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This is one of many truths about Juno Steel: he isn’t a bad singer. Hell, he’s better than most, even if that isn’t something he’d admit if you asked. Or even at gunpoint.
Ben had his dancing, which was never Juno’s thing, although he picked up a thing or two by proximity. But some part of him used to love music, a part untouched by bitterness or anger or disillusionment. It made his foot tap involuntarily to the beat, made him hum under his breath, made him sing silently to himself if he let his mind wander too far away to stop him. And the thing is- he has a nice voice, just rough enough to be charming, and he’s never had to put effort into hitting the right notes. So if anyone ever happened to hear him, they didn’t complain.
That was before Ben’s death, of course, and after that, there is little reason to sing. Music is a painful reminder of his brother and he does his best to avoid it, at least when he’s sober enough to care.
As the years pass, he stops flinching at every distantly familiar tune he remembers from his youth. Listening to music for his own enjoyment still feels like an undeserved indulgement, even a betrayal of sorts, so it’s never a habit he picks up. But the thing about songs that were once a part of you is that they never really leave. A tune you loved during your childhood is going to tuck at the same familiar strings inside you decades later, peeling away a lifetime of pain and forgetting in a matter of seconds.
Juno hates it. Anything that has the power to give him impromptu flashbacks to his childhood is going in his bad books immediately.
Still, he catches himself sometimes- on a rare good day; usually if he’s tipsy and in a good mood, if he’s lost in a task paying no attention to what his mouth is doing or if Rita left the music running in the office- even though he keeps telling her to use headphones, if she really must listen to music in the workplace (not that she’s ever going to listen to him, she insists it’s less fun to sing along if she can’t hear herself). He’ll be halfway through a song he didn’t even know he remembered when he realizes his mouth had been singing without his permission, voice soft and absent-minded and unworried. He’ll stop himself immediately once he realizes, shake his head and be left with a vague feeling of unease.
It’s not really a thing, though.
There are a couple of times over the years that Rita catches him, either because he didn’t realize she was there or because she managed to be sneaky about entering a room for once. Normally she has no reservations about passionately belting out the wrong lyrics at top volume with no regard for consequences but those couple of times she softly joins in without stopping what she’s doing at the moment, voice still shrill but not unpleasantly so. There’s something about those moments that stops Juno from interrupting himself or snapping at her. They feel too fragile to break, a thin bubble of peace, of harmony, that disappears once they’re out of words. Maybe Rita feels the same because, uncharacteristically, she doesn’t try to make him talk about it. It’s an unspoken secret just for the two of them- there is nobody else Juno would trust with this particular bit of vulnerability.
It happens so rarely that it isn’t really a thing, either.
When Peter Nureyev sweeps into his life he can’t even remember the last time he caught himself singing.
It doesn’t happen at all during the mess that the following years turn out to be. Once, Rita leaves a record running that used to play all the time when they were teenagers, quietly singing along, occasionally throwing glances at him, and something in Juno wants to join in, take this small piece of intimacy and comfort from a person that loves him but his throat closes up and not a note comes out. He murmurs an excuse and hurries out of the office.
His life gets upended a couple more times before he’s leaving Mars on a spaceship occupied by a bunch of legendary criminals, Rita (kind of also a legendary criminal now) and the man that could’ve been the love of his life (also a legendary criminal, technically. Juno isn’t sure he knows more than two people that aren’t criminals at this point). A quiet minute isn’t really a thing that happens for a while. To be entirely honest, it’s quite an adjustment to share a cramped place like a spaceship with five other people with a room about as big as a cardboard box as your only place of guaranteed privacy.
Juno is swept into adventure once more, wild and exhilarating and messy and scary and dangerous and wonderful, and he feels- he feels better than he remembers feeling in years, if he’s honest. Maybe better than he has since his brother died. He falls in love with Peter all over again, and this time- this time, they actually get to live in each other’s space instead of being thrown from one life-threatening situation into the next before being separated again.
It’s odd to think of their team’s escapades as normalcy. But after a while Juno finds himself settling into this life of daring escapes and a home among the stars. He almost stops expecting it to end any second now, for Peter to vanish for good, for their friends to die, be arrested, get rid of him, because what good is he to them, really?
He’s in the ship’s kitchen chopping potatoes next to Rita when it hits him- he’s well and truly comfortable. She’s absent-mindedly singing a half-forgotten song, intercepted by humming where she can’t remember the words and Juno finds himself joining in softly.
“Say, it’s only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea…” his lips form the words automatically when Rita starts on the refrain. She beams at him for a moment before turning back to the potatoes and he can’t help his lips twitching upwards in response. They finish the song and their dinner preparations but a warm feeling lingers in his chest.
Peter spontaneously pulls him into an empty corridor later. He laces their fingers together and presses his lips to Juno’s, chaste but lingering.
“What was that for?” Juno asks with some amusement when Peter pulls away again, eyes reluctantly opening.
“You’re looking uncharacteristically cheerful,” Peter murmurs, “I like it.”
He sweeps off on his way again before Juno can answer but that doesn’t stop him from fondly calling him an idiot.
It keeps happening, after that. Juno settles into the quiet between the excitement, into the domesticity behind the adventure. Bit by bit, he stops treading carefully, looking over his shoulder, being ready to be gone at a moments notice. He starts humming when he does work that keeps his hands busy but not his head and he finds he doesn’t mind so much anymore.
“...the sigh of midnight trains in empty stations, silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations...” he’s softly singing to himself while replacing a broken pipe in the bowels of the ship one day, only to trail off when he feels the prickle of being watched on his neck.
He tries to will his blush down before turning around, with mixed success. Peter is leaning on the railing like he hasn’t got a care in the world. He’s looking at Juno like he’s a beautiful puzzle that he’d be glad to take apart like he has all the time in the world. There’s something softer there, too, behind his eyes, almost melancholic. For a moment Juno is overwhelmed with the fact that Peter trusts him enough to let him see that deep.
“Don’t say anything,” he warns, voice grumpy but cheeks still warm.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare, darling,” Peter smiles, pushing himself back upright and idly wandering towards Juno, who clears his throat and goes back to work.
“I didn’t know you were such a good singer,” Peter says conversationally while he leans against the wall, now barely a foot away from Juno, who has had the theory for a while now that it physically hurts Peter not to lounge against something.
Juno glares at him over his shoulder.
“Thought you wouldn’t say anything.”
“It suits you,” Peter murmurs, hand reaching up to card through Juno’s hair with impossible gentleness. It’s a lot more than Juno can take in terms of unbridled affection so he resorts to scoffing and keeping his eyes trained on the pipe. When Peter doesn’t say anything more, just watches him with a barely-there smile on his lips, Juno assumes that’s going to be the end of it. But when he closes the toolbox and straightens, ready to take off, Peters arms snake around his waist and he’s pulled into a lingering kiss.
It’s not particularly comfortable, pressed into this corner with machinery digging into his back and a faint smell of oil in his nose but it’s not like he’s going to complain when Peter’s kissing him like this, like he wants to melt into him, like there’s nothing in the universe he would choose over this, like there’s nothing that could make him let go. Juno is entirely helpless against Peter’s gravity pulling him into orbit and keeping him there, has been from the very first day he met him.
Juno is breathing hard when Peter draws away, sharp teeth gently pulling at his bottom lip. He doesn’t go very far, forehead pressed against Juno’s, their breaths mingling in the stale air.
“Didn’t know dirty basements were something you're into,” Juno says once he’s caught his breath.
“Mmh, you’re not giving yourself nearly enough credit,” Peter smiles, “Say, did anyone ever teach you how to sing?”
Juno frowns at him.
“No, why are you still going on about that?”
Peter shrugs as much as he can considering how tightly they’re still pressed against each other.
“I can admire a lady for being talented, can I?”
Juno’s mouth is already half open in protest when Peter foils his efforts by kissing him again, and Juno doesn’t think about anything but him for a while, after that.
He might just be paranoid but he’s almost sure Peter keeps sneaking up to him more often during the following weeks.
They’re lying in bed one night, exhausted after more than thirty hours on their feet but still waiting for the leftovers of the adrenaline rush to wear off, Peter's head cushioned on Juno’s chest, listening to his heartbeat with a pensive look on his face.
Juno laces their fingers together with one hand and starts stroking Peters hair with the other, because they’re alive and because he’s allowed and because he’s slowly learning to reciprocate the casual affection that seems to come so easily to Peter.
“Would you sing for me, Juno?” Peter asks eventually out of nowhere. Juno freezes.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t have to, of course. But I’d like to listen, if it’s all the same to you.”
Juno gives a shaky exhale.
“It really isn’t. I’ve never- I don’t even know how- what, do you mean, like, right now?”
“Why not now, love?”
Juno sighs.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Indulge me?” Peter untangles their fingers in favour of running his hand along Juno’s side, cool fingers pressing reassuringly into warm skin.
Juno doesn’t answer for a long moment. He knows that if he asks Peter to let it go, he will, and he would never hold it against Juno.
That’s why he opens his mouth before he can change his mind, starting with a long low note, until his lips start forming the words to an old, old song that he remembers from an entirely different life.
“Somewhere there’s music, how faint the tune... Somewhere, there’s heaven, how high the moon…” he starts and for a moment Peter's hand tightens on his hip. They stay like that, impossibly close, in their own world for the minutes it takes Juno to get through all the words, it’s a short song, but he sings it much slower than he’s supposed to, hand trailing through Peter’s hair and over his neck in time.
They’re quiet for a long moment after, Juno already half regretting this humiliating nonsense, but then Peter pushes himself up on his elbow and cradles Juno’s face in his hand. There’s something in his eyes that stops him dead in his tracks.
“Oh, Juno,” he says softly.
Juno draws back a bit and eyes him with suspicion.
“What?”
“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you,” Peter murmurs and turns Juno’s head so he can kiss him, slowly, languidly, because here and now they truly do have all the time in the universe. Peter licks into his mouth, deeply but unhurriedly and pushes himself up until he’s half on top of Juno, tangling their legs together. Juno thinks that here, like this, he could die happy.
They trade kisses until their exhaustion catches up with them and Peter buries his face in Juno’s neck, breath slowing.
“I love you, you know,” Juno murmurs, unsure if Peter is even still awake enough to hear him. It’s not the first time he’s said it but it’s still novel enough that his throat gets tight with nervosity and his heart picks up speed at the words.
“Love you too,” Peter whispers against his neck, voice rough with sleep, “You could do this again sometime.”
Juno’s eyes have long since closed but he can’t fight a smile.
“You know, maybe I will.”