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He can’t breathe.
There are hands around his neck, thumbs pressing into the gap between Peter’s collarbones. He is gagging, bucking into the hands get them off get them off. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe.
Miasma’s laugh is ringing in his ears, and he fights even harder to get her off, get them off get them off he can’t breathe can’t breathe. It’s loud, it’s in his head I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.
But the hands around his neck are too large to be Miasma’s. They’re too rough to be a university professor’s. I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.
Peter bucks and gags, and stares into the eyes of Juno Steel.
Peter wakes with a gasp. He can’t catch his breath, and for one horrible moment it feels real, all real. He rubs his neck, uses the weight of his hand to ground himself.
It wasn’t real. Any of it.
Except for the parts that were. Except for the memories, the breathing, all of it.
The lump next to him in the bed stirs, and for one second –
But of course it’s not.
He couldn’t have picked a more opposite partner: lithe and pale, where Juno was stocky and dark; tumbling fair hair, where Juno’s was pulled back with whatever came near; soft and gentle, where Juno was rough and violent.
The eyes though. Different colours, but that same calculating intensity. Perhaps Peter has a type.
“Nightmares?” The man – Hero, his name is Hero, because Peter’s life is a joke – says, stretching out with the certainty of a cat. “You were… thrashing.”
“Mmm,” Peter rubs his eyes. “Apologies. I didn’t hit you, did I?”
Hero shakes his head. “Same again?”
“Something like that.”
Hero’s eyes flick up and down Peter’s body in a once over. Peter thinks about leaning over and kissing him; starting the sequel to last night.
But the memories of Juno’s hands around his neck are still there, vivid and visceral, and Peter – can’t.
“I’ve been wondering.” Hero’s fake nonchalance doesn’t fool Peter for one second. Hero probably knows. “Why now? Why did you come back here? Why would you?”
‘Here’ being Brahma. ‘Here’ being the closest thing Peter Nureyev has to a home. ‘Here’ being the place where Peter Nureyev is a dead man walking and a living legend.
“Are you going home today?” He trades a question for a question, a game of Rangian Street Poker with no cards or kills.
“I might. Depends on how the rest of today goes.”
“Does he know? That he’s the only thing you’ve ever called home?”
Hero just looks at him. That question probably reveals more about Peter than he’d like to admit.
He’s the closest thing Peter has to family, though. He doesn’t remember much about Brahma. Just cold, hungry, the crack of lightning from New Kinshasa, and a scrawny fair-haired boy only half-named.
The point being: Hero knows.
“Someone…” Peter says, beginning carefully. “Someone wanted to know who I was. Who Peter Nureyev was. They left that door ajar.”
Hero reaches out and touches his hip bone, makes him jump.
“They didn’t want that, in the end.” He watches Hero’s hand trace over his skin with a detached interest. “But I – I found the jacket tempting. So I returned.”
Hero looks unimpressed at Peter’s use of metaphor, but he understands, Peter thinks.
They lie in bed for a time in silence, just barely touching. Peter listens to the sound of Brahma, as his compatriots leave for work, get breakfast, and live their lives. He tries to look inside, tries to search for that feeling that Juno has, the strings attached that drag him down and back, the love that means more than any person ever could.
He feels nothing at all. Just the touch of Hero’s hand against his skin.
With some reluctance, Peter drags himself out of bed.
“Busy day today?” Hero shifts in bed, takes up more of it. His bright eyes are lazily-lidded, seductive. It is, Peter admits, a wrench to put on his clothes instead of joining him.
“Meetings with on high.” Peter shrugs on a shirt and does the buttons up with quick and nimble fingers. “The very highest. Heads in the clouds.”
Hero’s face splits into a real, genuine grin.
He watches Peter dress himself, showing no desire or inclination to get up.
Peter slips on his coat and heads for the door.
Hero coughs genteelly. “I think you’re forgetting something, Nureyev.”
Peter looks over his shoulder wryly. “I was testing you.” He puts a hand in his pocket and pulls out a sheaf of creds. “You’ve high rates, Hero.”
“I’m worth it.”
He doesn’t quite admit it, but his acknowledging noise probably does it for him. He drops the sheaf on the hotel room desk. “Check out’s at eleven. Help yourself to breakfast, it was included in the room.”
Hero gives him an inquiring look, a gratified nod.
“Go home tonight, Hero. See him for me.”
He, the baseline that keeps Hero grounded, the man whose identity he protects lavishly, secrets that Peter – a walking secret himself – can respect.
He closes the door before he can hear Hero’s response. He turns up the collar of his coat and heads for New Kinshasa.