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He wakes up from the dream again.
It’s a long time coming, that wake-up. Juno tosses and turns, Sarah Steel’s voice like a bottom-shelf strawberry liqueur—sharp and mean and too sweet by half—fading in and out among the sounds of occasional traffic filtering through the open window. When his eyes blink open, he’s wrapped in a tangled sheet and a film of drying sweat.
The clock blinks at Juno tauntingly. It’s less than an hour until the alarm is set to sound.
He gulps down air and feels it sting his throat. It’s not like it matters, why his throat is sore and raw—nobody’s around to hear him scream his way through a nightmare like a scared toddler anyway. Hasn’t been anybody for— Well. For a while.
And whose fault is that, Steel? It’s almost a relief to hear a voice in his head that isn’t hers, that isn’t anybody else’s at all, even if it’s still telling him the same things—the kind of things he learned early to take into himself and never, ever forget.
He remembers, is the point. He remembers when he’s awake and when he takes out the trash, when he walks down the street, when he sits in his office or gets stuck in traffic. He remembers when he drinks.
Actually falling into the birthday cake is new, but how small he feels in that candlelight has been with him for decades.
So the memory of a birthday that’s not a birthday and the name he rarely even lets himself think tossed out like it isn’t worth anything, he can handle that part. Sarah Steel is dead, and the only things left of her are stuck inside Juno like pneumonia: a looped recording and a fear he can’t run fast enough to escape. But it’s always the same. The panic and nausea and guilt are routine, by now. Rote.
It’s the other part of the dream that haunts Juno’s morning. Another name he hides from, another one that still follows Juno to give him a run-down of all the ways he messed up, all the pain he’s caused and the things he deserves to hear. It’s the only part of the dream that changes night-to-night.
Bits of last night’s version bloom in Juno’s memory as he brushes his teeth, grabs a decently clean shirt.
Nureyev is cold at first. That’s a constant. Even asleep, Juno can’t imagine the man would be happy to see him again. His laugh, too—a liquid chuckle, slipping down his brainstem. That might have been how it started, now Juno thinks about it.
Yeah, that sounds right. Nureyev’s laughter, smug and a little too knowing in a way that makes Juno’s hands itch, floating out of the dark.
He calls Juno a lot of things in the dream. When Juno really feels like hating himself, he’ll think about the rich shape of Nureyev’s mouth around “darling,” around “love.” Pet names have never really been Juno’s thing, but then again he’s not used to being with someone who would think to use them.
Needless to say, in his dream, Nureyev calls him nothing of the kind.
“Washed-up failure,” hits Juno like a laserbolt to the brain while he waits for his coffee to re-hydrate.
“Stop it,” Juno whispers weakly, to nobody but himself. His coffee-maker beeps in answer, turning the cold, black-blue sheen of the dream inside out and bringing Juno back to the rusty light of a Martian morning. He drinks right out of the pot, so fast it scalds his tongue.
And his day begins.
Juno Steel, private eye, spends long stretches of his time in less than pleasant places. When a little lady spends most nights in his childhood bedroom wishing he were sleeping in a sewer, he learns to tolerate a lot. Damp alleyways and cold underpasses and an abandoned fuel station, once. But rooftops? Bottom of the very, very long list.
Two and a half weeks will get him used to a lot, though. He’s still not exactly fan club president of the dizzy nausea of standing next to a three hundred-foot drop, but life’s like that sometimes.
So he sits, and he watches, and he’s bored. Clouds loiter in the sky, on the verge of deciding whether or not to dump a bucket of acid on a lonesome PI who forgot his umbrella. Irregular headlights dance past in the ambient light.
Juno talks to himself, like being the narrator gives him any kind of control of where the story goes. It’s an old habit, an old ideal. Today, he only makes it halfway to deluding himself that the tale of his life is one anybody with a brain and another option would want to hear. Hell, Juno is barely batting one-for-two on that front and he’s on the verge of switching channels. This one jumped the shark seasons ago, folks.
And then another day is over, nothing to show for it but Juno’s cramping thighs and aging back.
The rain finally makes up its mind just in time to douse Juno on the way to his car. He leans on the horn the whole drive back to his place, already feeling a placebo itch as the rain eats through his pants and shirt collar.
The elevator is broken. Again. Figures. He wheezes his way up two flights of stairs and drips acid on the faux-wood hallway.
When Juno gets home, he tosses his keys toward the bowl by the door and immediately knows he’s missed. He takes a second to wallow in the knowledge that future-Juno, somewhere in the timestream, is flipping him the bird for not finding them now, and shrugs off his coat.
Problems for the morning, and the morning after, and every weary goddamn morning for the coming weeks. And then… He doesn’t know what, then, but it’ll be something besides sitting on a rooftop all day. Even if the work is miserable, at least it won’t be tedious; isn’t that what got him into this call-it-a-career in the first place?
He hops in the shower to scrub his lightly-stinging skin, tosses his shirt and pants down the trash chute—the shirt had blood on it anyway, probably; time to put the damn thing to rest—and briefly considers painting his nails.
Juno is more or less free from paperwork these days. Perks of working for only one client, so he’s got the time. He might even have the energy tonight, which doesn’t always happen. It’s calming, takes him back to the day he, Sasha, and Mick scraped actual money together between the three of them and bought a little bottle of blue polish. Markers and repurposed paint samples worked alright for other colors, when an Oldtown kid felt like doing their nails, but blue was a tough color to make work. He remembers it, now; old-Earth sky blue, deep and brighter than anything else for a block around. It matches your eyes, someone told him—
No, not Juno. The memory comes in sideways and shifts around until it settles in. He remembers the observation, someone at school, said nearby him but not to him. And he remembers the money, now, not split three ways but four. Another pair of eyes the color of Juno’s; another pair of turned-out pockets for a spare half a cred, in pants that might have been Juno’s originally, if anything was; another set of fingers with the same contrast: blue nails, brown skin, blue eyes.
He shuts the bathroom drawer abruptly, rattling the small glass bottles gathering a little more dust every day. Why bother, anyway? It’s not like he was ever any good at doing his own nails.
He makes himself dinner instead. Actually cooks—if you can call it that—instead of tossing a nutrient cube into boiling water or heating up leftover takeout. It’s a decent halfway point, not a luxury exactly but still something to do with his hands.
It’s pretty good. Juno makes a little more rice than he needs, but that will keep. He knows how to save something for a rainy day. Figuring out when the day is rainy enough, well— That’s the problem.
Despite his best efforts—and he actually tried this time, dammit, how is that fair?—the rest of the evening slips out of his grasp. Between dishes and a drink or two and the drone of the public access feed he keeps on out of habit, time just trickles away until his eyes are heavy and there’s nothing he can use to procrastinate basic bodily needs anymore.
So Juno falls asleep. Again.
He knows what’s coming beforehand, but once the film reel of his dream sputters to life he forgets everything else. His own voice echoes, a tired here we go again, and then fades into darkness and silence.
Footsteps.
A shouted warning.
A quiet chuckle. A light.
The memory of what he did, what he wouldn’t let himself have, slides up Juno’s throat. It’s cold, like Nureyev’s eyes. Like the sneer that curls his mouth at the sight of Juno, at the way his dream-self can’t help but move closer and try to touch him.
“Peter Nureyev,” he whispers, like his breath alone will be enough to break apart the image in front of him.
“No, I certainly don’t remember using a name that common,” Nureyev says airily when Juno speaks the secret, one he thought carried weight. “Have some imagination, for once.”
“I thought—” Juno clears his throat, “it was a dick move to tell someone their gift means nothing, or whatever.”
“Hmm, yes, that does sound a bit like something I would say.” Nureyev blinks those big, bright eyes down at him. There isn’t even anger there, nothing Juno can push back against. “But how you could know that, I haven’t the faintest idea. We’ve never met, after all.”
The only look in his eye is disinterest. It stings more than hatred, somehow.
They orbit in the space around each other, further and closer and further apart again. Juno doesn’t tell his feet to move, but Nureyev swings past and is caught in retrograde regardless.
“Dammit, I am Juno Steel!” The match under Nureyev’s face is gone. It’s still dark in this wide space, but he glows with his own illumination. Like a distant star.
“You’ll have to try harder if you want me to believe that,” he teases. “Juno Steel stood up against the big, mean world and laughed. Juno Steel stood up, period. All you can do is lie down and play fetch, hm?”
Juno shrinks back. He’s nearly close enough to touch Peter’s sleeve, but now he doesn’t dare. If he does, he’ll be frostbitten. If he does, Nureyev will be gone, and it will be Juno’s fault all over again. He can have him like this, at least; taking what he deserves is a small price to pay to see him again.
“Nothing but a puppet with a gun and a paycheck, aren’t you?” Nureyev continues, looming into Juno’s space. “But the strings aren’t around your arms, no. You’ve tied their knots in your brain, anchored right in that eye of yours. How do you stand it? You silly girl,” he spits, “you weak little boy.”
“Stop it, Nureyev.” Juno’s throat feels too small, he feels too small.
“No.” Nureyev’s voice rings like a gong. “I’ve told you once, so it’s not my fault you refuse to listen: I am not Peter Nureyev.”
“Who the hell are you, then?” Juno trembles. His hands are clenched into fists, his jaw is set, his face aches like it’s about to collapse in on itself. “I know you.”
He wants, so badly. He doesn’t know what that wanting is for, doesn’t know what the hell he would do with a want once he got it. But he knows Peter Nureyev, he thinks. He might know him when he sees him, might know him when he hears him—but he needs to touch him, just once. Just to be sure.
“And I thought I knew you.” Nureyev says. Juno’s stomach drops like he’s falling, but he’s not falling, he’s standing upright and Nureyev comes closer with a loud click in every footstep. “Oh, Juno.”
Nureyev’s face softens. It’s almost like the one Juno first saw, the day a man in dark glasses acted like offering to climb out a window together was a slick move. It isn’t the tenderness he left behind in the half-light of a hotel—he didn’t deserve that then, and as sure as shit doesn’t now.
But something a little gentler than Nureyev’s glacial eyes? He can let himself have that.
“Come here,” Nureyev whispers a breath away from him. It physically hurts not to reach out, but Juno won’t transgress that line. He won’t dare to presume.
Long arms wind around him, and Juno damn near collapses. Strong hands on his back, one rising to rest at the side of his face. Nureyev is warm and solid, the only thing Juno can remember ever being either. He may have just gotten done prying Juno’s ribs apart to mock everything inside him, but he radiates a strange feeling Juno might name safety if he were brave enough.
“Nureyev, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, you have to believe me.” Juno’s voice says. “I feel like I messed up. I’m not sure, I’m still trying to decide, I—”
Nureyev kisses him.
If Juno had thought the softness of his face was painful, this kiss burns like a solar flare. The wanting inside him bursts open, floods every vein and artery in his body, runs up and down his tendons and sinew and bones and the roots of his teeth. He finally cuts through the boundary and puts his own arms around Peter. He holds him close—clings to him, really, like the scared little kid Juno never stopped being in any of the ways that matter.
His lips are too soft, too gentle, too perfect for a too-brief kiss. Juno wants it to never end; Juno wants to unmake himself and Peter Nureyev and this whole goddamn galaxy so it never happened, so he never has to miss it. So he never knows what’s missing.
Then it ends. Everything ends, and this kiss is no exception, much as Juno would like it to be.
“And this,” Nureyev leans his forehead against Juno’s, eyes open, “I think, is where we part.”
“Please,” Juno begs. “I’m sorry. Please, don’t go.”
“Oh,” Nureyev pulls back. There’s an amused smirk on his face, but a creeping chill in his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, dear detective. You’re the one who has to leave. To head out into that big, mean world, remember?”
“What?” Juno blinks rapidly as Nureyev steps back, hands still on Juno’s shoulders.
“One last thing before you go, yes?” He looks at Juno over the top of his glasses. “Mind the cake on your way down.” He grins, a flash of fox teeth that suddenly seem uncomfortably sharp, and shoves Juno hard.
Juno loses his footing. He screams, he falls, and two voices that he will nevermore hear anywhere in the waking world wish him the same thing:
Happy birthday.
Juno wakes up from the dream.
Again.