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- Duke Rose
“Are you coming or are you dead in there?”
Juno ignored the woman on the other side of the door, instead focusing on inventing new insults for people like Peter Nureyev as he struggled into the suit. As Nureyev had promised, it had been hanging in the closet, another little note pinned to the lapel saying “For Dahlia!” (with a heart after the name. A heart). At least it was a nice suit, he reflected ruefully, thinking of how many times in the past few days he’d been forced into suits without being consulted. And at least this one fit better.
It was the perfect size, actually, which suddenly made Juno even more suspicious. The tux Ingrid had provided for Vicky had been well-fitting, but his own, while flattering, had been cut for someone at least two inches taller than Juno. This one looked like he’d been through a fitting for it. How the hell had Nureyev gotten a suit tailored for him? Where exactly would he have gotten those measurements? And in the time since Vicky had called, and Juno had joined him on this ill-advised trip to the Oasis?
Questions, nothing but questions and doubts. If you were a fan of questions but not much into answers, Nureyev was the guy for you.
Juno closed the last button, and turned over the ID in his hand. Dahlia Rose.
Was he expected to act now, like Rex Glass had been an act? Juno wasn’t too bad at lying – if he wasn’t, he’d have been dead long before he made it out of Oldtown – but he didn’t think he was much of an actor. Who would Dahlia Rose be? Someone who trusted Nureyev, that was for sure. Dahlia Rose probably needed to be in love with Peter Nureyev, or with whoever Nureyev currently was. Juno hoped he could pretend that convincingly, rather than giving in to his current desire to strangle someone.
You don’t need to pretend all that much, a voice whispered treacherously in the back of his mind as he opened the door. Juno squashed it mercilessly. Time for that later, or preferably never. More important questions came first. Like what the hell the plan was here. Or what the hell those notes were. Or what the hell this suit was.
He tried to smile, when the door to Angstrom’s private room opened, revealing Nureyev seated next to Angstrom, a pair of crooks at a doubtlessly crooked card table. He tried not to flinch when Nureyev put his arm around Juno’s waist, or when he playfully ruffled Juno’s hair. But with uncertainty rising inside him every time he saw Nureyev’s gleaming eyes or felt the touch of those long, slender fingers, he couldn’t help but feel that this ruse had been doomed from the start.
- Cesar Jade
Juno had a knack for running into people right at the last place and time he’d want to see them. A rival private eye in his client's husband's office during his own break-in. A man he’d put away while he was still with the HCPD, on his first week out of Hoosegow. The other jealous husband of the woman whose double life he had been hired to investigate, right in the middle of a stakeout.
And Nureyev, anytime, anywhere, but especially Cerberus Province.
The bleeding from a cut above his eyebrow had nearly sealed his eye shut, and Juno’s view of the world was a dark, blurred mess, but he didn’t need facial recognition to know the silhouette that stood up at the table as he was dragged into the conference room by two of Seneschal Forestier’s goons. And he didn’t need sight to recognize the voice that rang out, the alarm not quite concealed.
“What are you doing here?”
Next to Nureyev, Forestier stubbed out his cigar and said, the words heavily distorted by an Erythraean accent, “I could ask the same question, and I think that I will.”
“Well, that makes three of us,” Juno said. A little hysterically, but who could blame him?
“We found him in the lower tunnels, sir. Probably snuck in through the sewers,” one of the goons said. He gave Juno’s arm a jerk, sending a bolt of pain through his cracked ribs. “One of Dorian’s, we think.”
Augusta Dorian had hired Juno to convince her daughter that, however glamorous it seemed from the city, joining Forestier’s bandits and eking out a violent life robbing tourist transports in the desert was a resoundingly bad idea. However, Juno was now rather less concerned with the fate of her three previous envoys than with why Nureyev was back on Mars.
He was glad he couldn’t see; the last time he’d seen that face, a year ago, he’d been memorizing its features in the near-dark of the hotel room, not wanting to forget it. At this point, an unpleasant death was genuinely tempting compared to facing the man he had loved and left. Had loved. (Still loved. Still, oh hell, definitely loved.)
“Not at all.” That smooth, confident voice jolted Juno back into the present. “I truly must apologize. I had no idea that he’d follow me here.”
“Ahhh. A colleague of yours, Cesar?”
“Oh, no,” said ‘Cesar;’ “No, unfortunately, this is my ex-husband. He’s been… troublesome for a while now.”
Juno seized the lifeline like a drowning man. Or maybe like a drowning man whose guilt and panic always brought out the part of himself that thought, hey, might as well see how deep I can sink first. “Not ex-husband yet!” he yelled, struggling against the two goons. “And I never will be, do you hear me? I’m not signing anything! I won’t let you leave me! I still love you!”
It wasn’t particularly good acting, but then again, he was only half acting. It still felt like a dirty thing to say. That was probably most of why he said it.
“Hmmmm,” Forestier growled . “Well, Mr. Jade, your ‘nosy ex-husband’ has become a nuisance to me as well as to you. Perhaps I can do us both a favor?” He raised a hand to begin some gesture toward the guards.
“Actually, I’d be very much obliged to you if you left him intact,” said Nureyev. “You see, if there’s any suspicion of foul play in the divorce, I stand to lose quite a bit in the settlement.”
“I do see.” Forestier leaned forward in his chair, and Juno could just make out his satisfied leer. “Obliged enough to return what you stole from me?”
This was why he hated running into Nureyev.
In the early hours of the next morning, as they watched Forestier’s compound burning from the shingled slope of a volcano halfway across Cerberus Province, the Martian wind whistling desolately around them, it was Juno who broke the silence. He fumbled for the right words, and when the wrong ones were all that turned up, he said those instead. “I thought you’d left.”
The reply was as sharp as he expected. “I believe you left, detective.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Then, “So why’d you come back?”
Silence. And then, “I suppose it does make me a bit of a glutton for punishment.”
Juno couldn’t help it. He laughed. He laughed way too long and too hard at the absurdity of all of it, at the fact that the two of them had somehow ended up here again, at the fact that somehow, he was almost happy about it. To his surprise, Nureyev laughed too, his shoulders shaking quietly.
“Shit,” Juno said, “Me too. I guess you’re still an asshole, then.”
“Pot and kettle, my dear detective.”
“No kidding. Fine.” Juno glanced over, bringing Nureyev fully into the center of his narrowed field of vision. Despite everything, it was still a much nicer view than the fire below. And even though it was all his own goddamn fault, he still just wished.
But then again, he thought, why not? Why not burn a few more things down while he was at it? “You… still want that divorce, Cesar?”
“I see.” Nureyev’s voice was quiet. “Well, perhaps I could be persuaded to change my mind.”
- Amir Silver
As they hurried along the corridor, Nureyev suddenly froze. Juno stumbled against him, barely managing to hold back a shout of pain as his lacerated right leg buckled; but there was a staff member turning the corner with a suspicious look on her face, and nowhere to hide.
So Juno giggled loudly, and leaned even more heavily against Nureyev. “Oh!” he said. “Oh, Amir, ask – ask her if she knows where our room is. We’re lost,” he added, directing the statement towards the uniformed woman. “It’s like a palace here! So big.”
The woman gave a practiced, but tight, smile; she saw a problem that she was well prepared to deal with. “And I hope you are enjoying your visit,” she said, with the slightest of bows. “May I assist you in finding your way?”
“Oh, yes,” Nureyev said, gesticulating extravagantly with his free hand, and then grabbing Juno’s arm with it, pulling him further upright. “The most marvelous resort I’ve ever seen.”
“Huge!” Juno said. “We went to the opera, right, and we got lost. We’re on our honeymoon. Just married.” Hopefully the drunk act would keep the staff member at ease, and keep her from noticing that Juno’s leg was bleeding into the mercifully dark carpet, or that there was a package barely concealed under the right side of Nureyev’s jacket. This place was a hedonistic paradise. Rich newlyweds must have gotten smashed there all the time.
He could feel Nureyev’s heartbeat where they were pressed together, rapid with panic and stress. There was something mesmerizing about it; easy physical intimacy was coming back to them slowly, and Juno might have taken advantage of his excuse to lean into Nureyev.
“Of course,” the woman said, pulling out a palmscreen. “Where exactly is your room?”
“Six fifty-seven,” Nureyev said pleasantly. “The honeymoon wing, of course.”
She checked the room number, and then, apparently satisfied, stowed her device. “Well, let me congratulate you on the happy occasion. You are heading in the right direction – the elevators are only at the end of this hallway and just to the right. Shall I escort you there?”
“No, I think we can find our way now, thank you very much!” Nureyev declared magnanimously. “You see, darling, I told you that we were going the right way – ”
The moment that they were around the corner and collapsed into one of the elevators on its way back to their room on the exact opposite side of the hotel from the honeymoon suites (where the crown in the package under Peter’s arm would be swapped for another, far less dangerous imitation, and then hopefully destroyed), Nureyev was on his knees, using some part of his outfit to staunch Juno’s bleeding. “It is rather a nice place, isn’t it?” he joked. His eyes alertly searched Juno’s expression, probably for signs of shock. “It’s a pity that we probably won’t be able to come back here.”
“Probably is kind of generous – and isn’t it a bit fancy for our tastes?”
They’d been traveling recently, whenever Nureyev appeared and Juno managed to wind down the case of the moment without ending up in the hospital. Not among the stars, but out of Hyperion City; after all, Nureyev had pointed out, there was quite a lot more to Mars. It was a compromise, of sorts; one of many that the two of them were learning to make, in this ill-advised attempt of theirs. So they’d been to the polar observatories, and Hellas, and even as far as the amusement park on Phobos, although Juno had found the brief shuttle ride extremely unsettling, and the destination not much better.
It had been a day with Nureyev, though, and Juno was still aware of how little he deserved every second they spent together. That was all well and good, Nureyev had said in the blowout they’d predictably had not long after reconnecting, but both of them would be much better off if Juno would act a little more like a thief, and take what he wanted, whether or not it was rightfully his. And so, somehow, they were trying. And he had to admit, he loved these stolen moments, the stolen objects, the quick-thinking lies and fights when things went wrong. However, as far as stolen objects went, Juno very much doubted that there’d be a return to Red Sands Resort once the crown’s previous owner discovered the remains of his room.
“You know, Juno,” Nureyev was saying as he tied off the makeshift bandage, “you’re definitely improving your bluffing, but you don’t need to say we’re married every time.”
“Look, I don’t criticize your quick thinking,” Juno said, which earned him a skeptical look. “Except when it’s a really terrible idea.”
Nureyev smiled, and pressed a kiss to the inside of Juno’s palm. “Well,” he said, “I’ll make sure to book the honeymoon suite next time, just in case.”
- Arthur Candle
It was a moment of panic more than anything; they desperately needed to keep the crowd’s attention away from the other end of the square for just a few moments, just long enough that no one would notice as Rita edged up to the monument, still covered with police tape, and took those few vital pictures. Unfortunately, as a thief, Nureyev was quite skilled at distractions, but was less practiced at distractions that involved drawing attention towards himself.
Juno realized this when he looked to his right, and saw the look in Nureyev’s eyes as he said Juno’s fake name. Nureyev started bending down onto one knee, and Juno grabbed one of his sleeves, hissing, “What are you doing, we need to be helping Rita – ”
“Darling,” Nureyev said, loudly enough that the two guards nearby immediately turned to look. “I know it hasn’t always been easy for the two of us. We are two very flawed people, and we’ve had our ups and downs. But you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And I am as certain now as I have ever been. And I hope that you can trust me in what I am about to do.”
“Arthur,” Juno said nervously, his mind blanking as he caught the drift of Nureyev’s emphasis – go along with the act. After so much practice, that was easy enough. The problem was that he was still not catching on to what the hell Nureyev was playing at. Why was he –
Oh.
“Lee, my beloved,” Nureyev said, reaching into one pocket, and fumbling for just long enough that it was apparent that he couldn’t find what he was looking for before drawing out a battered black leather box, “would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the Orion Arm, and becoming my husband?”
Juno stared at him with roughly the same amount of emotional response as the average department store mannequin.
Every single eye in the square, including that of the guards, was on the scene of the proposal. Across the square, Rita was bent under the police barrier, immediately visible to anyone who happened to glance away.
“Darling,” Nureyev said, a little more quietly; but his smile had a prodding edge to it. “Don’t leave me waiting.”
Juno swallowed, and opened his mouth slightly, but no noise came out. His blank mind was grappling with possible responses like a man trying to juggle an armful of eels. He wondered whether hitting Nureyev in the face was a believable response.
Someone in the crowd tittered. A low murmur was rising.
Juno blinked sweat out of his eye, cleared his throat, and said, “Of course I – “
“Hey, lady, what the hell are you doing under there? That’s a crime scene!”
Nureyev was on his feet and sprinting out of the square so fast that he nearly pulled Juno’s arm out of its socket when he grabbed the detective’s hand. Juno ran beside him, ran for dear life, but despite the searing in his useless lungs, he managed to gasp out, “What were you thinking?”
“Well, I’m sorry, Juno, but I expected you would be able to run with the plan rather than freezing like a flustered debutante!”…..
“Not that!” It had been, but Juno wasn’t about to admit it. “You do realize that Rita just saw you proposing to me, right?”
Nureyev shot him a glance. “Good point, Juno dear. We probably ought to run a little faster,” he said, and his laughter lent Juno’s tired legs another burst of speed.
- Stuart Winter
“Juno, it’s over.”
Juno looked back over his shoulder as Nureyev came up behind him, and let out a long breath, a little of the tension falling out of his shoulders. “Great,” he said. “What’s going on in there now?”
“Well, the police came and picked up Ms. Cardamone as soon as the fight drove her outside, where the CCTV cameras could see her,” Nureyev said, pulling his jacket close around himself as the chilly sim-wind nighttime breeze blew through the alleyway behind the club. “And they did so with great enthusiasm. I don’t think they’ll be giving her the opportunity to hurt anyone else.”
“Intisar will be glad to hear that,” Juno said quietly. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”
Nureyev gave him a kindly look, and stepped closer, so that the two of them were sharing body heat. Juno let his eye fall shut and leaned against the taller man.
“No one could bring her wife back, Juno,” Nureyev said, reaching one arm around behind Juno, and pulling him close. “And you brought her killer to justice. Something that everyone else was telling her was impossible. That’s more than ‘not much.’”
“Yeah,” Juno said. “But it’s hardly a happy ending.”
He could feel Nureyev’s sigh, but the thief didn’t press the point. “The police left just a few minutes ago. None of them saw you, and they were certainly more focused on getting Cardamone out than taking statements. One of them collected names, of course, and as a good citizen I obviously gave him ours, so that we can be summoned to the police station.”
“Obviously. Are we still Sam and Stuart Winter?”
“They are the names on our tickets. I told him that my husband had gone outside to get some fresh air to combat the stress. “
“Winter. It’s not the worst name you’ve given me, I guess.”
“What’s in a name, my darling?”
“Depends,” Juno said. “Whose last name was Winter before the marriage, mine or yours?”
Nureyev laughed. “Oh, I like to think that we’ve made a name for ourselves together, Juno,” he said. Then he looked back, towards the club, and remarked, “I’m a little surprised that they’re starting the dancing again. No one seems all that much concerned by the police arresting a serial killer in the middle of a sudden brawl.”
“Welcome to Hyperion City,” Juno said. “Life’s gotta go on, and so do people. So they do.”
“In some ways, I find that admirable,” Peter said. “And what about us, Juno, dear? With our villain in custody and the HCPD out of the way?” He smiled, a certain variation of that vulpine expression that Juno had long learned to associate with specific suggestions on Nureyev’s part. “Call it a night and head back to your apartment?”
Juno thought about it for a moment, breathing the chill air deeply. Ordinarily at this point in a case, he was bruised and exhausted. Tonight, he’d been lucky and made it out unscathed, and Nureyev’s unspoken offer was more than tempting; but the thought of tomorrow, when he would have to tell Intisar how the case had turned out, and the knowledge of how little this would do for her in the end, weighed on him heavily. You could talk about closure all you liked; it didn’t fill the holes that people left.
And Nureyev would be leaving too, tomorrow or soon after. This case had dragged on too long, and he had places to be. Juno envied the dancers and their ability to keep going, to be unaffected by the tragedy whose conclusion they had been witness to, to keep dancing because for them, the night hadn’t ended yet.
He'd never been able to live in this city like that. He knew he never would. But he was getting better at pretending, these days.
“Can – can we stay?” he asked. “Just for a little while?”
“Of course, Juno.”
Because he could, because for the moment he was there, because after six years and more fights and bruises and scrapes than he knew how to count, Juno Steel was finally sure that Peter Nureyev was his and vice versa, Juno reached up and kissed him slowly. “After all, Mr. Winter,” he said, pulling away, “you promised Sam a dance, and it’s not really fair for us to leave them to the mercy of the police without giving them one nice night first.”
Stuart Winter took him by one hand, and led him back through the door, out of the night and into the music. “And who am I,” he said, “to deny such a lovely lady a dance?”
+1. Peter Nureyev
Juno had not quite begun to doze off when Nureyev’s voice stirred him to wakefulness.
“Juno, may I ask you something?”
He turned himself over in bed, until Nureyev’s face came into view, lit by the faint blue beams that slid between the blinds. Nureyev looked pensive, but not worried. “Sure,” Juno said. “What’s on your mind?”
“You.” Nureyev traced one slender finger over the line of Juno’s collarbone, making him shiver. “Specifically, earlier tonight, when you asked to stay and dance?”
“Sorry. Just a whim.”
“No, I enjoyed myself very much,” Nureyev replied, staring at Juno with furrowed brows. “Juno, do you wish that we were married?”
Juno sat straight up. “What?” he demanded.
“It’s not a proposal,” Nureyev said, looking up at him in faint, sleepy amusement. “Though it is a serious question. It’s only that after all these years, some patterns have recently become clear to me.”
And Juno thought about it honestly for a long moment, staring away into the darkness of the room’s corners. The only thing in the room illuminated enough to be visible was the man next to him, those always-bright eyes gleaming in the glow of the billboards on the opposite building.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I don’t need it. To be honest, I never really… it didn’t exactly seem like it was gonna be relevant to my life. I don’t think I’d ever thought about it until I had to play at it so often with you. And even then, it’s you, and you’re hardly the marrying kind, and I’m not either. We’re getting too old and it’s all just an excuse for awkward family gatherings and tax breaks anyway.”
“And we’re not much for ceremony.”
Juno had to laugh. ‘Yeah, no. Or for actually telling people about us, which is kind of the whole point. But…” He searched for something to say that didn’t feel utterly stupid, but Peter Nureyev had never been conducive to that goal. “I guess that it’s nice, when we get to pretend? When I actually get to be with you in public. Or when we get to be people who don’t have all our… baggage. People who don’t leave. Who just get to be- to get married. It’s not us. It’s not us at all. But that does… get hard. Being us, I mean. Sometimes.”
“Yes,” Nureyev said, quietly. “It does.”
“But I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Juno added, bending over and kissing him on the temple. “Besides, it’s not like we could get married.”
“I don’t see why not.”
Juno snorted. “C’mon, Peter. Even if that was the kind of thing we’d do, it – putting a fake name on a certificate kind of defeats the purpose. And besides, who would we invite to a wedding, besides Rita? Mick? I’m not inviting Mick to a wedding.”
“Juno, my love, I’m not sure why you think I ever intended to do something legally. There are more important things at hand. And why should we not have the luxury of pretending whenever we want to, without the need of new names?” Nureyev shifted, reaching out one arm to something on the table by the bed; a metal glint in his hand, in the blue light. “I have to admit, I myself have little use for – oh, the words, the stacks of traditions, all covering up the actual point of marriage. I suppose that traditions are built on things that have meaning. Personally, I’d rather get directly to the meaningful part, but this seems like a rather useful piece of symbolism, if you’d have it. If it is what you want.”
Juno had stopped breathing at some point, possibly because his brain had decided this was all too far-fetched, and was trying to wake him up by refusing to function. He reached up and touched the ring that Nureyev was holding out. It was silver, not some stolen trinket, but something he’d seen Peter wear more than once: one of his few portable physical possessions, and therefore something precious.
There was a ring on Juno’s right hand, laser-carved from the heavy black Martian basalt that Hyperion City was built on. You could pick up rings just like it in any number of shops in Oldtown – they were unobtrusive, but wear a couple and any punch became that much more dangerous. This one had served Juno well in that capacity since he was a teenager; it was a rough, dangerous, unsentimental thing, but in the right light, and with the right mindset, you could call it pretty in its way. A charm for protection, of the practical kind.
He worked it off his finger, and then slipped it into Nureyev’s hand, and for good measure he kissed him for a long, long time. “I think I do,” he whispered, feeling stupidly giddy, like a teenager getting away with something. “So when’s the wedding, Peter?”
“I didn’t think big venues and exorbitant catering fees were to your taste, somehow,” Peter drawled. “No, I thought we’d skip right to the vows. Isn’t that the real point of the entire to-do?”
“You first, then. Since you asked.”
“Oh, alright,” Nureyev said. Juno wanted to take hold of the fond warmth in his voice, to curl himself around it, to keep it close until he worried it to bits like a terrier. “Hmmm. Give me a moment to improvise.”
“We’ve practiced this scene enough times. Just think of this as the heist you’ve been rehearsing for six years, and convince me.”
Peter rested his forehead against Juno’s. “Here, then, you impossible detective. Any lack of poetry is entirely your fault.” He cleared his throat. “I left Peter Nureyev behind a long time ago, with every intention of doing so for good. He, and what he represented, were no longer of use to me. Can a mask be torn away if there is nothing underneath? Until I met you. Since then, I find that whatever I do, wherever I go, whoever I am, Peter Nureyev is at the core of it all, and it does not seem that he will be leaving. And Peter Nureyev, and whoever else he might be on any given day – I, Peter Nureyev – love you. And I am wholly yours.”
He said it almost brusquely, more honest than he really knew how to be. Juno recognized this as one of the rare moments when he could be certain that he was not talking to a mask, but to the man himself. A man who, maybe, had just been a memory until Juno showed up.
“What the hell am I supposed to follow that with?” Juno said. “I love you. I really, actually love you. I don’t really want to run away from that anymore, so I guess you’re stuck with me. You may now kiss the bride.”
Nureyev laughed, and then he did.