[Blows dust off]

I'm in a Position with Night Moves, cause i should probably finish S4&5 of Juno Steel but also I like the canon divergence semi-au I've made here and I want to shelter it. The struggle I have with Night Moves is that it wants to be long, which preemptively exhausts me. But i love it and it does haunt me.

I’m late!!

But I am still gonna play! Thank you @kelliealtogether for tagging me in the ‘five favourite fics that I've written (for writer appreciation day)’ 

This was the kindest thing you could have tagged me in, because as much as I love my fics when I post them, I tend to have a distorted view of them later on, thinking that my writing must have been so much worse, that I’m sure I fucked up the pacing, etc. But having now gone back and re-read a lot of these, I like them just as much - so much that choosing just 5 is gonna be hard! 

Buddy had intentions. Vespa had suspicions. Rita had hopes.

"Have you seen the way they're all over each other?" Vespa gagged.

Rita shushed her, waving her hands and staring, panicked, at the door which stayed resolutely shut.

Either not caring if she was caught gossiping or otherwise seeing no reason to comply, Vespa did not, in fact, lower her voice. "I'm telling you, those two are absolutely-"

"And yet," Buddy interrupted delicately, "while I have had to add ahem, personal supplies," She ignored Rita's shocked, embarrassed cry, and Vespa's flustered sputterings. "To resupply orders for each and every one of us in this room, I have never had been approached by Juno or Ransom. Have you, my Vespa?"

"Well! I... that's!" Vespa's pale skin flushed all over. "A breech of patient confidentiality. You know I can't answer that!"

"Just as well as I know you'd find some way to confirm without saying yes if you had." Buddy said.

"I mean, we packed up most of everything we had when we left," Rita said, thoughtful. "So maybe..."

"You think Juno brought supplies on board?" Buddy laughed, delighted. "Enough to last six months worth of sleep overs with a paramour?"

Rita took only a second to think it over before Buddy's meaning set in. "Oh! Well! No! Mista Steel ain't had anyone serious since...uh, well. Not for a long time anyway."

"So it's settled. Ransom and Juno are not, in fact-"

"Just 'cause the hacker says so?! Bud! You've seen them!" Vespa wasn't, it seemed, willing to let this go without a fight. "Sequliak! You share a wall with those two disgusting-"

"Miz. Vespa!"

"Disgusting fruit bats." Vespa finished, triumphant.

"Why fruit bats?" Rita blinked, eyes huge behind her thick lenses and busy frames.

"W..why not?!"

Jet felt he had to explain before Rita started coming up with her own ideas and Vespa became defensive. "Fruit bats form family groups, and on Ranga, have been documented to have very involved mating rituals, which they engage in more often then any other species."

"Oh, yeah that makes sense."

"Sequliak!"

"No."

"No?" Buddy tittered.

Jet knew. The trick to making a ship fast is to make it light. Since it is inadvisable to sacrifice the integrity of the hull, which seperates the passengers from the crushing vacuum of space, most ships do this by making the inside walls very thin.

It was not just the common and banal sounds of sex which leaked through the thin barrier separating Juno's room from Jet's. If it was, Jet would have no problem in joining the gentle and almost affectionate mockery happening.

But it was not just sex between Juno and Ransom.

That was obvious, beyond what Jet could overhear. It was in the way they looked at one another. In the endearments that Ransom had long stopped smothering. The way that Juno looked first for Rita when he entered a room, and then, having found her, did another sweep, relaxing when Ransom was in sight. The way that Ransom would hold out a hand, inviting Juno into his space, and Juno - prickly, self conscious, over-independent - would accept that invitation.

And of course, there were the whispers of pillow talk Jet did overhear, when one or the other was a little too loud. Praises sang and nightmares soothed.

Jet knew.

He's just not telling.

Conscious of the crush of the room, Juno swayed himself sideways along the wall and angled his mouth towards Nureyev's ear like they were sharing secrets. In a way, they were.

"Baby, you don't want me for your enemy."

"You're right,” he said, and Juno was close enough to feel the way he shuddered even as his voice was strong and confident. “I don’t.”

In a single, smooth motion, Nureyev cupped a hand around Juno’s elbow and twirled them into an shadowed alcove, a depression in the wall Juno hadn’t seen before. 

Juno held himself tense, cursing himself for missing the way the gaudy wallpaper had disguised the opening from his diminished depth perception. Nureyev’s other arm had slid quick along the small of his back and he knew that meant his blaster was gone. He tried to prepare himself for what would come next, a knife between the ribs or plea of forgiveness...

Then Nureyev’s guiding hand slid from his elbow to his hand and raised his scarred knuckles to trembling lips. “I never did.”

Continuing my recent trend of stealing ideas from Schitts Creek:

A MiG extra scene where Juno moves to leave after their talk, and Nureyev catches him and kisses him.

"Thank you, um, thanks for that. I - I didn't want to presume, or push but, I really, really missed you and I was getting a little nervous that I might leave without doing... that. So. Thanks." Juno says without opening his eye or moving his hands from where they cling, anchored, to Nureyev's shoulders.

Nureyev should say a lot of things. He should say you're welcome, or tease Juno a little. Knowing what he knows, he should do anything but what he does, which is kiss him again and whisper 'stay,' against Juno's slick, smiling lips.

It just honestly fascinates me that every scene we have with juno and nureyev, its either juno looking to nureyev for reassurance or guidance and nureyev immediately providing it, or nureyev anticipating juno's reaction and steadying him without having to be asked

To the point where its a common and expected dynamic that others comment on...

“Juno,” Nureyev says, and it’s...it’s not right. It’s not right to hear his name sound like that on Nureyev’s lips. Nureyev is supposed to say his name just the way he always has. Like it’s a gift and a blessing and a god damned delight. 

Not like it’s a sigh of surrender. A last prayer. 

And Juno knows, he knows what Nureyev is waiting for. He’s waiting for the Juno Steel special. He’s waiting for the outburst, the overflowing of moral outrage and righteous indignation. He’s waiting for Juno to give him something he can defend against, apologize for, weave around until Juno is wilted against him like a flower in the desert heat and… he can’t give that to him. Juno’s not sure if it’s the way his jacket is crisp and free of wrinkles, or the way his face is bare and his cheeks are flushed but Juno tries to reach for the hot core of fury that has kept him alive and moving and finds it empty. 

For as long as Juno can remember there’s been a crack in his heart that has welled a desperate angry need to prove himself. And when he tried to patch it up, it overflowed. And if he let it overwhelm him he burned but gladly. 

There is still a crack in his heart but now he thinks if someone were to put an ear to his chest they would just hear an echo of a chasm left behind. 

“Juno?” Nureyev looks worried now, his hand half reaching out like he wants to touch but can’t make himself bridge that gap. 

And he won’t. Between them, he was never the one who took leaps of faith. 

But Juno’s legs feel numb and his chest feels cold and he knows the dangers of moving when one can’t feel their limbs but he makes himself take a step anyway. 

“Come on, Ruby’s waiting.” 

“Juno… I,”

Again, there is the weight of expectation. Nureyev, trying to measure out the distance between them, waiting for the explosion he thinks is inevitable and what the terrain will look like afterward. 

But for once, for once, Juno can’t make his hands form fists. He can’t turn this space into a battlefield because he’s already lost the war. 

There’s a moment where Juno isn’t sure what to call him. He still thinks of the man before him as Nureyev, a name given to him like a gift and a blessing and a secret delight on his tongue whenever he said it. 

But the thought of saying it now sends a cold wind tearing through the crack in his heart and he can’t. He can’t. 

Juno thinks about the names he’s used before. Juno thinks about what a name is. Then he thinks about the camera’s he couldn’t disengage and the way walls have ears. Then he thinks about the sleepless nights spent planning, the way he didn’t expect the man to be here but is too tired to be surprised by it. He says, “We don’t have time for this. Come or don’t.” 

He turns his back and begins walking. 

“Juno don’t walk away from me.” 

He wishes there was enough left in him to flinch at that. But he’s tired and he stopped fighting the way this man made him feel so long ago. 

He keeps walking, and the knife never comes. 

“Juno, please.” 

There is nothing he can say, nothing he can give, nothing the man can steal. Juno doesn’t know if he will come. Doesn’t even know if he wants him too. But he also knows that it’s his family’s best hope if he does. 

There isn’t an echo behind him and Juno does not turn. 

But a shadow of a man slips into Ruby’s passenger seat and a smooth careful voice asks, “Where to, detective?” 

“Perdita.” 

Juno closed the motel room door and an arm wrapped around his waist. 

Juno almost went for his blaster, his knife, almost twisted in his attacker's grip, his hand was already gripping that arm when the scent of warm spice reached him, rich and achingly familiar. 

And in that second a million thoughts passed through his mind - that this was a trick, a dream, that he had let down his guard for an imposter and he'd die for having one last greedy breath of Nureyev's cologne. Slowly, Nureyev slid his other hand down Juno's arm, over the knobs of his wrist, and guided him. Juno didn't even think of putting up a fight, couldn't have even if he'd thought of it, probably. They locked the door together. 

"Juno..." 

Like a puppet with its strings cut, Juno sagged against the door, the spy-hole pressing into his forehead and Nureyev pressed along his back and neither sensation helping the fine tremors that suddenly wracked his frame. 

Lips brushed his temple and Juno knew, just from the feel what colour they'd be. The softest pink, uncovered by the flashy oranges, reds and purples he usually wore. "Love, how did you find me?" 

Juno closed his eye, cold and hot and jittery as he kept himself still through the warring urges to push Nureyev away and bring him closer. As close as he could. "I didn't," he said, matching the way Nureyev had breathed the words. Like anything too loud would break this fragile bubble of dreamlike ruinion. God, how he'd dreamt of this. 

"You....didn't." 

The dry laugh felt like it was dragged out of his throat. "I didn't." 

At his back, Nurevey's body tensed, his arm becoming a solid band around Juno's waist; and Juno was suddenly aware of the difference between being pinned and being held. 

Juno dug the tips of his fingers into the textured metal of the door. "Where were you?" He rasped. 

Those loving, lovely lips pursed against his skin. 

"Are you angry with me?" 

God. Damn it. Nureyev should have sounded upset. He should have sounded angry. He sound have sounded like he was begging for forgiveness he knew he wouldn't find but he didn't. He sounded almost curious. A little sad. Like he was commenting on something distant horrible that happened to an acquaintance he once knew. 

"I love you," Juno said instead of anything Nureyev might have expected to hear. 

Nureyev jolted, rocking them both against the solid, cold metal. "Juno." 

There he was. Hook, line and...

"Everything that makes me Juno Steel loves everything that makes you Peter Nureyev," Juno whispered, short and harsh and almost unheard of over the climate control. "But I don't think I like who Peter Nureyev is." 

His lips parted silently, and Juno felt the gasp of air he took in the pressure that held him solid against the immovable god damn door. Like a broken gravity well, heavier and heavier and crushing and necessary. 

Sinker. 

Interrogations were tricky. They have to start on the right foot. The balance of what to give, what to hold back, and when to give what you've held back. 

"Where. Were. You?" 

You know, I don't think Juno gets enough credit for how completely he fucked up Nureyev AND Miasma's plans in s1

Who would win: The Nameless Thief with a history of stealing anything he set his sights on*, a hyper-intelligent anthropologist with careful plans of world domination, or one (1) depressed private eye?

* excepting, of course, the aforementioned depressed private eye

JUNO WAKING FROM ANESTHESIA.

"Hi," Juno says slowly. He hasn't even opened his eye yet.

Nureyev takes Juno's reaching hands with his own. "Take it easy love, Vespa had to do surgery."

Juno smacks his lips, blinking his eye open slow, like his lid is heavy. "Di'she put me under?"

"She did, dear. She had to."

"Oh." Juno's whole beautiful face creases in confusion and he tugs his hands away, putting them both of them over his mouth.

"Love? Juno...what are you doing?"

Juno hums an negative, shaking his head sluggishly back and forth. Nureyev moves to tap at his wrists when the lovely lady's jaw cracks with another yawn.

"I don't wanna say th'wrong thing," juno whines quietly, but perhaps not as quietly as he meant to. He starts to rub at his eyes and grumbles but doesn't fight when Nureyev moves his hand away from the empty socket. "Wrong name. But I wanna say y'r name. 'S a good name."

"There's no one else here my dear detective," he rests his lips against Juno's knuckles, gripping his lady's hand tight between his own to disguise the way he's trembling. "a-and even if there were," he hesitates, kissing the warm skin beneath his lips for courage. "It would be a small price to pay to see you wake up."