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No, there’s no doubt about it. Any way you look at it: it’s a frog.
Peter picks it up. He places it gently into the palm of his other hand. Its paper mouth stays firmly shut, its paper legs are still.
He’s fresh out of the shower, towel around his waist and four-months-haircut-overdue hair dripping onto his shoulders. The vents rattle to life and a sudden splutter of cold air gets spat out directly onto his wet back, but he hardly even realises he shivers.
The frog has a little bit of pen marked on its back. Peter is suddenly desperately curious to know what pen-and-paper design this creature was fashioned from. He turns it once over again, tries to guess at it, and, failing that, begins to unfold it.
With each gentle twist of the paper, more and more pen mark shows. Over time, a page of abstract doodles in his own amateur style reveals itself. He remembers doodling this while listening to Juno talk about what he’d been up to while Peter was away on the mission – yes, there’s a smallish sketch of Juno and Rita watching a comms screen, of Jet accidentally finding Rita’s snack stash in the hidden compartments of the RUBY 7.
It occurs to him that later, when it had been Peter’s time to talk, Juno must have picked up the sheet and absentmindedly started folding it. Nobody else has been in his room, or if they have, haven’t fiddled with anything else, so that must be it.
He hadn’t known Juno could do this with paper. Peter knows it’s an ancient Earth artform, must’ve known the name of it at some point, but Earth trivia tends to be so dull compared to other planets that it’s quite slipped his mind. He wonders where Juno could have possibly picked it up.
Peter sits down on the end of the bed and traces the folds of the paper with his fingers. The vent coughs up another hairball of cold air, and Peter absentmindedly scoots a little further out of the way of the blast. He makes a fold of the paper. Then another.
He can see that there’s been a fold made here, and followed shortly after by one there, but how it could have possibly twisted to try and make… this fold here…—ah.
Peter frowns disapprovingly at his fingers. The paper has torn.
Mind now released from fervent curiosity, he suddenly registers that he feels very cold. He crumples up the torn paper and throws it into the small wastebasket near his desk. He sits for a moment, before getting up and heading into the closet to change into warmer clothes.
This time it’s a rose. Peter finds it in his bed, a little squished under his pillow. He holds it between two fingers, the sheets laying haphazardly over his bare back, and his hair drifting over his shoulders. He puts his chin in his unoccupied hand and smiles privately to himself.
Juno hasn’t been in his room for a while over the last few days – things have been busy – but the last time he had, he had been wrapped up by these same sheets, soft and vulnerable in Peter’s bed, smiling dozily at him as he bustled around the room. Peter had gone to have a shower, and when he’d come back Juno had dressed, but was still there.
Still there. It hadn’t occurred to Peter when he’d first left the room, but was suddenly profound in his returning to it: that Juno had been in his bedroom, without him. Had stayed in his bedroom and gotten dressed in his bedroom and (apparently) had time to fold a little flower in his bedroom while waiting for Peter to get back.
It felt, of all things, like a step in their relationship, to be just as comfortable in each others spaces alone as together.
He unfolds it. He can’t help himself, he has to know what he possibly could have left lying around his room that caught Juno’s eye and inspired him so. It’s a list, actually – of beauty products Peter needs at their next market stop. He has been keeping it beside his bed to remind him.
It’s not significant, but it also is: there’s no intentional message in the choice of paper, but there’s a meaning to its unintentional design as well – the way Juno feels comfortable with picking up and playing with the parts of Peter Nureyev he finds scattered around. No longer is there a hesitance to what he might find if he goes looking.
Peter tries to fold it again. He can’t, of course. So he tucks the list underneath the bedside lamp to keep it from falling off the bedside table, and gets himself out of bed.
Peter never sees him do it.
He wonders if it’s a part of the whole thing, of Juno leaving little gifts around for him, or if he simply makes them without thinking at idle times and abandons them. He tried asking Rita on the down-low if she’d ever been given little folded paper shapes by Juno before, or noticed the habit, but it ended on an hour’s long lecture on the time Rita flooded the office with paper spaceships that Peter was obliged to smile stiffly and nod to and try desperately to keep his eyerolling purely internal. (It’s not that he doesn’t adore Rita’s company, it’s only that it’s very hard to find an easy out to a conversation once she begins).
It’s the face of a puppy dog, triangle with two floppy ears. It’s also a cat, the old Earthen kind with the alarmingly few number of eyes and no stinger. There’s a rabbit, two bears, and a whale. Peter finds them in a pile on the bedside table after spending the night in Juno’s room.
In his defence, he hadn’t meant to stay. It was only that Juno happened to be warm and the vents happened to be cold and before he’d quite meant to he’d fallen asleep during the stream. Juno, curse his compassionate heart, had not waken him up but simply manoeuvred him into a sleeping position and kept him warm all night.
He’d woken up alone, but with reminders of Juno all around him. He unfolds them to find torn pages of Juno’s notebook, a few pages of his own doodles again. He’s still proud of a few of those scribbles, so he folds them up and pockets them in his pyjamas. By now he’s given up on his endeavour of replicating the little creations.
Juno has gone to breakfast, but he must’ve spent time making these. Peter can imagine himself snoring softly in the bedsheets while Juno pried himself from his clinging grip, and spent time doing something that interested him just because he could. Just to spend a moment longer beside Peter in bed, at peace with the world as it was.
It’s probably a romanticisation of whatever really happened, but Peter finds his heart warm at the idea – and that is different. It’s huge, really. He’s spent so much of his life being terrified if he wakes up to find he’s the last to do so. Panic tends to grip him that he’s muttered some secret in his sleep or has been searched and exposed at his most vulnerable.
He’s never thought it sweet that someone might wake up before him, before. It’s not that he has no secrets from Juno as much as that he trusts Juno to let him keep them, to not pry even if he mumbled long-gone names or plots or plans.
He even, and this is truly unfathomable… he even trusts himself to love Juno, even if Juno has made no move to return the sentiment at this stage. It does bother him, at times, when he is alone and the usual anxieties move in, that Juno seems uncomfortable with the phrase, skirts around affirmation when Peter dotes over him. And yet, he can’t quite bring himself to doubt that loving Juno is right, regardless of whether the feeling is returned.
Buddy knocks on the door and informs him that he’s late for breakfast. Peter searches through Juno’s closet for something that will compliment his figure well enough, and leaves the room.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Juno says. He sighs, fiddling with the strap on his eyepatch. “I get the feeling it’s not going to be as simple as Buddy says it will be.”
“It rarely ever is,” Peter mutters, sliding the sleeves of his red velvet blazer over his arms.
Juno grunts in agreeance, “I know, and I get she does her best. She does fucking fantastic, actually. It’s just… just once I’d like a heist that doesn’t involve threatening you, me, or…”
He trails off. Peter glances up from adjusting his tie to follow his line of sight to… ah.
There’s a piece of paper on Peter’s desk which has been clearly unfolded. Peter remembers what it was – an origami koi fish (he had the decency to search up the name of the art form once it became clear this was a personal interest of Juno’s and not a passing fancy).
That’s… embarrassing. He wonders how Juno feels to find out that Peter’s incessant curiosity has led him to unfold each of his little gifts. He wonders if he should explain himself. He gets as far as taking in a breath when Juno sniffs and glances back up at Peter in the mirror.
“Yeah, anyway,” he says, as if he hadn’t paused at all, “Basically, I just think my blood pressure would appreciate a heist to go at least fifty percent according to plan for once.”
Peter laughs, and Juno grins the bashful grin he makes when he’s happy he’s made Peter happy, and asks for help with his eyeliner.
Peter decides not to unwrap any more pieces of origami he finds, despite the itching curiosity he feels when he sees them to know exactly which piece of paper got folded, and how Juno found it, and when it might have happened, and for what purpose.
This turns out to be easier than expected, because Peter doesn’t see any more origami for an increasingly alarming period of time.
At first he hopes that Juno has perhaps been busy. This heist took a lot out of him, thankfully only metaphorically, and he’s been deep in conversation with Buddy over their next moves. Then the heist hype dies down and their next long stint of travel begins and Peter still doesn’t see any more origami. It’s then that he has to confront the awful truth: his insensitivity has scared Juno off.
He wonders, again, if he should say something. He wants Juno to know he didn’t mean to offend him, or to seem ungrateful for his tiny gifts. He’s only insatiably, fatally inquisitive.
It worms so deep into him he thinks about it all the time. Juno slips into his room for a night time visit, a mischievous look in his eye that Peter has become well acquainted to by now. After Peter has thoroughly replaced the mischievous glint to a deeply satisfied one, and Juno lies sweaty and chest heaving in his bed, Peter leans over and kisses him.
“I love you,” he mutters, and Juno, spurred by the romance of the moment, turns his head right into him and says, “I—”
That’s all. Peter hears his voice get chopped off in his throat, hears the soft grunt that comes out instead.
Juno relaxes into the blankets. He sighs, and says, “Sorry.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, my love,” Peter says, and kisses him again, “It’s okay.”
But for the first time in a while, he wonders if it is.
A heart.
Peter almost missed it on his way to family breakfast. The strangest thing is that he hasn’t visited Juno’s room recently, nor had Juno visit his, and yet, here it is. A little heart.
He picks it up off of his desk like it’s a microscope slide, thin glass, and examines it. There’s a pen mark on it. His eyes get stuck on the detail and circle back to it each time he glances the origami over. If his curiosity was insatiable before, it’s almost unbearable, now.
Peter, not without some effort, puts it gently into his pocket without touching it any further, and continues to breakfast.
Juno makes no acknowledgement of him out of the usual – a peck on the lips and pressing of hot coffee into his hands, an inquiry after his sleep and whether or not he heard the frightening noises from the kitchen at three A.M. because Rita got hungry.
Breakfast is nice, if not boring, and the family meeting that follows is boring, if not nice. Peter spends a lot of time with his hands in his pockets, absentmindedly tracing over the shape of the heart he knows is in there, and glancing at Juno. Juno never looks back, but that’s his lady: focused and determined as ever on everything Buddy Aurinko has to say.
He heads back to his quarters after the meeting is done and gets himself ready to have a shower. It would be odd having showers at random points during the day if Peter’s entire schedule wasn’t usually random to the point of nonsense, and anyway showering during the day guarantees not having the door banged down and being shouted at when he’s simply trying to complete his skincare routine.
He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket that has been folded in half, among all his other paraphernalia (Rita’s scrunchies, again, she really ought to stop leaving them so accessible for absentminded pickpockets when she gets so mad when he ends up with them). Prompted by vague curiosity, he unfolds the piece of paper he just pulled out—and falters.
He plunges his spare hand in his pockets to look for Juno’s origami heart. It’s not there. It seems at some point during the meeting Peter’s absentminded tracing had turned into unconscious unfolding, which means that this must be…
Peter looks back at the piece of paper. It has lines where the folds once were, and…
And his heart is in his mouth. Peter sits down and stares.
“Wo-o-oah!”
Juno laughs as Peter pushes him backwards into his room, slapping carelessly on the wall behind him to close the door as they stumble towards Juno’s bed.
“Someone’s in the mood,” Juno teases, breathlessly, before he gets pushed down onto the bed and Peter gestures for him to move backwards until he’s sitting against the headboard.
Peter climbs onto his lap and kisses his forehead. He kisses down one side of his face, feeling the tickle of first Juno’s curls and then Juno’s eyelashes as he traces every each of him with short presses of his lips.
Juno’s hands find their way to Peter’s waist, and he holds him steady as Peter follows the bumpy ridge of Juno’s nose to the other side of his face, under his eye, down his cheek, teasing at the corner of his mouth on his way down to his chin.
After a while, Juno giggles, “Is this going anywhere?”
Peter pulls back. “No,” he says, breathlessly, “Not unless that’s what you want.”
Juno smiles back, “I’m not going to lie, you got me a little excited there,” he says, but when Peter’s hands rush to the buttons of his shirt, Juno catches his wrists and eases them away.
“But,” he says gently, “Now that you’ve started… I think this is nice, too.”
So Peter goes back to trace his jaw with kisses again.
“What is all this special treatment for?” Juno asks eventually, his head tipped back so Peter can kiss up to his ear and back over his hairline again. There’s a huge smile on his face, which makes Peter’s whole chest sing.
“You know what,” he mutters, against Juno’s forehead, and pulls back in time to see Juno’s smile widen.
But Juno says nothing about it, and that’s fine. Two can play the silent game, after all, and Peter’s move is as simple as peppering Juno with kisses enough that he doesn’t notice the piece of paper that gets tucked into his pant-line.
