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Slip Jackson and Peter Nureyev are stowaways. They’re not supposed to be here, on this ship to this sick bay on this planet. They need to be there, though, and neither of them want out. This is just the way to get to where they need to be, for Slip to do what he needs to do. And he wants Peter here with him. It feels kind of exhilarating when Peter takes the pill that’s going to get them into the homesick district of Saraswati. He trusts Slip to put him into a coma if it means they’re going to be together, going to stay together – Slip saved his life in that basement in Brahma, and Peter is going to repay him in any way he can.
Juno Steel and Peter Ransom are not stowaways, however. They were both hired for a job aboard the Carte Blanche. Peter knew this, he put down Juno as a reference, but it didn’t prepare him for looking at the lady who he was stuck with when Miasma wanted the technology behind his eye, now looking face-to-face at one another. But it’s him alright. Ransom had no choice but to trust Juno when he went through his memories, and now they’re just about to go on their first heist together. He grins that same grin that Rex Glass had on his face when he met this detective that was good with his blaster and deflective in a way that made him curious. Juno looks at him with the same skepticism he looked at Duke Rose and the same skepticism that Petya once looked at Slip Jackson over a Rangian poker table. Ransom is not here for Juno.
He is here because, upon awaking surrounded by the people who Slip lied to in a game where lying is punishable by death, they told him the truth. Even if Slip Jackson was alive in one young Dodger-slash-Nureyev’s head, he was almost gone. It wasn’t intended, but the Dokona group didn’t seem like they minded breaking a few Brahman eggs for knowledge’s sake. Peter isn’t sure how much time he spent curled around Slip in ways he remembers doing for a lifetime that didn’t happen, tracing chemical tattoos. But he had to leave, to make sure that Slip didn’t give him that life together and then let it never actually happen. Leaving Slip alone, with that machine helping him breathe – it was a decision that took hours to make.
Juno had left in the middle of the night, hours after he’d almost blown himself up but only maybe forty minutes after he’d wished Nureyev goodnight. Nureyev, god forbid, had let his guard down enough to sleep. He trusted Juno, and Juno placed all his trust into the skyline that’d let him down since he was young, the tinted sky that overlooked the apartment where they’d first kissed. He’d told Nureyev about Hyperion, how Oldtown’s streets were the same color of hell as Brahma’s, and with all that, Peter couldn’t imagine anyone would want to go back.
Yet he knows all about going back for people. Even when his mind was programmed, perfectly engineered to make him comfortable because he thought it was his, he only left for water. Slip had brought him things, saved his life and taken him along, so Peter would come back for him. That’s why he needed to do this, leave Slip not quite dead in that room with those people who nearly killed him, and take on this job with Captain Buddy Aurinko. It’s all for Slip, all for the money needed to be able to return.
But Juno – Juno Steel, private eye, surprisingly competent thief, does one thing Slip doesn’t. Actually two, but only one is under his control. The one that matters, the one thing, is that Juno thanks Peter. The same way, now that he thinks of it, he thanked Slip. Like it was a necessity. And he saved Juno’s life, doesn’t that mean he is to his dear detective what Slip was to him? Doesn’t that mean that Juno would do things for him that seem stupid, doesn’t that mean that when Ransom eventually buys Slip’s life back, Juno won’t let go?
He’ll disappear without a trace, then. Easy as that. No not quite to hang onto, to follow, to unravel one lead at a time. His detective is good at that – at knowing what’s going on and where to look when he doesn’t. He’s just as horrible at restraining himself when there’s a case to be done as Nureyev is with closure. But at this point he’s been caged in the Carte Blanche for a year, just enjoying Juno while everything lasts, and waiting to have to leave the same way that Juno did. He’ll say goodnight, leave some kind of closure like the note that he wrote on the night they met, and leave. It feels so final. He’s never left before, not without a promise that he’d come back.
But loving Juno feels different than loving Slip. Slip is like jumping into cold water, holding your breath as he offers you all he can. Juno feels like coming up for air, like stopping to breathe and feeling lucky because there is somebody who’d stay with you if only you’d let him, heart almost stopping when you see him smile. When you wake up and he’s in your bed and you know you’re his home now. But he doesn’t owe it to Juno like he does to Slip. Peter and Juno had their lifetime together, and it’s almost over.
After all, Peter has always wanted what he couldn’t have. Revolution without a catch, murder without the guilt, love without loss. And right now, the thing he wants to do the most is to see Slip Jackson’s tooth gap as he smiles, rest his hand on his back when he’s breathing hard, hear that soft voice tell him to be patient. Call him the name that ruined the life that he never really had, say the words that woke him up in the room that housed his captors.
Peter wants to go home just as Juno does. And Slip Jackson is his home. But just like Juno said what happened to Oldtown, Nureyev is worried that he won’t be able to go back.