Chapter Text
"You know, Juno...call me a fool if you like, but I think I...may have fallen in love with you."
Peter's soft, sleepy tone was like a sucker-punch to the gut--and Detective Steel was the sucker...
"I...heh...if you're a fool, that makes two of us."
Juno lay winded as the man fell asleep beside him, breathing deeply, like someone who knows the tomorrow he's waking up to will be worth showing up for. And perhaps it was. And perhaps Juno, for once, felt just like that--but it kept him awake! How he could ache with thoughts of bouncing through orbits and chasing stars by this man's side, Peter Nureyev.
I may have fallen in love--
Juno stared at sharp teeth peaking past pretty lips, recalling his half-dreamt confession. And then before then, strong hands that kept him assured before his own death threat, before those tall, black spires that consumed them, within the tomb, between the sheets... He stared, and he stared, wanting to reach out and prick his finger upon those canines. God--he was hopeless, pathetic, still running on a post-suicidal adrenaline that drove him through to frantic sex in a hotel room. Juno was all edges, losing half his mind to those lips as his head spun with his sudden lack of depth perception. His eye socket still ached, his head still ached, his body down to the bones and along with his voice--losing it over the stretch of hours crying out Nureyev.
Nureyev.
The name was warm. He could wear it like a coat, tucked within the soft final “v”. The thought made him blush! It was his to keep between his trigger-happy fingers; a name that was Juno's and Juno's alone in this whole, wide solar system.
"Nureyev..." he sighed aloud to the night, sharing his secret to the darkness, to the namesake's snores. He could say it again. He could sing it.
What am I? Some sappy bride on my wedding night?
Juno winced, his breath coming out as sharp as Peter's teeth. Was this it then? His second farewell to bachelorhood, to kissing pretty dames on a stakeout? Were their vows given in blood? Juno's ears still rung with Peter's screams from that horror-show of a laboratory, and he felt his heart pang in his chest.
"Peter--" he murmured aloud again, throwing an arm possessively around the other and gripping tight, afraid the man might slip through his fingers again. He could have chased this man through moons, hell, out to the Kuiper Belt if he could! He dreaded and dreamt of a night like this, reading the man's neat script in his final note and fumigating his apartment of that cologne--a scent he found himself obsessed with! And then he followed this man on half a slice of trust with a side of paranoia, led around like a fool until his near-death...
...call me a fool...
"Peter Nureyev..."
A gift that was almost as sweet upon the tongue as Peter was. And yet he felt his heart close to giving out...
...may have fallen in love...
He felt a dampness pour out of his remaining eye as he looked upon those cutting features. He seized Peter Nureyev close, moaning out a soft sob as it all came down upon him like a ton of bricks. He shook against the other, wondering if he actually did die in that tomb, and perhaps wishing he did, if it could have prevented the heart attack he was about to have now.
Juno fell asleep to a mumbled question, and fell hard.
He awoke in weak sunlight, a gentle cornflower blue that tripped and fell upon a blooming crimson horizon. He awoke to his head in Peter's chest, limbs entwined. He awoke with a smile for what felt like the first time in his life, and hoped against hope that he would wake up like this every morning for the rest of his life. And yet, there was a current that ran through him--he was a live wire sparking out of control even when the pinprick of sol in the sky was still wiping the crud out of its eyes. Rigidity took his bones. He felt hard--he felt hard?
Juno wanted to kiss him again, kiss him a thousand times--those lips like silk... he could live in them.
But he didn't.
...love...
Juno was careful in disentangling himself from the other. He dressed quickly, quietly, in the brightening room, fumbling in his half-blindness for keys--
"Juno..."
The detective stared once again at the man's sleeping form, his soft voice pouring into his spine like ice, before melting, making him feel full and heavy, tempted to just lie back down and lose himself to those strong hands.
It seems Peter's gift went both ways. Juno Steel's name was no longer his own. It belonged to Peter now, Peter Nureyev, and no one else.
The detective breathed hard as he clung desperately to the doorknob, afraid his knees would give out beneath him. A part of him hoped they would.
He slowly shut the door before spinning around and jogging apace down the halls, not stopping until he felt the cool air of the morning, the brisk wind sobering him up.
He could have had the solar system, the galaxy--hell, the universe!--from the likes of Peter Nureyev. But Peter was chasing a thousand paradises that never were and never will be, and Juno almost fell for it. He still felt himself falling, unsteady on his feet, hurtling toward the very ground he stood on, and he wanted so badly to run--run upon the rings of Saturn for crying out loud! But to run with a thief--a thief he trusted--away from killer stars and runaway execs and starving children and bad parents and smugglers and mercenaries and murderers and anthropologists!
Away from a dead girl, rotting away somewhere in this filthy, beautiful city...
But Peter was running away from his own home too. He'd been running for so long he seemed to have forgotten how to stand still. He was running towards a dream that twinkled like starlight, but was still as much of a ball of gas as well.
The detective had run to his office door just as the sun chased after him, climbing out of its bed and into the slowly yellowing sky.
He dashed inside and then he--stool still...he finally stood still before the window as the powdery blue horizon gave way to a murky gold, as tall, black buildings cut through like knives, shadows fading as the previous nights sins were laid bare for all to see. Juno grunted as his hands found the violet bruises on his neck, running down to his chest.
Although there were drunks drifting through the streets, greeting addicts who had turned their skin to pincushions and powerful people who profited off the pinpricks alike, Juno found himself suddenly bonded to them. Yes, this city was messy, and he often wasn't very proud of it. But it was his city, and it was worth saving.
Hyperion City belonged to Detective Juno Steel, Private Eye.
The detective breathed deeply, trying to calm down. But he found instead the scent of that damn cologne, sticking to his clothes, to his skin. He breathed in again, and breathed out in sniffles, then laughing, then hyperventilating, before he broke down into loud, painful sobbing, grabbing hold of his desk as he fell to his knees.