Chapter Text
It wasn't meant to be this way. He was meant to have a wife, a job, but the first ended long ago, and the latter, well...
Who knew at this point? All he knew is that he took his old desk name tag with him...and the old wedding dress was still stuffed into a closet in his apartment. But he thought about it often. It was simple, white, hip hugging, off-the-shoulders. Rita embroidered a pair of lace sleeves for it herself, actually, back when she thought it could have worked, back when the boys at HCPD were lining up to come to the killer bachelor party Mick was planning.
But they were far from that old dress now. Now he and Nureyev were at a small bodega on the outskirts of some city. It was sunset, tinted blue by the radiation filters. There was soft music drifting by and by, but Juno did little but absorb it, through his nose, into his skin.
"You haven't touched a thing on your plate, Juno."
Juno jumped in his seat, finding that he had been stirring some peas and carrots, but never quite scooping them, never beginning the process of placing them into his mouth. And then he looked up to find Nureyev, frowning gently at him. There were days when he'd forget that he was there, that Nureyev found him again, at last. Part of him wanted to lean over and touch the other's face, just to ensure that it wasn't some dream, some desert-induced hallucination, or some flashback at the end of his life. He had to restrain himself from doing so, for fear of throwing the peas. Juno replied instead with a noise that was likely meant to be words at some point, until he changed his mind halfway through moving his lips. He stabbed a carrot, but his fork did not quite make it to liftoff.
"Juno...you know you're supposed to put those in your mouth, right?" the other tilted his head, smooth, black hair shifting along with it. Juno was dully fascinated with this sight, though his attention was mostly occupied by the sound of his own heart.
Nureyev sighed. "You're making that face again, you know?"
"What face, huh?" came Juno's first real reply, indignant as usual.
"The I-don't-quite-know-where-I-am face. Rita and I have a running total of how often you make this face."
"I...don't wanna know the number..."
Nureyev smiled with his lips pressed thin, but the expression evaporated. He leaned forward and gently placed his hand over Juno's and spoke in a whisper as soft as a breeze. "Where are you right now, Juno?"
"In some crappy little bodega, where else?"
Nureyev gave a threatening half smile and tilted his head to the side once again. His eyebrows rose and fell, and Juno's own defensiveness fell along with them.
"In my closet, in Hyperion City..." the ex-detective grumbled.
The thief gave a full smile at last, baring his sharp teeth. "Now whatever could you be doing in there, Juno?" he asked, leaning in to try to catch Juno's avoidant gaze. "If you forgot your favorite shirt in there, I'm afraid it might be a little too late to go back and get it."
"Hey, look, I'm not the one who has a patterned button-down of almost everything in the galaxy--like what is that you're even wearing right now? Salmon swimming upstream?"
"It was a gift," Nureyev answered without skipping a beat, "From Earth. Anyway," he adjusted his glasses with one hand, not letting go of Juno with the other, "I have a feeling this is about a little more than a shirt, isn't it?"
Those dark eyes could see through him. Juno waited for Nureyev to just miraculously pull the answer out of him, despite not even knowing a thing about Juno's previous love life. Looking into those eyes, Juno was convinced Nureyev already knew every detail. Juno stalled with a fork, picking up the single cubed carrot, chewing thoughtfully between his teeth for much longer than necessary, before swallowing, all while holding eye contact.
"It's a wedding dress, alright?" Juno sputtered out alright. "You know, for a wedding."
"Yours?"
"No, Nova's--yes, mine!"
Juno was on the verge of laughing, but Nurevey's face was smooth as marble. A single eyebrow rose."You...never told me you were married, Juno." His voice was soft, though the words came out on a harsh breath.
Juno could only smile a bitter smile, though it tasted like a grimace instead. "Didn't quite get there, actually...she ran out the night before. I shoved the dress into the back of my closet. No big deal, you know."
"It sounds like a big deal to me..."
"Well it isn't!"
Before Juno could even complete the thought of wanting to pull away, Nureyev's hand clamped down onto his. He smiled again. "Sure. It doesn't seem like a big deal at all."
"Oh now you're the sarcastic one!"
"And she suddenly left you, eh? Well...that explains things..."
"--what sort of things?"
Nureyev stopped talking, stopped smiling, though he didn't stop holding onto Juno's hand. They spoke without words, arguing through the touch of fingertips on skin. Nureyev's hand engulfed Juno's, then Juno's hand flipped, and he slowly ran his thumb across Nureyev's knuckles.
"That was rude of me," Nureyev spoke first.
"Yes it was."
"And it would be bad form for me to pry, but..." and then Nureyev felt fear. It was written upon his face. A fear of not knowing the person in front of him, one that Juno had felt towards Nureyev once, before he crept into the other's mind one awful day, and got to meet Nureyev Senior himself. His eyes widened, his teeth clenched, Juno's thumb ran faster over Nureyev's knuckles. "I suppose it never came up..."
"You never asked," Juno replied quickly, "But...I should have told you..."
Juno suddenly realized that Nureyev had never crept into his mind as well. There was a history, a time pre-Carte Blanche, even pre-Nureyev, that Juno never told, because half the time he pretended it never even existed, and part of him wished it really didn't. He trusted Nureyev, through and through, and yet Nureyev had no reason to trust Juno, nothing to base his love on besides whatever Juno told him. Nureyev simply would have to pray it was all the truth, or that he could at least deal with whatever the truth turned out to be. Juno stared at Nureyev, wondering where to start, if to start, if Nureyev was truly the one to tell of some hard-boiled kid roaming around the streets of Hyperion City, with nothing but bloody knuckles and a whole lot of grit to face the little world that kid knew.
Perhaps Juno would trust Nureyev with such stories one day, but for now he began with his ex-fiancée's name.