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Through some convoluted lapse in judgment, Juno and Nureyev end up sharing the hotel room.
Nureyev wonders if it’s to make sure he won’t run.
The door clicks shut, and then they’re alone, really alone, for the first time since Juno found him. Not even Ruby to blow freezing cold air into Nureyev’s seat. Thankfully.
Juno sits down on the bed; Nureyev lingers by the door. For all that Juno was the one who came for him, for all that Juno was the one who asked for his help, Nureyev isn’t sure his presence is… welcome. Wanted. The silence presses down on him.
Wordlessly, Juno picks up his small rucksack and starts rummaging in it for clothes. His bandages need changing. He looks tired. They haven’t spoken much since Nureyev got in the car. It isn’t the cold shoulder of someone who wants to make this more painful than it already is; Juno isn’t like that.
Maybe it’s just the exhausted quiet of someone who has nothing more to say to him.
That thought terrifies him more than anything, so much that he actually takes a few steps forward.
“Juno—” Nureyev fumbles. Words are natural, to a thief. Flattery, string-pulling, lies: these are easy to pull out of thin air.
His honest heart is a little harder to spit out. Juno just looks at him, eye wide and waiting. It claws at him, seeing this wary not-quite-trust again, like Nureyev is on the knife-blade choice of stitching this gap between them or ripping it irreparably, and Juno is watching for which way he will jump. A matchlight half burnt out, when Nureyev has grown too used to the full, unclouded sun of him.
Can we talk? is probably what he means to say, but what comes out shakily is, “I missed you.” The rest knots in his throat.
Juno’s hands turn over the fresh shirt in his hands idly. He stares at him, gaze dark and intent, and Nureyev wonders what he’s read in him, what the detective is deducing from his twisting hands and unmade face. He can only imagine what he will say. Serves you right, or, funny way of showing it, or, then why did you leave?
But of course, Juno doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he just tilts his head towards the space next to him, face unreadable, and says:
“Yeah. I missed you too.”
And like a pull, a comet returning to orbit, Nureyev goes to him.