Working on it,” Rita says. Juno hears furious typing. “Wait,” she says, and the typing stops. “Us?”

Fuck. “Yes, Rita. Us.”

“Does that mean you caught the robber?”

“Not exactly, and I don’t have time to explain.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going -- "

Juno pulls his blaster back out. “I don’t suppose you came prepared to get out of here,” he says. “You usually have a backup plan.”

“Not to my usual standards, unfortunately,” Peter pushes himself up from off the wall. “But there is a defunct air duct system that runs in the ceiling here and opens up outside the building, if we can find it. It seemed big enough to be used as an escape tunnel, in a pinch.”

“Air ducts, Rita,” Juno says.

“I see it,” she says. “You have to go back to the staircase you came down and it’s on the left -- yes! Yes, the left. Up on the wall. It’ll spit you out a block away, maybe. Want me to come get you, boss?”

“No,” Juno says. “I’ll figure it out. She found it, come on.” And he head back the way he came, blaster stretched in front of him.

The alarm continues to blare as they hurry down the hallway, and Juno knows it’s only a matter of time before the staircase is full of security so he jogs a little recklessly. Peter shadows him, behind him and to his right so Juno can’t see him at all. Blind spot feels a little too literal. But they don’t encounter anyone as they reach the stairs, and Juno peers along the wall until he sees a metal panel that looks like it could conceivably lead to an air duct. It’s set into the wall a little, and it’s definitely something that Juno will get stuck in.

“How are we gonna get in it?” He says. “I’m not gonna fit through that -- “

“I believe the tunnels themselves are bigger than that,” Peter says. He’s looking up at the panel intently. “This is an old building. Let’s see -- give me a boost, will you?”

Juno doesn’t want to, but he bends and laces his fingers together so Peter can step into them, and then he lifts him up. Peter grabs onto the inset edge of the panel with both hands and somehow manages to perch himself on it. His right knee is somewhere next to his ear.

Juno coughs, and makes himself look down the hallway.

“Oh, yes,” Peter says, “it’s much bigger inside. I won’t be able to stand up completely but I’ll be able to walk, certainly.” There’s a metal clang, and then he’s sliding his legs through the hole. Juno can hear him moving on the other side of the wall, and for one long moment he thinks Peter is going to leave him.

Then his head pokes out of the hole again. “Take my hand,” Peter says, “and I’ll hoist you up. Hurry -- I think I hear footsteps up above us.” He reaches both arms out of the hole in the wall and Juno gets both his hands around Peter’s wrists. He feels the delicate bones there shift and strain under muscle and tendon as Peter pulls him up, and a second later Juno tumbles headfirst into the air duct, practically knocking them both over.

Peter is on his feet in a second, busy replacing the metal cover behind them. Juno stands up more slowly. They’re standing, in essence, in a small metal tunnel, not quite tall enough to stand up in but certainly large enough to move down. Juno’s shoulders brush the sides when he faces front and he’s grateful he’s not broader, or that he didn’t bring more stuff with him. With the metal cover replaced it’s quite dark, stuffy and hot.

“I can’t see a damn thing,” Juno whispers.

“I’ve got a -- ow,” Peter, digging through his pockets, hits his head on the ceiling. “Here.” A tiny beam of white light emanates from behind Juno. It gives him enough light to move forward and so he does, following the metal wall with his hand on his blind side.

“Do you think they’ll come after us?” He asks.

“If they do, at least we’ll hear them coming,” Peter says. “This is really just putting the cherry on top of today, you know.”

“Says the man who once jumped cheerfully into a garbage chute. It’s not like you were invited on this little expedition anyway. Oh. Shit -- “

There’s a clang from somewhere above them and they both jump. Peter hits his head again. It’s getting colder, and harder to breathe. Ten minutes pass, maybe, Juno following the light from Peter’s flashlight with one hand pressed flat against the wall to guide his way.

“Rita,” Juno hisses, “how much of this is there?”

“I think you’re halfway through it,” she says, cheerfully. “Cramped in there boss?”

“No it’s lovely,” Juno says. “I think we’re gonna relocate the office here. Sets a real mood. I’ll check back in when we’re through it.” Peter snorts behind him, which is kind of satisfying. “Stop eavesdropping,” Juno says.

“Absolutely not, how would I ever learn anything?”

Juno rolls his eyes in the dark and starts to turn in order to look back over his shoulder. All of a sudden, the metal against his right hand stops and his foot comes down on empty air. He wobbles, dangerously, one leg flailing and his left hand holding the blaster scrabbling outward for purchase.

Strong hands grabbing the back of his jacket, then firm against his waist. Peter has yanked him firmly backwards and up and Juno gets his second foot planted. Everything is swimming and his heart races and thunders and Peter’s fingers are digging into his ribs so hard it hurts. He can’t get his breath and he gasps in air, his lungs burning.

“Juno -- “ Peter exhales, hard, right against Juno’s ear. He sounds shaken. Juno can feel him breathing where his back is pressed hard up against Peter’s chest.

“The floor just -- “

“I think I understand why this is no longer operational,” Peter whispers. “It seems structurally unsound.” His little flashlight, still clutched in his hand, sits in front of Juno’s stomach and he turns his hand so that the beam sweeps outward and away from them. The light gets swallowed up by the empty space, metal walls sloping down to the belly of the building. “Well. Best stay against the wall I think.”

Juno’s stomach plummets and his legs liquefy and he thinks for a real second he’s going to throw up his lunch.

“Turn the light off,” he snaps, and his voice comes out reedy and thin. Peter doesn’t, but he drops the beam so it’s pointing instead at their shoes.

“Juno,” he says, again right in Juno’s ear. It helps, a little. Juno closes his eyes and pushes the nausea down. Unintentionally, he’s clamped his left hand around Peter’s wrist and his fingers feel brittle like ice.

“Give me a second,” he manages. His voice, which had echoed even in a whisper as they’d walked down the cramped tunnel, gets pulled into the empty space in front of them. He imagines it plummeting down, an unknown distance, dizzy and dark. And he hears --

Laughter.

But that isn’t real, Juno, it’s in your head. Breathe in, breathe out. His lungs feel like they’re too small. It isn’t real because she’s dead. Sometimes that thought is enough to dissolve it, something that might be a memory and might be something else, but not now. It’s too dark.

“Are you afraid of heights?” Peter doesn’t shake him off. Juno can hear his concern. No -- Juno can feel it. Can he feel it? His head is swimming and deep at the back of it something hurts, dully, not wanting to be forgotten. 

“No,” Juno snaps. “Yes.”

“We have to keep moving,” Peter says. “Juno. I’ve got you -- “

Juno’s stomach drops again, a different reason. “I’m not a child,” he snaps, and it feels like a futile argument to make in the dark.

“Then walk,” Peter says, and he clamps his arm more firmly around Juno’s stomach and begins to move them along the wall. And Juno, god help him, wills his feet to move.

It’s probably only a few minutes but it feels much longer than that, a moment that feels frozen rather than stretched, never-ending. But finally, Juno feels Peter exhale again, and loosen his grip on Juno’s stomach.

“There,” he says. “That was vexing.”

Juno opens his eyes again. Peter’s light is whizzing around them, outlining four walls in solid metal. Juno lets out a very deep breath, pries his fingers from Peter’s arm and rests his head against the metal wall in front of him for just a second. It feels much colder when they aren’t as close together.

He feels -- and he knows he feels -- Peter watching him. Peter's thoughts are like liquid, like glass, layered and shifting, shivering over each other, a shell protecting what's hot and red deep underneath, teenage boy in a red room holding a knife, waking in an empty bed you don't expect to be empty --

Thoughts, memories. Juno doesn't know. The right half of Juno's face feels stiff. 

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” And he turns and keeps walking towards the exit.

They reach it, or at least the end of the tunnel, not long after that. The path ends abruptly in another metal grate. He presses himself against the wall to let Peter slide past him and remove it, fingers working deftly, so they touch as little as possible. Embarrassment sinks into his gut.

“This isn’t right,” Peter says. “We’re on the outside wall of the building.”

“What?” Juno tries to peer past him through the opening but can’t.

“They moved a wall here or something,” Peter says. “We have to be quick. There isn’t anyone outside that I can see -- “ he hops up and wriggles out of the opening, then pulls Juno out.

The night air is fresh -- or as fresh as air gets in Hyperion City. It’s moving, anyway, and not stuffy. Juno takes a few deep breaths. He can hear traffic to their left and see lights on the other side of the wall surrounding the warehouse. He gestures with his chin and Peter nods, and they both run in that direction together which is a kind of pushing-your-luck last-ditch decision that either works perfectly or fails completely.

They get out of the gate, and nobody sees them go. Until Juno lets out a relieved sigh, a few feet from the exit, and Peter shoves him sideways on his blind side into a bush.

“What the fuck -- “ Juno starts, but Peter, half on top of him, covers his mouth with his hand. He kicks at Juno’s legs too until Juno pulls them up so they’re hidden completely by the foliage.

“Keep it down,” Peter hisses, so quiet that Juno almost can’t hear him with the traffic and the leaves rustling. It’s a very robust bush, and there’s a branch or something digging into his back. He shifts so it hurts less and only really succeeds in bringing them even closer together. Peter’s face is turned, listening, but Juno can see him swallow. He can hear his own heartbeat echoing inside his head, and he feels, or imagines, Peter’s in the palm of his hand against his lips.

A pair of boots crunch by on the path they had been standing on a second before, and Juno holds his breath.

“Funny,” a voice says. “Thought I heard something.”

“I think they’re still in the building,” another guard calls from the building. “Nobody’s come out the front doors. Get back here.” The feet crunch away, and Juno and Peter both exhale as one.

“Good ears,” Juno whispers under Peter’s hand. “Are they gone?”

“Give a moment, to be safe,” Peter says. He removes his hand, braces it on the dirt next to Juno’s head. God bless landscaping and the rich fucks who pay for it. Peter turns his head and they look at each other and they’re very close together. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” Peter says.

“Shove someone into a plant?”

“It always seemed like a dashing thing to do in the movies,” Peter says.

“There’s a root in my spleen, I think.”

The night sky above Peter’s head is city-bright, inky black very far off. Peter cut his hair, since the Utgard Express. And his eyes are so dark, much darker than the sky above his head. This is the very definition of compromising and Juno almost starts - This isn’t a damn honeymoon suite! - but he doesn’t because it wasn’t funny then and it wouldn’t be now.

If he’d really gotten what he wanted, he would have preferred never seeing Peter Nureyev again. But life likes to throw punches at Juno Steel. Improbably comedy, probably. He can see Peter’s collarbones shift as he breathes, see the muscle jump in his jaw.

“Nureyev -- “ Juno starts, and Peter blinks and something drops down over his face. Just like that. It takes Juno a second to recognize it and it’s strange because in some sense it’s how he first met him. Rex Glass, secret service. Suave and friendly and all business. Peter puts it on like a mask.

“Just a moment,” he says. “I’m going to jump that guard to make sure nobody follows us.”

“Don’t -- don’t kill him,” Juno says as Peter stands up. There is one guard, probably the one left when the rest all went inside, and he’s only a few feet away. Peter waves cheerfully at him.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve been instructed not to kill you!” And then he grabs the guard by the throat.

They leave the unconscious guard behind in the bush and walk a few blocks, Peter in front and Juno behind, pushing himself to keep up a little. Late night traffic picks up as they move away from the warehouses and towards a larger road and Peter cuts a tall, dark figure among the crowd of late-night drinkers. Juno flips his collar up, keeps his head down, until Peter stops on a street corner.

“I’ll call a cab,” Juno says. It’s really pushing their luck, getting a cab in this neighborhood this time of night, but he’s not going to sit on public transportation and he doesn’t want to drag Rita into this situation, or give her any ammunition.

“I suppose you know,” Peter says, “that there are a number of ways for somebody to hire someone like your mystery jewel thief for a job like this.”

“Someone like you, you mean.” Juno edges his shoulder into the street and extends his thumb.

“I do.”

“I do have an idea,” Juno says. “I figured that they wouldn’t, you know, just give you a call.”

“No. Well, except on Earth, where I maintain an office with a secretary who answers the phone.” Juno snorts, and Peter laughs too, brightly. “The reason why I knew where the next robbery would take place is because someone was very desperate for this job to be pulled off.”

“They advertised in Master Criminals, Monthly? Someone hired the thief. Great. This is a lot more complicated than I thought. It’s wishful thinking to suggest you know who it is, right.”

“Yep.” A cab passes them and doesn’t stop.

“Well, that’s better than nothing I guess. I thought you said you weren’t going to tell me anything.”

“You should know better than that by now, detective,” Peter says. “I lie.”

You and me both, Juno thinks. Another cab passes them, full of happy drunk people. “Why didn’t you take the job?”

“Didn’t feel like it. And I was busy masquerading as a dignitary in order to steal a very large diamond from the Emperor of Xanadu. I was put up in his exquisitely tasteless summer house for a month. Bathed in champagne.”

“Yeah, and I got into a fistfight in a sewer last week,” Juno says, and resolutely does not think about that image even a little bit. “Now you’re really being petty.”

“Maybe.” Peter smiles sideways.

“I did go to the opera recently,” Juno says.

“Really? Didn’t know you were a classical music fan, detective.”

“There’s a lot of shit you don’t know about me.” Juno pauses. “And the tickets were complimentary. I saved the singer from being stabbed a few months ago.”

“And how was it?”

Juno coughs. “Someone in the audience got stabbed. But other than that it was nice. Oh, finally.” A cab slows and he steps out towards it and is only a little satisfied to hear Peter gasp. In order to hail a cab in Hyperion City you have to be bolder than the cab drivers.

“Can I, uh,” Juno slides all the way across the seat and crosses his arms, “drop you off somewhere?”

“I suppose,” Peter says.

And that should be that, really. The end of it, a parting where they go their separate ways. But it’s not. Because -- because Juno’s an idiot, really, and because of Peter’s cologne and because he knows he needs to get what’s coming for him sooner or later and because --

Peter came back for him. Then Juno left. Watch them go, running around in circles.

“Unless you want a drink,” Juno says, and he doesn’t look in Peter’s direction.

“I suppose,” Peter says, and smiles.   

Out the window, the city speeds by, colors blending. Juno wants to say something that will mean something, but he can’t think of what the right thing would be so he just stays silent.

They stand in silence as they ride the elevator, and they stand in silence as Juno unlocks his apartment door and walks through it, and Peter looks around, curiously, as Juno pulls glasses and ice and a bottle out of cabinets. The apartment is cramped and untidy, perpetually disorganized in a way that isn’t intended to be unfriendly exactly but certainly does the job if needed. Peter peers at stacks of books, old case files, photos -- all the receipts from years of tedious research or life-saving detail, unused mementos, things too worn out to be useful. Juno has never been any good at throwing anything out.

“Are you ever going to need to know -- “ Peter bends to read the title on an article, “the medicinal properties of the ink of the Mhyasian Space Squid?”

“Doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” Juno pours whiskey into glasses. “Austerity doesn’t suit me.”

“I don’t think it suits anyone, that’s the point.” Peter crosses the room and picks up the glass, drinks, then makes a face. “And it certainly doesn’t have character.”

“I didn’t invite you here to criticize my apartment,” Juno says, and he knocks back half the glass.

“If you’ll forgive the question, why did you invite me here?” Peter’s voice is light, jaunty, but Juno can feel his eyes on him.

He doesn’t have an answer to that. Not anything he can put into words, anyway.

“Why’d you come back to Mars?” Juno counters, then swallows the rest of the glass.

“For an argument, of course. Can’t get enough of them.”

“You didn’t have to,” Juno slams the bottle down onto the kitchen counter and all the glasses sitting there rattle. “You could just have not come back here at all.”

“Is that what you want?” Peter’s voice is icy.

“What do you know about what I want?”

“I don’t think you know what you want.”

“The thing is,” Juno yells -- and he really yells because it feels good in this moment. It makes Peter take a step backwards, which feels like a win.

You’re always bracing for a damn fight, Mick had told him once, after they’d finished up one, and if it doesn’t happen, you create one.

Well, sue him. There’s nothing wrong with using your strengths.

“You don’t really know me. At all. You’ve got a bunch of facts about my life and you’ve got two miserable fucking weeks and you had a moment of weakness -- “

“That isn’t true and you know it,” Peter says, and he says it very quietly.

“-- because it would’ve been nice, yeah. To go with you. It was -- it was a nice story.” Juno pauses, and puts both his hands flat on the kitchen counter. “But that’s not how the world works for me. And if you know me at all then you’d get that.”

“Maybe,” Peter says, slowly. Juno wishes he could understand what he’s thinking, just for a second. All this insider information -- by necessity he’s an expert at it. A nervous gesture, the flicker of eyelids, the choice of words. Peter drops faces over his own like he’s putting on masks, new mannerisms to study up on, fictional lives to be worn and tossed aside.

Insider information -- everybody looks the same on the inside, ink red bloodstains and dumb-ass decisions.

“And anyway,” Juno says, because, well, if he’s going to get something out of this it might as well be the last word, “you don’t need me out there at all. Seems like you’re getting on just fine as it is.”

“I am,” Peter says, and his voice is so cold that Juno flinches, “entirely self-sufficient by necessity, detective, and I haven’t needed anybody for a very long time. But did I want you to? Of course I did. The point is not need. It’s want. ”

There’s something very dark and hot at the back of Juno’s throat and his knuckles itch. His hands, still flat on the kitchen countertop, look white and bloodless and he doesn’t move them because he doesn’t want to be the first person to swing a punch here.

“Look,” Juno snaps, “I fucked up. I’m very happy to admit that. I’ll dig into my savings and get a big ‘Juno Steel Fucked Up’ neon sign set up over Old Town. It’ll be really popular, everyone’ll love it.”

Peter makes a derisive sound in the back of his throat.

“But you do not get it. I didn’t lie -- “

“I didn’t think you did --”

“-- but that isn’t how the world works for most of us, okay? Not all of us can just, fuck, thump some cops on the head and pull a new name out of thin air and take off to whiz around the galaxy whenever we get bored or we’re in trouble or things get tough. Some of us have shit we have to have to handle where we are.”

As soon as he says this he sees it, the image in his head as bright and clear as it had been when he’d seen it the first time. Peter, young, yelling Don’t walk away from me! The expression on his face indicates that Peter’s thinking about the exact same thing. You can’t go home again -- that’s how the old saying goes isn’t it. It never brings anything good, backtracking on that side of town digging up nostalgia, but at least for Juno it’s still there. More or less.

“Fuck--” he stumbles over it, doesn’t know how to take it back. It’s too late, naturally. “I -- I didn’t mean -- “

“No,” Peter says, crisply. He sounds like he’s engaging in a business deal. Most of the time he sounds like he’s propositioning someone, which makes Juno know he really struck a nerve that stings. One of those ones that you think has healed until you move wrong and then it burns, and aches for days. He’s got a few. “I’m sure you didn’t. You do manage completely thoughtless and careless with other people’s emotions very deftly though, don’t you?”

Juno doesn’t have the whole story. He has fragments of it, images and a string of scenes and the way it had felt, the expression on Peter’s face when it had happened. He’d fought for years -- half his life maybe -- to protect something that he couldn’t. And Juno --

He’s never kidded himself that he can fix Hyperion City. Nobody can fix Hyperion City. She was a lost cause a hundred years ago. What a cause, though. What a fight. He’s good at taking punches. It’s practically a hobby.

“I know,” he snaps. “I really bombed sensitivity training. Don’t know why you’re shocked.” He turns away from the counter, crosses the room to sit down on the couch. It puts some space in between them.

“You could have told me,” Peter says, and there’s something honest and very brittle in his voice suddenly and Juno can’t stand it. “You could have just -- “

“I know -- “

“You said that you regretted not following me the first time and so I thought -- and perhaps I shouldn’t have told you that I’d leave but I didn’t know you if you wanted me to stay so I had to -- “

“I know, I -- “

“But you could have just told me.”

“Congrats,” Juno barks. “You’re well cemented on the list of shit in my life that I wish I’d done differently. It’s a long list, so don’t feel too special, okay? Top five, maybe, but not even at the top. Join the fucking club. Does that make you feel better. Is that what you wanted? I know, okay? I know. I’m a horrible person and running out on you was inexcusable. I know. Say what you’re gonna say and leave me alone.”

There’s a long silence. Peter stands, his shoulders outlined by the light from the skyline outside the window in the kitchen.

“Well, Juno,” he says, finally. Juno stares at his hands. His knuckle is still busted up, still stings. “I must say you take the fun out of even this.”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“Well, I for one am not going to stick around massaging your insecurities, as you really do seem to have that down to a science all by yourself.”

“Don’t really know what you thought was gonna happen,” Juno says, “unless you were planning to stick around to massage something else.”

Peter snorts, then barks out a laugh. It’s real genuine laughter, surprised and kind of delighted especially considering Juno hadn’t actually planned to say that at loud at all. Peter practically giggles into his hand, a less-than-elegant gesture that makes Juno laugh too.

A couple of assholes, laughing in the dark. That makes Juno laugh harder.

“Fuck you,” he manages, and Peter takes off his glasses, bends over to clutch at his knees.

Juno can’t stand it, the sound of his laughter and his long fingers on his kneecaps, his shoulder rising and falling. He leans forward, yanks off his eyepatch, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. The muscles around his right eye socket ache. So does something way back inside his head, the beginnings of a headache or maybe something much worse. Pretty difficult to walk into a clinic and ask, “Hey, doc, can you tell if there’s any ancient Martian virus still rattling around up there?” Especially on Juno’s budget.

It’s complete darkness with his eyes shut. Juno opens the right one, just to see. The tumor, or whatever it was, had severed his optic nerve. Not the kind of thing you bounce back from.

In the dark, he hears it. Suddenly and very clearly, like they’re in the room together. A memory of something he’d once seen, but he also wonders how much of what he’d pulled out of other people’s heads is stuck in his own. It’s always right there on the surface, Peter in that red-walled room holding a knife like it’s an extension of his own body. Peter, screaming. Peter, on the other side of that door. And her voice too, slithery and cold. Sometimes it feels like she’s still speaking to him, taunting him and his lifelong futility, the inevitability of it all going up in smoke. And Juno hears it, like she’s in his ear.

He jolts upright, snaps his eyes open. In a second, Peter steps across the room and lowers himself to his knees, his hands resting on Juno’s bent legs.

“Don’t -- “ Juno starts, but he doesn’t even know what to say. He doesn’t want pity, and that’s what’s on Peter’s face. Come see Hyperion City’s amazing defective detective. Watch him dance.

“I won’t,” Peter says, and he removes his hands, and Juno wishes he hadn’t. “Juno.”

“Do you -- “ the desire to say this, surprising. Nobody else was there and even if they could understand Juno wouldn’t want to tell them. His voice sticks in his throat like molasses. “I dream about it,” he says, finally, and stares at his knuckles. “Sometimes I hear her thoughts. Like before.”

Peter reaches forward and touches Juno’s temple, the corner of his eye. “Because of -- “

“Pretty sure this is just good old-fashioned trauma. Just like Mom used to make!”

“I do too,” Peter says softly. “I dream about hearing that bomb go off and not being able to do anything to stop it. I -- it hasn’t been a great six months, exactly.”

That’s the problem with being someone with history. Even when you try to willfully destroy it, do everything in your power to shoot it dead, some threads still hang on. Juno looks up at him -- the turn of his mouth, the light in his eyes. They’re so dark they look liquid, reflecting the skyline outside the window. Hyperion City captured in them, just like Juno is.

In a perfect world, Juno would do anything in the world for this man. But it’s not a perfect world.

“I came back to Mars,” Peter says, “because I wanted to know if you were alright. Unfortunately I think I’ll probably keep doing that, regardless of what you say next.”

“This probably isn’t gonna help,” Juno says, “but I was pretty glad to see you.”

“Oh,” Peter says it like a sigh. His eyes haven’t left Juno’s. “Well. You are sentimental.”

“Don’t tell anybody,” Juno says. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

Peter smiles. And then he stands up, a long line of leg clad in black. He pushes his hair back with a decisive gesture.

“I have a transport to catch in an hour,” he says, and he turns his face away from Juno and towards the door. “So I won’t take up any more of your time.”

Maybe this is a test, and maybe it’s not. It doesn’t really matter because to Juno it feels like it, and for once in his life he feels like he might have the right answer. He stands too, and squares his shoulders.

“You don’t have to go, Peter,” he says. It comes out soft, but it’s the best he can do.

Peter turns, starts to open his mouth, and there’s a bright and burning kind of certainty in the pit of Juno’s stomach that pushes him forward. All a series of kinetic action, a pattern his body knows. Two steps to reach him, a third to bring them level, one hand to the front of Peter’s shirt and his surprise swallowed by the lack of space between them.

Juno kisses him.

Peter kisses back.

Everything else in the whole entire galaxy, Juno thinks, is a waste of time.

Then Peter stops and his hands come up to either side of Juno’s face. He presses his forehead against Juno’s and closes his eyes. Juno can see impressions of his face rather than specifics - the sweep of his dark lashes, his nose, the curve of his mouth.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Peter says, and Juno feels the words rather than hears them. “You could have just asked me to stay. Now I’m quite caught off guard and you have the upper hand.” His voice is ragged. Maybe it was a real shock. Juno feels he should get to give one, sometime.

“I know,” Juno says. “I wanted to. Thought I’d try being advantageous for once.”

“How so?”

“Like this,” Juno says, and he tilts Peter’s chin upwards to kiss him again.

“I think I see what you’re getting at,” Peter says, his eyes closed as Juno follows the line of his throat and then his collarbone with one hand. Juno feels his pulse there, hot under his skin, honest and present and right here, nowhere else. Juno could stand here forever considering the fact of that, Peter Nureyev’s pulse under his fingers louder than anything else, his own thoughts or the constant heartbeat of the city. It’s not something he deserves but -- Juno think it so clearly, just for a moment -- what about want? Ideas he never thought weren’t interchangeable.

Then Peter is moving Juno’s face upwards and kissing him, all elegance in the gesture until their lips meet, and Juno stops thinking about anything except how that feels.

Desperation doesn’t lend to elegance and Juno doesn’t care. He can do one and has never bothered with the other and all that matters is getting as close to Peter as he can. Peter’s hands catch either side of his face and when the kiss ends Juno’s fingers are white-fisted in the fabric of his shirt until Peter places one hand on top of Juno’s own so both of them, fingers stacked, rest above his heart.

“I tore your shirt,” Juno says, somewhat embarrassed.

The pupils of Peter’s eyes are eating up his irises. “The lady’s abashed! It’s a good look on you. It’s a shirt,” he says. He bends forward and puts his mouth to the spot under Juno’s ear where his pulse jumps. “I can get another one and I don’t think I’ll need it right now.” Kisses Juno’s neck, then the curve of his shoulder at the edge of his shirt collar. Juno clings to him, dizzy with it. Relief is like sunshine. “Unless you have somewhere else you need to be?”

“Can’t think of one. Wouldn’t have invited you in for a drink if I had -- ” teeth on the edge of his collarbone, so Juno sucks in a breath, unsteady, “ -- somewhere to be.”

“What about your mystery thief?” Peter says against Juno’s neck.

“I can only handle one of those at a time.” Peter laughs, and the sound races up the length of Juno’s spine. “It’s a problem for tomorrow and I’ll worry about it then.” Juno slides his finger through Peter’s hair where it’s cut short at the base of his skull. “Because tomorrow can wait.”

Peter straightens and grins. Dangerous. All teeth -- a hunter’s grin. Different masks, different faces, and Juno knows this one because this one is Peter Nureyev. He never stood a chance, not from the first minute they met. “That’s good advice,” he says. “Where ever did you hear that?”

“Oh, you know,” Juno says. “Someone special I met once.”

Juno’s bed, crammed against a wall in between a rickety bookshelf and an old chest he hasn’t cleaned out in years, isn’t really set up to fit two people. That hasn’t been much of a problem for a while. Peter dozes, one leg hanging off the side of it. Juno starts to, edges into sleep until a nightmare begins to creep in. Something formless and loud, screams in the dark impossible to place in time or memory with any specificity. So he gets up, quietly as he can, pulls on sweatpants and walks into the kitchen.

Through the window, the skyline is black and neon-blue. The city is still awake and it moves around him as he watches -- people out there fighting and fucking and apologizing, loving and losing, robbing, winning and screwing each other over, on and on and on.

He stands there for a while, tracking the movement of cars against the sky, until he hears movement in the other room.

“Oh -- “ Peter’s voice says. “Juno?”

Juno turns and opens a cabinet as loudly as he can, doesn’t want to get caught standing alone in the dark. Several months ago, Rita had hidden several bottles of wine in the back of this cabinet for who-knows what reason and he grabs one at random. He’s got no idea if he owns a bottle opener so he improvises with a kitchen knife, which goes about as well as expected. When the cork pops he walks back into the bedroom.

Peter is lying on his back, one arm crossed behind his head, busy redefining the dictionary definition for the word ‘languid.’ It looks a bit staged, and Juno realizes that means he’d woken up nervous.

“Hi,” he says. Witty rapporte, Steel. Stunning as always.

“Hi,” Peter says. “You didn’t wander off after all.”

“Where? I live in a shoebox,” Juno shoves the wine bottle in Peter’s direction. He raises an eyebrow. “Nicked it from Rita’s book club stash. Don’t tell. I’m not really in the mood for Scotch.”

“That’s a respectable brand.” Peter eyes it, then drinks right out of the bottle.

“She’s got good taste. Well, kind of. She does still work for me, despite my best efforts.” Juno sits back down again, tosses his blanket over his knees and lets Peter hand him the bottle. He doesn’t know a damn thing about wine of any variety but it does taste good so that has to count for something anyway.

Peter shifts against the pillow, leaning on one elbow so his chin is resting in his palm. With the other hand, he reaches out to touch the fading, white-edged scar that sits between Juno’s collarbone and his shoulder. Juno watches his fingers follow the line of it, the kind of scar that’s stuck deep in muscle tissue so it’ll never fade completely no matter how much time goes by.

“There’s a story behind that,” Peter asks. “Isn’t there?”

“Not a very interesting one,” Juno says. “I was a kid. I’ve got lots that are more daring.”

“Like this one.” Peter reaches up and touches, gingerly, Juno’s cheekbone, just under his eye. The one that’s up there solidly not pulling its weight these days.

“Well,” he says, quickly. “What about that?” Peter has a tiny scar on his chin, very faded and mostly hidden except in the right light. He looks like he hit his chin on something very hard once, or got punched. Juno touches it with his thumb, because he can.

Peter laughs. “Someone’s knuckle bone, I’m afraid,” he says. “It’s a good story, but it feels a bit unfair to just offer it up to you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I could suggest a game of Rangian street poker -- “

“Fuck no,” Juno says. “I saw enough of Rangian street poker to last a lifetime, thanks. No idea how you managed to play it badly.”

“I spent some time working on a Rangian shuttle craft, of course. It passed the time. But that’s not quite what I mean. We can simplify it.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“There’s the technical part of the game and then there’s the fun part, detective.”

“You want to -- “ Juno swallows more wine, “barter. Questions?”

“Answers, and secrets. Of equivalent value. You can always pass. Unless you’re scared.” Peter’s fingers trace the scar on Juno’s shoulder again.

“I’m not scared.”

“You keep saying that I don’t know anything about you,” Peter says, “which I should contest, but I won’t. In the grand scheme of things I suppose we haven’t known each other long, and certainly not very specifically.”

“Most people,” Juno says, “just do pillow talk, or smoke in silence, not play 20 questions to the death.”

“You and I, detective, are not most people. And we can nix the more deadly part of the game.”

“Whatever,” Juno says. “Fine. Why’d you tell me your name?”

“Oh, interesting. Starting out strong. If I answer that then you have to tell me about joining the police force.”

Juno’s skin prickles, but he wants to know. “Sure,” he says.

“Because I wanted to,” Peter says, smugly.

“That’s cheap. A cheap answer. I asked and you said you wouldn’t and then you did anyway. There has to be a reason.”

“Well you’re right,” Peter says. “I wasn’t going to. You impressed me, I’m sure you guessed that much, and I thought it might be interesting, if a bit stupid, to see if you could figure it out yourself. It could have required some, hm, cleanup, but I was curious. And then -- “ Peter paused, and there’s something in his eyes Juno has trouble parsing. “There was something about your face. Night, with the city lights coming in through the doorway. You were so curious. And I thought I might quite like it if you tracked me down.”

“That’s a good answer,” Juno says. His face is warm and he thinks that feeling is reflected in Peter’s eyes. Maybe that’s it.

“So, why did you join up with Hyperion’s finest in blue?”

“Cause I grew up in a slum,” Juno says. “And my marketable life skills extend to shooting straight and being faster than the other guy.”

“Those skills can get anyone work in security,” Peter says. “Which isn’t what you did.”

“Yeah,” Juno amends. “Then there’s what my friend Mick calls my hero complex.”

Peter grins. “Do you have any non-marketable skills I don’t know about?”

“I’m a pretty good cook. But that’s a question.” On a whim, Juno reaches across his own shoulder to catch Peter’s hand, laces their fingers together. A pianist’s hands, maybe. An artist’s. Juno’s knuckles are still busted up from the other day. Peter nods, like he’s suggesting Juno continue.

“What’s your favorite color?” Juno says, to make him laugh.

“Lavender. How do you like your coffee?”

“Bitter.”

“Fitting.”

“How do you like yours?”

“Same way I like my sex. Lots of it, very hot, first thing in the morning.” Juno snorts and Peter grins, dictionary definition of ‘lascivious.’ He brings their hands, knuckles still folded together, up to his mouth. “Why did you leave the police force?”

Juno’s heart jumps, unpleasant and sideways. “Pass,” he says quickly. “It isn’t a good story.”

“Okay,” Peter says, and leaves it. “What’s -- hm. What’s your favorite smell? You know, if you had to pick something to put in one of those air fresheners for your car.”

“What?” Juno barks. “Pass.”

“No, you passed once already!”

“Stupid questions should get an automatic pass,” Juno grumbles. His face is hot again, conveniently reminding him exactly how embarrassing he is. He shoves his face in the pillow. “Your cologne.”

The pillow is snatched away a second later and Peter’s leaning over him, and Juno feels less stupid at once. Maybe he can feel his delight at that. Maybe it's just obvious in the set of his shoulders as he rests his chin on Juno's shoulder. 

“You are sentimental, just as I suspected.”

“Yeah, rub it in. Tell me -- your favorite heist you’ve pulled off.”

“Oh, good one,” Peter leans back, tosses the pillow at Juno who catches it and puts it back under his shoulders. “Let’s see. Oh -- okay. This was five years ago, maybe? Someone paid me a great deal of money to relieve a minor government official on Earth of some weapons plans. To destroy them, Juno darling, don’t make that face at me I can’t bear it. I put a great deal of planning into breaking into his office because he kept them locked away in a wall safe. And the intel I had was bad -- he wasn’t supposed to be in but he was. So there was me, blithely wandering my way into the building, and I open his office door to see him facing me. Quite a surprise.”

“What did you do?” Juno asks. He can picture the scene in his head -- Peter’s surprise, his quick action.

“Slept with him.”

Nevermind. “You didn’t. You didn’t!” Peter laughs against their folded hands.

“I seduced him, picked his pockets while he slept, took the plans and escaped out the window without any pants on. That’s where I got that scar.” Peter points to a faint white scar on his thigh, above his knee. “From hopping over a hedge.”

“You probably could have just knocked him out,” Juno says, but he’s laughing. He touches the scar. He can still feel its raised edge, just a little. It had probably been deep.

“Probably. But then it wouldn’t be my favorite story, now would it?”

“It’s your turn,” Juno says, shifting a little to put his arm under his shoulder so they’re more face-to-face. To his surprise, Peter’s face grows contemplative and he doesn’t speak for a long moment. Juno lets him study him, the elegance of his spine and his shoulderblades outlined in muscle. His wrists, his elbows and the fine bones underneath them, the jut of his hipbones, the tops of his knees.

But the silence stretches on too long.

“What is it?” Juno asks, and he pushes down the urge to run.

“What did you see?” Peter asks. He doesn’t really ask it so much as blurt it. “When you read my mind?”

Juno’s first impulse is to answer that one sarcastically. But he doesn’t. He touches his cheek, and Peter closes his eyes.

“I saw you save a city full of people,” he says softly, and Peter snorts, presses the side of his face into Juno’s hand. “What I’d have done. Except better, probably, because if it’d been me a lot more people would have ended up dead.”

“Some still did,” Peter says briskly. “Where it mattered.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

“When I was seventeen,” Juno says, “I spent my time worrying about how to get drunk and how to get the boy who made drinks at the bar down the street to want to make out with me.” This isn’t entirely a lie, and he doesn’t feel obligated to say anything more. “So I think you did pretty good.”

Peter doesn’t say anything, and Juno doesn’t move his hand.

“Are you ever gonna go back there? To Brahma?”

“Pass,” Peter says. “Juno.”

“What?”

“Why did you leave?” Peter says, like Juno knew he would.

“I can’t answer that without being insensitive.”

“I think I can stomach insensitive. It’s part of the charm, somehow.”

“I -- “ Juno takes a deep breath. “This is my home,” he says, finally. “I mean, it’s a shithole. It smells bad and it’s dangerous and more than half the people who live here would sell their own grandmother for a few creds but -- “ He clears his throat. “So. Why did you?”

“What, back with the mask?” Peter purses his lips, thinking. “Because -- well, out there, detective, is the closes thing to a home I have. And I love that, too.” He pauses. “Also I really did not want to be arrested by Hyperion’s finest.”

“Well,” Juno says. “Fair enough.”

“Not that I couldn’t have broken out --”

“Of course, sure.”

“Is that doubt, Juno? Do I hear doubt in your voice? I’m affronted. My reputation, my good name.”

“No, it’s not,” Juno laughs, “it’s just not an easy prison to break out of.”

“I did come prepared, you know, in case the eventuality arose. Look, we could practice with your cuffs. I’ll show you.”

Something in Juno’s brain short circuits, and he knows Peter knows it. “I’d be doing a disservice to law enforcement across the galaxy if I let you practice breaking out of anything,” he says, as firmly as he can manage.

“Oh but Juno,” Peter says. His face is serious but his eyes glint. “I love it when you get all bad cop.”

Juno coughs, and Peter grins.

He starts to focus on pulling himself together and then considers the fact that, really, he doesn’t have to. Peter’s looking for a reaction and there isn’t anything wrong with that, not here and right now. “If you can’t come up with a question,” Juno says, and he edges closer. Their kneecaps touch and he presses the palm of his hand flat against Peter’s chest. “That means I win.”

“Well, hm,” Peter says quickly. “We can’t have that. Oh, let’s see. What’s the number to your bank account? Oh, don’t make that face, I’m joking. What’s your favorite place in the galaxy?”

A big question. An easy answer. Juno thinks about considering it for a minute and then just says it. “Right here,” he says. “This room.”

“Oh,” Peter says. “Funny. It’s mine too.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I make a point not to, unless I’m making a point to do so and in that case I’m sure you’d know.”

Juno knows that it’s probably a lie, but right now he decides he doesn’t care. Something else to deal with tomorrow morning.

He wants to be needed. That’s what they call a fatal character flaw. It’s best to know the things that are yours, so you can recognize them when they come back to bite you in the ass.

“Oh -- “ Peter says, muffled, when Juno moves forward and kisses him, hard. “I suppose the game is over, then?”

“We can pick it up later,” Juno says, and lets himself be pushed gently down onto the pillows.

The phone rings.

Juno swears at it. It just keeps ringing, undisturbed, so he swears again and picks it up. It’s early, grey and yellow sunshine morning light coming in through the window, and Peter is asleep in the bed next to him, his arm tossed carelessly across Juno’s stomach. He sleeps like the dead, like someone trained from a very young age to sleep anywhere at any time, knowing he can wait in a second to reach for the knife under his pillow. Juno sleeps in fits, always has, and he keeps a blaster under his bed.

Peter shifts, eyelids moving a little, and Juno’s chest aches.

“What?” He barks into the phone. “It’s first thing in the fucking morning.”

“Oh thank God -- “ Rita bellows into the phone. “Mister Steel! You’ve been home this whole time? I’ve been calling and calling -- ”

“What?” Juno is realizing he never called her to tell her what had happened last night. “I’m fine, stop yelling. I’m at home.”

“You could’ve called me and told me!” Rita yells. It seems like she’s worked up a real head of steam, and he’s very glad they’re not in the room together.

“And told you it was a wasted evening and that I was going home? We’re in the shit, by the way.”

“Yeah you should’ve!”

“You’re not my babysitter,” Juno snaps. “I don’t have to check in with you every time I decide to call it an early night, alright?”

“No,” Rita says, “except the last time I just assumed everything was fine you vanished for two weeks because a crazy archaeologist locked you in a cave.”

“She was an anthropologist,” Juno says dully. She’s right. She usually is.

“I don’t give two good goddamns what she is!” Rita yells so loudly that Peter opens his eyes, frowning, and Juno has to yank the phone away from his face.

“I -- “ Juno opens his mouth to argue, then stops. “No. You’re right. Sorry.”

“Are you okay boss?” The volume of Rita’s voice drops considerably. “Cause that sounded like an apology and I thought I'd be freezing in hell before -- ”

“That is enough concern for one day. We’ve got a lot of legwork to get through today, Rita, but I might have a lead. I’ll see you at the office in an hour.”

“Legwork,” Rita groans. “Great. I regret calling you at all.”

“Bye, Rita,” Juno hangs up the phone and looks over at Peter, looking at him.

“She worries about you.”

Juno shakes his head. “When I got back she was on the warpath, terrorizing the whole precinct to send out search parties. She likes it when men taller than her run away in fear, that’s all. I’m pretty skeptical they agreed to it. The day I vanish for good is the day HCPD throws a parade.”

“She worries about you,” Peter repeats, and Juno can’t read his face.

“Morning,” he says instead. “You’re -- well. Still here.”

“So are you.”

The expression on his face makes it very hard for Juno convince himself to stand up. So does the kiss that accompanies it, how soft Peter’s eyes are and the languidness of his limbs, the smell of his cologne stuck in the pillows.

“I have to make coffee,” Juno says, and stands. “And catch a thief.”

“I suppose it is tomorrow,” Peter says, slowly, as Juno walks into the kitchen. He sets out two cups. They don’t match but he likes how they look sitting on the counter anyway. The coffee is done by the time Peter joins him, dressed again, his hair pushed back.

“When are you leaving Mars?” Juno asks, a little tentatively. Peter stirs sugar into his coffee and sips it. It’s hot and steam clouds his glasses, obscures his eyes.

“That depends,” he says. “On what you think should happen next. You know how I feel. What I said, before, that night -- I meant it.”

Juno makes himself turn to look at him. If you’re a fool that makes two of us, his own words in response. It’s been a very long time since anybody had told him they love him, and he’s very good at running away from that.

“So did I,” he says. “But -- Nureyev. Peter -- “

Peter rotates the mug in his hands. He doesn’t speak.

“If you ask me to leave with you I’m going to say no,” Juno says. “This -- this changed -- well, I don’t know what it changed, exactly, except something. But -- that hasn’t changed. I’m not -- “

“Well,” Peter says, “it’s a good thing I wasn’t planning on asking you that.”

“Oh.” Of course not. You take warmth where you can find it.

“I was going to suggest,” Peter says, “considering a vacation, but you beat me to -- whatever this is.”

“Vacation.”

“Yes, you know. Where you spend a great deal of money to go somewhere with a view in order to drink fruity drinks, wear something pretty, have a lot of sex and rifle through nearby hotel rooms.”

“That’s what you do on vacation?”

“Petty larceny does the soul good, darling. Oh, this is a good cup of coffee.”

“Maybe,” Juno’s head feels like it’s filled with cotton. “After I figure out this case, I mean. You’re -- ”

“Compromising? I’ll admit I’m not particularly interested in storming out in a huff this morning. I thought I might be, but the urge has gone right out of me.” Peter sounds like he’s haggling.

“Compromise.”

“Negotiate.”

"You want to cut a deal." 

“Middle ground, detective.” He sets the cup down, still full, on the counter, and leans against it. Juno follows the line of his body, his crossed ankles.

“Stop it,” he says. “I’m trying to think.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re being distracting and you know it.”

“Hardly,” Peter says. “If I intended to be distracting you wouldn’t be speaking English.”

“Okay,” Juno says.

“Okay?”

“Let’s compromise. I have to finish this case first and then -- “

“I look forward to it.”

“I’ve got a pretty shitty track record,” Juno says, “for -- well. Anything related to this, really. So you know. I’m also a dick. You know that, though.”

“And I,” Peter grins, and that is distracting, “like a challenge. And you know that. I also will admit that it’s been a very long since I tried -- well. To trust anybody with anything personal, outside of a job. So you know.”  

“But people -- “ Juno finds himself grinning, tries to stop it and can’t, “they make things work. All kinds of things, all kinds of people. All the time.”

“Worth a shot certainly.”

And -- yes. Sometimes things are.

“So, listen,” Juno says, and he looks into Peter’s face and Peter is smiling and there are no edges to it and he looks pretty good, standing in Juno’s kitchen. Really good, actually. “There’s this case, right? Jewel thief thwarting security, apparently untraceable. Big reward if I can crack it. I think I could use a consultant, to give me a little edge. Someone who knows the business, you know.”

“It does sound like that would be useful,” Peter nods earnestly. “I know a few people I could recommend.”

“I’m wondering if you have any experience doing detective work.”

“A little,” Peter says, “I worked with one once before. Pretty fellow, don’t think you know him. Are you offering to split the cut? My rates aren’t cheap, you know.”

“Thirty seventy,” Juno says.

“I think,” Peter leans forward, “you’re underestimating my potential contributions to your case, detective. I could be a very valuable resource.”

He pauses, his mouth a few inches from Juno’s own and Juno puts his hands flat on Peter’s chest so their hips are touching.

“I’m not haggling,” he says.

“Oh, I love it when you get bossy,” Peter is all delight. “Alright, I accept. Call me a fool.”

“Takes one to know one,” Juno says, and kisses him. “But seriously,” he says a second later, coming up for air, “we need to get going or my ass is gonna be toast.”

“Right behind you,” Peter says, and Juno goes to get his coat.

The morning sun outside the apartment building is bright and yellow. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Juno’s car is still at the office and he decides to walk the few blocks rather than calling a cab, Peter in step behind him.

“You know,” Peter says thoughtfully, “this takes me right back to when we met. You and me and a mystery between us. I’d prefer not to be tied up in a restaurant today, though.”

“I’d really like to not have to arrest you,” Juno says, and Peter laughs, and Juno thinks he has a point.

Life moves in circles -- that’s part of what makes it so grim sometimes. He knows that you never really outlive something, you just move past it and brace yourself for the next round. On and on, their actions and reactions How he’d gone, and also been left, and they’d still circled back here. The arcs in the patterns of living, the leaving and the going and the loss. Something his mother used to say, as he scowled in the kitchen clutching his shirt to yet another busted-up lip or nose or black eye.

“You never learn your damn lesson, Juno Steel,” she’d say, and she’d say it over and over again. “You climb too high you better be prepared to fall down and get hurt.”

No, he never did learn his lessons. Not even the ones he tried to teach himself. Not even the ones that sting, that ache year after year after year. Not even those with the kind of hurt he can anticipate, when he runs things into the ground, so full and deep it’ll never really go away.

Today, he doesn’t mind it.

Tomorrow -- who knows.

“Come on,” Juno says, and he turns up the collar on his coat. “Let’s go solve a mystery, huh?”