Chapter Text
Even when the course of his life had forced Juno into business casual clothing, he had never been the type for button downs and pencil skirts and the chunkiest jewelry imaginable. Yet here he was, wrestled into all of the above and not enjoying a single damn moment of it.
The air conditioner ran too cold, his nerves ran too hot, and it was decidedly too early for anything like this to be happening. If he was going to bear an eight hour workday in heels for an entire week, he’d rather start after seven in the morning.
He looked down at the clipboard in his hands, squinting against the cruel fluorescent lights. About twelve names lined up on the page, as evenly spaced as soldiers waiting for inspection. Juno felt his face fall when he realized he could confidently pronounce less than half of them.
Just to tear his gaze from the piece of paper, he looked up into the faces of the dozen people he had to fool for the sake of a very important heist. They returned his unsteady look with a single, consistent message scrawled across every face: they would rather be asleep than here.
At least Juno could agree with them on that matter.
“Good morning, class,” Juno winced as the words fell from his mouth with all the grace of dishes crashing forth from a cabinet. Their grumbled reply was at least empathetic. “I’m going to be your substitute teacher for the next week.”
. . .
“A goddamn English teacher?” was all Juno could manage when Buddy explained the mission to him a week before.
“Yes, and a very important one at that. Miss Keating, for whom you are filling in, was signed up to chaperone the school dance,” Buddy started.
“What, are we going to do a heist during homecoming?”
Buddy met his rolling eye with her steely one, and his bared frown quieted into a passive grimace.
“Yes.”
“My dear, I certainly wouldn’t mind another opportunity to see you in such a gown as the last,” Nureyev offered.
“You’re one to talk. You get to babysit a bunch of kids who know what they’re doing. I have to read a book about a man-eating whale,” Juno retorted in the hopes of hiding his blush at Nureyev’s comment. Judging from Peter’s victorious grin, he had not done so successfully.
“Buddy’s not done,” Vespa shot. Nureyev looked away while Juno cleared his throat.
“Thank you, Vespa. Our target is Mister Cetus. He holds a very large stock in the Board of Fresh Starts,” Buddy continued.
“And he’s a high school principal?” Juno cut in. “Sorry,” he added after Vespa looked like she might cut into him.
“Our research’s best guess was power and tradition. There has been a long line of Mister Cetuses at that school,” Nureyev quickly explained, gesturing for Buddy to go on.
“It is in technology that we find the problem. This particular asteroid enjoys far more traditional technology than we are accustomed to. They cite religious and philosophical reasons, but the specifics are of no matter to us. However, as such, the paperwork and certification for the stock are all saved onto the physical computer, rather than connected to the internet. Therefore, we need the computer itself.”
“And why can’t we just steal the computer any time?” Juno pressed.
“He’s rather anal about security, despite the cameras being what you or I might call ‘last season,’” Buddy half-smiled. “Sometimes a crowd is the best cover. I trust the three of you will be able to pull off the heist without issue. We will meet again tomorrow to organize your exact details of escape.”
. . .
So here he was, awake before eight in the morning, and praying the early hour wouldn’t fend off all the studying he had to do just to bullshit a week’s worth of lessons on Moby Dick.
“My name’s Mister Laurence, though I’ll take Mister L or ma’am, if that’s too hard for you,” he sighed, giving the attendance records another glance before giving up and doing a headcount of the students instead. Thankfully, the numbers matched.
A student in the back row raised their hand.
“Before you ask, I sat too close to the TV when I was a kid.”
The student put their hand back down.
“Your teacher didn’t leave me a lot of notes,” Juno began. She didn’t really have the time. The big guy had the honor of kidnapping her and sending her off on an all expenses paid pleasure cruise while Juno got to muddle through a Melville-induced breakdown. “But apparently you’re all reading Moby Dick.”
The faint rustling of nods was his response. He almost wished he had a rowdy class instead of twelve juniors mere inches from falling asleep on their desks.
“Have you started?”
Juno could only assume the low grumble meant “no,” and sighed. At least this gave him a few extra days to finish the book while the kids caught up.
He had sincerely meant to finish the novel in that week before the heist, but there were two notable problems. First of all, the book was about a whale. Second, Juno was scared shitless of them.
It wasn’t something that had ever come up in a case, and not something he had ever expected to, but the sheer scale of the gray whale skeleton in Hyperion’s museum of ancient natural history did a number on his psyche as a child. It was just that fears such as blood, heights, and relationships came up a lot more often than long-extinct water slugs.
“Alright, then I’ll read you her notes on the introduction of the book,” he finally started. The class barely stifled a groan, and only professionalism kept him from joining them. “Moby Dick by Herman Melville was written in 1851 and based on the story of a real whaling ship that was wrecked when a bull sperm—“
Juno really wished he finished his sentence before Peter Nureyev, or rather, substitute drama teacher Mister Noble, flung open the door with all the bravado of a struggling actress from mid-twentieth century Earth. One of those long, old fashioned cigarette holders wouldn’t have looked out of place in his hand, nor would a string of pearls look out of place around his neck.
Juno thought he had a lot of nerve being dressed to kill at half past seven in the morning. He didn’t usually mind it when Nureyev fixed him with that insatiable wine red grin, but he really wished it hadn’t made its presence known during a conversation about rampaging sperm whales.
“Good morning, my dear colleague,” Dimitri Noble, rather than Peter Nureyev announced. Juno had to cover his mouth with a ring-clad hand to fight back a laugh. The crew had only managed to rent two apartments for the three members down on the planet, meaning two were forced to share. Juno certainly didn’t mind offering to play married. In fact, he enjoyed it a little more than he should have.
However, playing ‘married to Nureyev’ had one major downside he often forgot to consider. He wasn’t playing ‘married to Nureyev’ as much as he was playing ‘married to Nureyev’s latest alias.’
On one hand, Nureyev’s married aliases were usually some shade of Duke Rose. Sometimes, they were merely Duke Rose hidden behind another name and a different sense of fashion. Juno never had any complaints there.
On the other hand, Mister Dimitri Noble was the substitute drama teacher.
“Morning,” Juno acknowledged. Nureyev beamed as if Juno had written him a thousand love letters in those two syllables alone.
“It seems I have found my office entirely void of writing utensils. I was wondering, hypothetically, if you might be able to part with one of those pens in that, dare I say, quite tasteful Shakespearean insult mug of yours?” Nureyev half-monologued, passionate enough to wake a student or two up.
He was leaning on the doorframe as if the doorframe were a set piece, built only to bear his weight while he crossed one long leg over the other and fixed Juno with the kind of look that shouldn’t ever accompany such a mundane question. Juno swallowed.
“You wanna borrow a pen?”
“Yes.”
Juno rolled his eyes, but gestured for Nureyev to come into the room nonetheless. He didn’t have any right looking that good in business casual, though Juno supposed he could probably pull off a potato sack with minimal effort. Overall, the effect was very distracting, but certainly better than discussing whales for any longer than necessary.
“You want blue or blue?” he snorted, hoping his pulse didn’t visibly jump when Nureyev strode over to his side and laid a hand on his arm.
“Quite the array of options,” Nureyev began, faux deliberation crossing his face. “I think I feel the blue one calling me.”
“You’re an idiot,” Juno grumbled upon turning his back and rummaging for a pen. Nureyev grinned like he had won something.
“I love you too,” he returned, his voice low enough that only Juno could hear it.
“Here.”
Juno tossed the pen in Nureyev’s general direction, watching those clever fingers close around it with ease. Soon, the pen was half-vanished behind Nureyev’s ear, and Juno couldn’t help a laugh.
Peter Nureyev was never the type to look particularly bookish, even when he exuded Rex Glass’s air of academia. With a pen behind his ear and a copy of Romeo and Juliet pressed to his chest, Juno could almost see him as the substitute he pretended to be. Something in his chest fluttered at the sight and he felt his cheeks grow hot.
“Is there something on my face, dear?” Nureyev teased.
“No, uh—”
He hadn’t realized how long he had been staring at the charming scene before him until a student’s comms let out a thunderous buzz and shattered the moment.
“Well, I suppose then, I must be forced to leave your presence,” Peter grinned. Juno rolled his eyes. “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
“Have fun with your pen,” Juno teased as Nureyev left with a wink and a grin that for the sake of the very tired, very teenage, and very captive audience, he had to pretend wasn’t making his stomach do flips.
“Who was that?” a kid, the most awake-looking of the bunch, asked.
“Mister Noble. He’s subbing for the drama teacher,” Juno explained. “What do you say we get back to that whale?”
He got a vague grumble in response. Perhaps the students preferred the company of ‘Mister Noble’ as well. Perhaps they’d prefer anything over Herman Melville. Juno couldn’t really disagree with them either way.
. . .
Juno soon learned Nureyev didn’t have a first period class, and thanks to being in charge of a fairly self-sufficient group, didn’t have any reason to use his planning period either. As such, he had resolved to torment Juno with his presence at ungodly hours of the morning.
He also had a habit of waltzing in at the absolute worst times to do so.
“So in last night’s reading, which I hope you all did,” Juno began, words droning from him as they fell off the page of notes the English teacher left behind. “We learned that Captain Ahab’s leg was bitten off and eaten by—”
“Good morning, my darling!” Nureyev beamed, poking his head through the cracked door and quite clearly hiding something in his hands.
“Good morning, Mister Noble,” Juno sighed. “Care to join our discussion on man-eating whales?”
“Oh, quite the contrary,” he chuckled, so light and lovely Juno had to grip the edge of the chalkboard just to ensure the floor hadn’t fallen out beneath him. “The pen I borrowed yesterday is long gone, I am afraid. I thought I would bring you an olive branch.”
Juno raised an eyebrow. Nureyev produced a cup of coffee and a pastry from behind his back.
“You know, whale-induced amputations aren’t ever great for my appetite, but you might just have me convinced,” Juno said, trying and failing to fight back the warm laughter in his voice. He was pretty sure he heard a student groan.
“I must admit something to you,” Nureyev continued, guilt suddenly flooding his voice as Juno took the peace offering and set it down on his desk.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve found myself in need of another pen.”
Juno’s groan was an affectionate one, but he threw the pen at Nureyev nonetheless. Once again, Nureyev caught it without breaking a sweat, almost as if it was his partner in some elaborate, avant garde dance.
“You’d better not lose this one again. Can’t have you distracting my class forever,” Juno pretended to grumble.
“If it means seeing you again some other time, I’m afraid this pen will be forced to slip my mind,” Nureyev grinned, then turned on his heel to leave the classroom.
Most of the week came and went without issue. Nureyev joined him for lunch breaks and consoled him through his rage at the sheer word count of certain novels about certain whales, while at the halfway point of the allotted hour, they would switch and Nureyev would complain about low-energy sword fights and total misunderstanding of Shakespeare. Juno almost preferred that his afternoon classes were rowdier. It was at least something to fill the silence that wasn’t him or another class discussion on the meanings of certain symbols.
When Friday came, the closeness of homecoming buzzed in the air like ozone heralding the presence of lightning. Even the quieter morning classes broke their stony silences to share pictures of suits and dresses. When Juno said he’d be chaperoning, he was all but bullied into pulling up a picture of his gown on his comms.
The compliments were nice, even if they were coming from a small army of teenagers. He only lied a little when he admitted that his husband helped him pick it out.
Even though the notes had instructed otherwise, Juno thought he’d keep the lesson short. They’d review a few symbols and if that didn’t take too long, he’d give them time to start the assigned reading in class. He knew well they wouldn’t use the time allotted, but he didn’t particularly care.
“Your teacher noted an honestly kinda morbid parallel she thought was interesting,” he began that morning. The words had started to feel a little more like his own as the week went on, even if he’d survived the lessons by reading extensively about the book. He had long since graduated high school, and as such, had a right to never touch a book written before the twenty ninth century again. “The narrator, Ishmael, survives the wreck by clinging onto a coffin. Some of the real crewmen of the ship Moby Dick was based on survived by killing and eating teenage sailor Owen Coffin—”
“My darling, I hate to interrupt a conversation as lovely as this,” Nureyev started, all but waltzing into the room. Juno was pretty sure he heard a few students sigh, relieved at the arrival of a distraction.
“Go ahead,” Juno snorted.
“Ah, well, in that case, I suppose there are far more important things we must discuss. Notably, your birthday.”
It wasn’t Juno’s birthday. It wasn’t even Mister Laurence’s birthday. With the glowing look on Nureyev’s face and some kind of gift clearly concealed behind his back, however, Juno didn’t particularly mind.
“Aw, how old are you?” a kid from the back of the room piped up.
“It’s rude to ask a lady his age. Twenty six, for all you know,” Juno joked, turning his attention back to Nureyev and barely caring that in setting down his book, he had completely lost his page.
When he looked back at Nureyev, there was a bouquet in his hands and a look in his eyes so soft that Juno could barely manage to meet them.
“Happy birthday, my dear,” he grinned. Juno really, really wanted to blow the entire heist and kiss him right then and there.
“Let me guess: you need another pen?” Juno laughed, taking the bouquet and placing it in a decorative vase on the desk. He was almost certain the students could see his hands go a little shaky.
“Would it hurt my chances of seeing you at the dance this weekend if I said yes?”
Juno rolled his eyes. “You’re my ride. Of course you’re gonna see me.”
He threw a pen in Nureyev’s direction nonetheless.
“I just wanted to make sure, my love,” Nureyev beamed, leaving with just as much of a flourish as he had entered.
Juno caught himself staring at the empty doorway when a student in the front row cleared his throat.
“Do you two, like, know each other?”
Juno laughed.
“Yeah. That’s my idiot husband.”