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Juno walks into his bedroom to find Nureyev lying on his bed.
This in itself isn’t anything unusual: they’ve been spending a lot of nights in each other’s rooms lately. A lot of nights…communicating, both the literal kind and the euphemistic kind. It’s become almost routine, even. Juno likes that.
So much in his life has changed since leaving Mars behind, so being able to have a routine to fall into, a sense of familiarity, is welcome. It reminds him of driving the same streets to his office every day in Hyperion City, of wearing the same coat and collapsing into the same bed. There is something very comforting about being able to walk into his room at night expecting Nureyev to be there, and to indeed find him there.
Only, this time…
“You’re on the wrong side of the bed,” Juno grumbles, shoving at his shoulder.
Nureyev gives him a cold look over his glasses and sets down his book. “I’m sleeping on this side tonight.”
“But why? I always sleep there! That’s my pillow, and everything!” Juno knows he sounds like a petulant child, but he is genuinely baffled. They’ve been sleeping on the same sides for days. He likes his side. He doesn’t see any point in changing things up now.
“I’m sleeping here,” Nureyev repeats, and his tone is final and oddly serious for something that shouldn’t matter.
They always say not to go to bed angry- or at least, Rita always says that’s what they always say in the streams- and Juno doesn’t go to bed angry that night. He does go to bed feeling vaguely confused and frustrated, though.
In the end it is the realization that sleeping on Nureyev’s side means getting his pillow, which has absorbed the scent of his cologne, that convinces Juno that this might not be such a bad idea after all and allows him to drift off into a deep sleep.
The next night, Nureyev is back to sleeping on his regular side like always and they don’t speak of it again.
The Carte Blanche’s next destination is a decent distance away, which means they’ll have an entire seven days to pass aboard the ship. Jet made sure they’d have enough supplies and fuel for the week, so they won’t need to touch down even once before they reach it.
There’s something almost cozy about it, Juno decides. He likes being able to spend time with the others without the immediate threat of a heist looming over their heads. He watches streams with Rita, tries- and fails miserably, but tries- to join Jet on his meditation routine, has several long talks with Buddy that end with her insisting she’s not his therapist before welcoming him to talk to her again any time if he needs to, and even manages to only get into a fight with Vespa on five separate occasions.
Nureyev sleeps in his room, or he sleeps in Nureyev’s, practically every night now. It softens the edges of his nightmares, knowing that when he wakes he’ll be able to roll over and see the love of his life beside him, feel the warmth of his lanky body under their covers, a constant reminder that he is living in a different reality now. A safer one.
Then he wakes up from a dream about Benzaiten at four in the morning, and Nureyev isn’t there.
He isn’t immediately shocked or horrified. He knows Nureyev can take care of himself, and that he’s probably just on a late night trip to the kitchen or bathroom. Still, he is overwhelmed with the desire to see him, just to make sure he’s still…around. For a moment his dreams meld with reality and he sees Ben dead, but it’s not Ben, it’s Nureyev, and he’s-
He wants to see Nureyev. Just in case.
After ten minutes of searching, Juno is surprised to find him in the stream room, curled up on the couch and snoring lightly. He would have guessed that he came out to get something and accidentally fell asleep, but he brought a pillow and a blanket with him, and looks positively comfortable there.
Something inside Juno stings.
You really want to know why I slept on the couch, Juno? You don’t snore. That was a lie. I just couldn’t stand the thought of having to sleep in that bed beside you for even one more night.
He swallows the memory. He’s past that now. Nureyev isn’t like the people he’s dated before; he’s not out here because he’s tired of Juno. There has to be another reason. He’d really like to know that reason, though.
Before he can stop himself, he shakes Nureyev awake.
The man yawns and stretches, looking at him blearily. “Juno?” he mumbles. “What time…?”
“It’s still the middle of the night. Not time to get up yet. I just…wanted to know if you’re okay.” If you’re still okay with me.
“Ah. Apologies, Juno, I should have said something, but I didn’t wish to wake you. You looked so peaceful when I left,” Nureyev says through another yawn. “I just wanted a change of scenery, that’s all.”
A change of scenery. It feels like a weak excuse, but despite having been forced awake at 4 AM Nureyev is giving him such a fond look that even he, wired as he is to notice so much as the smallest shift in tone from a partner, struggles to read any resentment behind it.
He can’t help still returning to bed worried and confused. The following night, however, Nureyev stays beside him until morning and holds him close, and he reassures himself that he hasn’t done anything wrong.
“What’s a lady like you doing in a place like this?”
Juno looks up from brushing his teeth to find Nureyev leaning against the doorframe and cocking a suggestive eyebrow at him.
“Er…you mean the bathroom?” he says. “Getting ready for bed, mostly.”
Nureyev grins, and there’s something strange about the grin: it’s not Nureyev’s. It’s not Ransom’s, either. It looks a bit like Glass’, but not entirely. “Oh, such dry wit. I think you and I will get along well. What’s your name, if it isn’t too forward of me to ask?”
Juno isn’t sure what to make of any of this. He and Nureyev have roleplayed before, but only with a lot of communicating beforehand, and it had gone quite badly. On Juno’s end, at least. Nureyev had done a great job, but Juno just hadn’t been able to get into character at all. He wasn’t a good enough actor for the role, frankly.
Now, though…he doesn’t get the feeling that Nureyev is expecting him to act. This is about him playing a character, not about Juno doing so.
Juno sighs and sets down his toothbrush. “Juno Steel. And you?”
“Zeus LeRoi. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He reaches out one long-fingered hand, and Juno takes it and shakes.
He’s a bit too tired for all of this, but he indulges Nureyev anyway, obligingly responding to the man’s flirtations as though this is their first meeting. Zeus is even more theatrical than Nureyev, all sharp smiles and big hand gestures and distinctly unsubtle innuendo.
When they get to the bedroom, Juno cautiously admits that he’s not in the mood for sex. The second the words leave his mouth he’s filled with sick fear and regret.
God, Juno, it’s like you’re never in the mood. What’s even the point of dating you? It’s so boring.
Nureyev- or rather, Zeus- seems unfazed by this, however. He doesn’t drop the personality as he assures Juno that they needn’t go any further tonight, and even jokingly insinuates that it just means they’ll have to meet again another night, as though they really are strangers who haven’t already had plenty of opportunity to explore each other’s bodies.
When he holds him as they lie together in bed, it’s with the tentative touch of a new lover. Juno falls asleep in Zeus’ arms, wondering vaguely what that means and what point there is to roleplaying without sex.
Nureyev continues to act odder and odder as days pass.
Some nights he falls asleep in Juno’s bed, some nights his own, and others in random locations around the ship. Once Juno even awakes to him fast asleep on the cold, hard floor right next to their bed. ‘Change of scenery’ remains the only explanation he ever gives.
The strange, sudden roleplaying continues as well. It only appears when they’re alone, but it’s usually not sexual, just intimate. Sometimes it’s just a conversation. Nureyev will launch into some convoluted backstory about life growing up on one of Saturn’s moons, and Juno just has to smile and nod along.
It’s to the point that even the others are starting to notice something’s up.
“What’s wrong with your boyfriend, Steel?” Vespa asks him bluntly one morning when they run into each other in the kitchen.
“What? What did he do?” Juno asks.
“Nothing, really. He’s just being fucking weird. Even more so than usual, I mean.”
Juno can’t argue with that, especially since he’d just walked in on said boyfriend repeatedly packing and unpacking his travel bag while humming the tune to a sitcom they’ve been watching through with Rita. When asked why he was doing this, he’d just waved Juno off, saying something about how it always pays to be prepared in a pointedly cordial tone.
Nureyev isn’t being actively worrying, per se- Juno has yet to find him sobbing into his hands or bemoaning the sorry state of his own existence or anything- but somehow that actually makes it all the more worrying. If he did something like that, at least it would give them an excuse to talk about whatever’s wrong.
To Juno’s relief, he seems marginally better in days leading up to their next heist, completely caught up in the whirlwind of planning and memorizing floor plans and creating his next persona.
During the heist, he appears positively ecstatic, reveling in the thrill of mission and throwing himself headfirst into his fake identity as a Plutonian debutante.
Then he breaks his leg.
Juno sees the look on his face when Vespa tells him he won’t be able to walk for at least a week. It crumples as though he’s just been given a death sentence.
Once his cast is on and they have the infirmary to themselves as Juno idly doodles hearts on the plaster, he’s finally able to bring himself to ask, “Are you all right?”
“My leg is broken,” Nureyev responds, quirking an eyebrow.
“I know! I mean…other than that. How are you doing with this…mentally?”
He lets out a long sigh. “It’s not ideal, of course, but…I’ll manage.”
“I won’t let you be alone in here all the time. I’ll stay with you. Bring you whatever you need.”
“Thank you, dear.” Nureyev smiles at him, but there’s something behind that smile that Juno can’t place, and he doesn’t like it.
The day passes relatively normally. Nureyev gripes about his condition rather a lot, unsurprisingly, but seems to be recovering well otherwise and assures Juno that so long as he doesn’t try to move around he has little pain. Juno spends as much time with him as possible, bringing him food and books and board games.
They part that night with a kiss. Juno is unhappy that he can’t fit in the infirmary bed with Nureyev, and considers sleeping in the chair next to him, but Nureyev insists he get a good night’s rest in his own room.
“I’ll be just fine here, Juno,” he says. “Good night.”
“Night, Nureyev.”
Juno still feels odd about leaving him there. His sleep is fitful, and he ends up waking several times in the middle of the night. The third time he wakes, his comms reading 3:10 AM, he gives up and walks back to the infirmary to check on Nureyev.
Nureyev’s bed is empty.
Juno tries not to immediately panic and fails miserably.
Where could he have gone? He isn’t meant to even go to the bathroom by himself, in his current state. Isn’t even supposed to stand. A million terrifying options run through Juno’s head, and he is already imagining Nureyev passed out in some enemy combatant’s ship, or dead, or-
His spiraling thoughts are interrupted by a low moan from somewhere to his right. He recognizes it as Nureyev’s voice and instantly jumps to turn on the light and reach for the blaster that definitely isn’t on him right now.
Nureyev is crumpled like a rag doll in the far corner of the infirmary, near the other exit, his face a mask of pain.
Juno rushes to his side, desperately looking over him for injuries, his head spinning with fear. “Are you all right? What happened, Nureyev? Did someone hurt you?!”
“Fine, ‘m fine,” the man mumbles finally. “I simply…overestimated myself, is all. Didn’t want to…wake anyone. Thought I could make it to the bathroom and back on my own. Evidently, I was wrong. Hurt too much. Couldn’t…make it back. Had to lie down here.”
The part of Juno that is in love with Nureyev wants to believe everything that says. The part of him that was a detective for over fifteen years can’t help but note that Nureyev is on the opposite side of the room from the bathroom.
He decides not to remark on that right now, however. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
Juno tries to lift him as carefully and gently as he can, but Nureyev inevitably lets out a gasp of pain as he is gathered in his arms, making Juno flinch guiltily. Nureyev is and has always been somewhat worryingly light, but the gangly nature of his limbs and the addition of the heavy, bulky cast makes carrying him the ten feet back to the bed a difficult task nonetheless.
“There you go,” Juno says softly as he deposits him onto the sheets. “Want me to get you anything? Water? Painkillers? It’s been long enough since your last dose that I think-”
Nureyev just shakes his head. “I’m fine. Thank you, Juno. I’m sorry that you had to witness such a…pathetic display. I’m quite all right now.”
He doesn’t look quite all right. “Want me to stay here with you?”
“No, no. Get your rest. I apologize for worrying you.”
“You have nothing to- ” Juno cuts himself off and shakes his head. “All right. Good night.”
He leans down and kisses Nureyev on the cheek before leaving. Nureyev closes his eyes and leans into the kiss, his expression fond.
Once again Juno is hit both with an assurance that Nureyev does indeed love him and that something is definitely wrong, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile these two truths. He was trained in his previous relationships to assume that every new quirk, every cabinet door shut slightly harder than usual, every sigh was directed at him- was the direct result of him having done something wrong, whether he knew what he’d done or not.
Back then, that knowledge had been both horrid and relieving. At least if it was his fault, he could try to fix it. Whatever this is, he has no idea how to mend it. He has no idea what he is supposed to do or what Nureyev needs, and that scares him.
It is a harrowing couple of hours, when Juno finds Nureyev missing from his bed again, and this time he isn’t just lying on the floor ten feet away. This time, he really was kidnapped and shoved into a bag by an enemy. This time, the ship crashes into the ocean and it’s a miracle that they make it out alive and relatively unscathed.
Nureyev’s leg certainly isn’t helped by him having been shoved into a bag, nor is it helped by the fact that the infirmary no longer exists and it will be several days before Vespa has it back up and running. If everything had gone as planned, he’d be almost healed by now, but instead he is stuck in his tent completely unable to walk or stand without someone- namely, Juno- to support him for several more days.
Juno knows this is weighing on him. He doesn’t say much about it, but his tone lately has been clipped, severe; his body language strung tight as piano wire. Juno sees the frustration and longing in his face when he can only watch as Rita and Buddy go off to the explore the beach that they crash landed next to.
Juno can tell something is off when he helps Nureyev to his bed that night, but as usual, he doesn’t know what.
Juno kisses him good night. “Wake me up if you need anything. Just…call out or chuck something at my tent, and I’ll be there.”
“Mm. Thank you, Juno,” Nureyev says, and his voice is tired and strained.
“You okay?” He’s asked it many times, and can’t help asking it again.
“As okay as one can be, given the circumstances. I’ll survive.”
“Night, then.”
“Good night.”
Juno isn’t sure whether or not he’s imagining the quiver in Nureyev’s shoulders as he turns away to go back to his own bed. When he glances back again, the man is still, and gives him a wan smile. He smiles back and walks away.
Juno wakes up in his dark tent to being shaken, hard.
It takes him a moment to come back into reality, and for him to register exactly who is shaking him. His eye hasn’t adjusted well enough to see yet, but he still knows it’s Nureyev, would know that scent and the feeling of those strong, slender hands anywhere.
“N’reyev…what? How did you even get here?”
His tent is pitched right beside Nureyev’s, so it’s a walk of only a few yards, but that’s a few more yards than Nureyev is meant to be walking unassisted in his current state. Juno sits up and switches on his lantern, confused and tired.
The light reflects against wide, terrified eyes.
Nureyev is straddling him and staring down at him like the world is ending. His breath is coming out in short, panicked gasps and his entire body is trembling. Despite the cool night air, his skin is coated in a sheen of sweat.
Juno wakes up as fast as if he’d had a bucket of ice water thrown on him. He scrambles out from under Nureyev and says, “What’s wrong? What’s happening?!”
“We have to go,” Nureyev replies, and his voice is high and strained. “We have to leave. I’ve already packed.”
“What is it? Is Dark Matters here!?”
Nureyev shakes his head.
Juno is already out of his bed and pulling on socks and boots, reaching for his blaster. “Are we under attack again? How are the others?”
Nureyev grabs him and shushes him. “We have to be quiet. We can’t wake them.”
This catches Juno off guard. He furrows his brow. “What?”
“I-if they see us leaving, they’ll stop us.”
“Why do we have to leave?!”
“We just have to. I- I have to, and I can’t go without you. M-my leg. I need you to help me.” His voice is becoming more and more strained, the words choked out between gasps. “Please, Juno.”
Something about the way Nureyev is acting is familiar. It takes Juno a moment to remember where he’s seen it before: several years ago he worked a case for someone who wanted him to investigate a science lab in Hyperion. In one of the rooms he’d found rows and rows of too-small cages containing animals that the lab was performing experiments on. The creatures had stared out at him with wide, desperate eyes, clawing at the bars and desperate to escape.
That is what Nureyev reminds him of now. A caged animal, reaching out at him through the bars, begging to be freed.
No one is attacking, he realizes. Nothing’s wrong. At least, not externally.
Nureyev has let go of him and now his arms are crossed, his nails digging bright red marks into his bony elbows. In the light, Juno can now see similar marks around his upper thigh where the cast meets his skin, as though he’s just spent the last twenty minutes trying to claw it off of himself. As though it is a ball and chain, not a medical device meant to help him heal. As though he is a prisoner, not a patient.
Juno grabs Nureyev’s hands and holds them so he can’t hurt himself further.
“Babe, you’re having a panic attack,” he says as gently as he can muster through his concern and pain over seeing the man he loves in this state. “Take deep breaths.” Is this how Rita feels when she catches him in the middle of an attack? He’s suddenly guilty for having put her through that so many times. He’s not used to being on the other side of this, but he’s determined to do his best.
“We have to go,” Nureyev insists again, but his voice is meek.
Juno shakes his head. “We’re not going anywhere, Nureyev. We’re staying right here.”
Nureyev swears and reels away from him. He tries to stand, but his leg immediately gives out under him and he collapses back onto the bed with a cry of pain.
“Stop! Stop, stop trying to move.”
Juno grabs him and pulls him into his arms, restraining him. Usually he’d be more careful about touch when the man is in such a state, but right now what’s most important to him is that Nureyev doesn’t injure himself more. Nureyev struggles for a moment, but eventually relaxes into his embrace. His breathing slows to a ragged but more reasonable pace after another couple of minutes, and he’s able to speak again.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” he whimpers. “I can’t be here anymore. I don’t want to be Ransom. I-I’m trapped in this alias, in this place, in this broken fucking body-”
“Shh,” Juno shushes him gently. “You’re not trapped. You’re okay.”
“I want to leave. I want to at…at least be able to walk on my own.”
“I know, Nureyev. I know.”
“I can’t run. I couldn’t run. They sedated me and tied me up and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“I won’t let that happen again.”
“Juno, I have to be able to run,” Nureyev insists, clutching at him like a drowning man to a life raft.
“You’ll be able to run again,” Juno assures him, “but you have to let yourself heal before you can do that.”
At first, Juno was shocked to see Nureyev like this: it felt so sudden, so out of the blue, this desperate need to run away. Now that he’s had a moment to think, however, he knows the signs have been there all along. Nureyev must have been doing everything, from the roleplaying to the sleeping in different places on the ship to the obsessive rearranging of his bags, to stave off the feeling that is currently hitting him full force.
Of course. Juno curses himself for not realizing it sooner.
He’d been so caught up in the comfort of having routine again that he’d barely taken a moment to think of Nureyev, of the thief without a home who’d spent the last twenty years of his life hopping from planet to planet and alias to alias. The man who never spends more than a week in the same place, who gets antsy just having to sit in the same room for half an hour. Routine doesn’t comfort Nureyev. It terrifies him.
Juno realizes, miserably, that he has no idea how to fix that.
He loves Nureyev more than pretty much anything, but he can’t leave the others. He won’t. He’s not sure that Nureyev even wants to either; his brain is just wired in such a way that it insists that he needs to leave after a certain period of time regardless of any affinity for his current compatriots.
He can reassure Nureyev that his leg will heal soon and he’ll feel better then, and that may be true, but it doesn’t fix the core problem. Nureyev’s been having issues since before he broke his leg, and he surely will continue to have them after its healed. Juno feels weak and useless. Why can’t he find a solution?
“Juno…” Nureyev mumbles into his neck, his voice thick with unshed tears.
He can’t find a solution because there isn’t one.
Rita was never able to find a solution for his depression or his panic attacks either, and she never tried to. Some feelings don’t have a solution, at least not an immediate one. Sometimes the best you can hope is that someone kind will be willing to sit with you and hold your hand while you’re feeling them.
He can be that person for Nureyev.
He spends the next two hours holding Nureyev and talking gently to him, telling stories of his past cases and enthusing him about their upcoming heists. He’s not sure how much of what he says, if any, is being heard and understood, but Nureyev eventually relaxes enough to fall asleep beside him. Juno carefully lifts Nureyev’s glasses from his face and sets them aside before curling up and falling asleep too.
When he wakes in the morning, it is to find Nureyev sitting on the end of his bed, long fingernails tapping anxiously on his knee as he stares at the tent flap.
“Morning,” Juno says, rubbing his eye.
“Good morning,” Nureyev says curtly. They’re quiet for a while, and then he continues, “I apologize for last night. I don’t remember much of it, but I know that I acted in an…embarrassing manner.”
Juno sighs. “No, you didn’t. You were just spooked. I’m the one who should apologize for not realizing that you were struggling sooner.”
Nureyev chews his lip. “You’re happy here, Juno. With them. I…I would never take that away from you. I would never ask you to leave it behind. Er, at least not in my right mind.”
“I know that.”
Juno feels a heavy dread settle in his chest. He knows what’s coming. He knows what has to come next, what inevitably always comes.
He swallows the bile in his throat and says, “Nureyev…if you have to leave…it’s all right. I understand.”
“Juno-”
“This isn’t your life. When I left that hotel room that night…it was because you were asking me to do something I wasn’t ready for. You were asking me to leave when I’d never left before, and I was too scared to do it. I didn’t know how,” Juno continues. “I wasn’t ready to leave then, and you aren’t ready to stay now. I can’t…I can’t expect that from you, especially not after betraying you like that.”
Nureyev is quiet again, for a long time. The silence is deafening. Then, finally, he says, “I’ve spent my entire life running away. Right here, right now, with you…is the first time I’ve ever even wanted to stay. And I do. Juno. I want to stay more than anything.”
Juno nods weakly. “But you can’t. I understand.”
Suddenly, there are hands cupping his face and eyes the color of the night sky staring into his soul. “No. I want to stay more than anything, so I’m going to learn how to.”
“…What?”
“I’m scared. I’m frustrated. I’m angry. I hate this wretched cast, and some nights I feel like I’m going out of my mind, but…I love you more than I feel all of those things. Last night made me sure of that,” Nureyev says. “Two years ago I could have never envisioned a scenario where I could ever be anything other than miserable when trapped in one place unable to do so much as stand, but…even in this state, when I’m with you, I’m happy.”
There are tears stinging Juno’s eye, now. He doesn’t know what to do with the leftover adrenaline from the terror he felt when he thought Nureyev was going to leave him, doesn’t know where to direct it or where to put his hands.
“I knew all along,” he realizes.
Nureyev tilts his head. “Hm?”
“Th-the way you were acting. I knew you were panicking because you were stuck, but I was scared…scared to bring it up, or to even admit it to myself, because I was so sure that you were going to leave.”
“Oh, Juno.”
He bites back a sob. “I want to…ask you a million things right now. To demand why you think I’m even worth staying for, but…I won’t. I trust you, and that means that while I don’t always understand it, I do believe that you love me. I believe everything that you’re saying, and…thank you.”
He collapses into Nureyev’s arms, tears flowing freely now, feeling the weight of what this man is willing to do for him on his shoulders- no, not on his shoulders. He is not Atlas, but the opposite. Nureyev isn’t something he must carry; he’s the earth beneath his feet that holds him up.
“I’ll need your help, of course,” Nureyev says into his hair. “Not just with carrying me around, though that has been much appreciated. I’m…new to this. I’ve never done it before. You managed to stay on that dreadful red planet for 40 years; I feel the least you can do is give me some tips.”
Juno laughs breathlessly. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Anything you need.”
A part of him longs to feel guilty. What’s wrong with him, that he couldn’t fix himself enough to run away with Nureyev all those months ago? Meanwhile Nureyev is here, willing to change the very fundamentals of his being, to rewrite the essence of his existence and every one of his natural instincts, all for Juno’s sake. All for the sake of the lady who betrayed him.
But no, that’s wrong: because he’s changed, too. Juno isn’t the same person who walked out of that hotel room anymore.
He didn’t intentionally change for Nureyev. He changed for Rita, for Mick, for Hyperion City…most of all, for himself. Somewhere, though, in the depths of him, it had been for Nureyev too. Even if only subconsciously, he’d wanted to become the kind of person who deserved Peter Nureyev.
He can’t help but laugh. “Look at the two of us. I didn’t know how to leave, and you don’t know how to stay.”
“We do make quite the pair,” Nureyev agrees.
“What is it they say? ‘Love conquers all’?”
“Such a ridiculous cliché, really.”
“Mm, definitely.”
“True, though.”
Juno smiles, threading his fingers through Nureyev’s and squeezing his hand tightly. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”