#jupeter dads au

[mollymauk-teafleak]

just as much as all those years ago

Please consider reblogging and leaving a comment over on Ao3!

This is for my ever wonderful girlfriend @spiky-lesbian who is just the Best and will always be the absolute Best and I love her very much. Returning to my favourite comfort AU and of course it’s angst I write.

Trigger warnings: descriptions of an injury, specifically a burn

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Memories were funny things for Juno Steel.

They came when he didn’t call them and hadn’t asked for them. When he needed them, he couldn’t find them, only the ragged edged gaps where they’d once been. And they were never whole either. They came as sounds, one random lyric from a song his brother used to warm up to or the sound of his mother’s footsteps in the hall or the way the coffee maker in the HCPD had always sputtered close to the end of its cycle. They came as smells, Buddy’s hairspray or the way the hallways had reeked in his old high school, the milky smell of when his babies had been brand new or Rita’s goddamn salmon things. They were fractured and jumbled and awkward to hold.

And they were so hard to tell from reality. One moment Juno was up to his elbows in soapy water, taking advantage of the boys actually going to bed at a reasonable time to get the dinner dishes done. He was whistling a song that had been on the radio as he’d driven back from the office, tapping the hell of his bare foot against the tiles in time with the beat that existed only in his head. He was tired, he had a few new aches to catalogue and he was perfectly happy.

And the next moment his nose was full of burning ozone, scorched fabric, heat and blood.

Juno froze, hands stilling and letting the plate he’d been soaping drop back into the water. Suddenly he was pulled into a handful of times and places at once. He was at the practise range at the academy, he was trying not to be sick the first time a perp had shot at him, he was pounding on his brother’s bedroom door and begging him to answer, he was lying on the floor of the Carte Blanche and seeing Sasha shake, he was a cop, he was a kid, he was a pirate, he was a twin without a brother. All because of a smell in the air.

And he might have shook himself, pushed it all away and told himself not to be an idiot if he hadn’t heard the voice and realised it wasn’t a memory.

“Mama? I...I’m sorry…”

It wasn’t a memory. Juno whirled, eye wide, heart no closer to restarting in his chest. His oldest daughter stood just behind him, holding her arm tightly with a hand that trembled, with skin that was ashen and a face wet with tears. His old coat was black from elbow to shoulder, one stripe of it completely gone and giving a glimpse of raw, red skin. A laser burn from a distance, it had just glanced off her but it was enough.

She looked so scared.

“Bianca?” he breathed, not really wanting to believe this was actually happening. His daughter was off on a job, of course she could never tell them much about it but she was meant to be off being young and reckless and having fun and swinging on starlight, just like her daddy did.

“I...I thought I got away but I missed one of the guards,” Bianca’s voice was tight, adrenaline clearly the only thing holding back the pain, “Mama…”

Juno swallowed hard, putting a firm, hard foot on his panic and shoving down hard. His baby girl needed him and when it was over he could go and find a quiet corner to scream and cry and rage about it. But for now he needed to get a goddamn grip.

“Bathroom,” he moved forward, sliding an arm to take her weight, just in time as her knees buckled.

Suddenly her free hand was bunched in his shirt tight enough to pinch his skin, his arms holding her as easily as if she was two instead of twenty two. As if she was as small and delicate as she had been then, when he’d first met her and realised just how much he’d be willing to give to keep her safe…

No. Not now.

He went to call for Nureyev, he was doing yoga in their bedroom, but Bianca’s hand tightened and she gave a strained, pained whine through her teeth.

“No,” she begged, breathing coming hard and shallow, the pain of her wound coming in through the cracks as she realised she was safe and didn’t need to run on sheer adrenaline, “Please don’t, not until...not until it’s covered up, I don’t want him to see…”

Juno went to protest but stopped himself, they didn’t have time and he couldn’t say she was wrong. Nureyev didn’t need to see this part, his husband’s field medicine skills weren’t as practised and when he saw the state their daughter was in, it wouldn’t even have mattered. He would freeze and he would break. Juno didn’t blame him in the slightest, he’d nearly gone himself, but he couldn’t hold both of them together.

So he kept quiet and carried his daughter to the poky bathroom of their apartment, moving quickly and quietly as he could past the twin’s bedroom.

“You need to keep talking for me, kiddo,” he said through gritted teeth, as soon as the door was shut behind them, “Tell me how you got in without any of us hearing you. Give me all the details.”

Bee Bee managed a weak chuckle as he sat her down against the edge of the bath, “I’m not giving you all my secrets, mama…”

Juno could dredge a smile for her, if she was going to make the effort, throwing it over his shoulder as he wrenched open the medicine cabinet and pulled out one of the many emergency first aid kits stowed around the apartment.

“Then give me all the moons of Jupiter in size order, biggest to smallest. I know your daddy made you memorise them.”

Bee Bee swallowed hard, shifting as she started to slump, “Um...Ganymede. Callisto…”

“Good, good girl,” Juno was more focused on pulling out the scissors and cutting away the ruins of the coat sleeve so he could start cleaning and dressing it, but as long as he could hear her talking he knew she was conscious.

“Io…oh mama, no, your coat…” Bianca tried to lean away from the blades.

“Bee Bee, I don’t know if you noticed but I care about you a little more than I care about some ratty old coat,” Juno sighed, ignoring her weak protests.

He couldn’t help but wince as he saw her arm, fully exposed. The bolt had only grazed her but clearly it had been set to kill, it had scorched a clean edged, diagonal path along the top of her arm. If she hadn’t been running away, if the person had fired a second before…

Juno shook himself and focused, it was clean and wouldn’t need more than a gentle dousing with cold water which he quickly set to. Don’t think about what could have happened, focus on what’s in front of you.

It broke his heart when she hissed in pain, the second where she clearly wanted to pull away from him, however much he could rationalise it. But he’d been doing some version of this for a long time, from the first time Bee had caught her tiny fingers in the door on the Carte Blanche.

“Hey,” he gently reached over and turned her face to him, “Just look at me, okay? You’re doing so well.”

His brave Bianca took a shaky breath and nodded, ‘Himalia is next. In the size order.”

Juno smiled with a soft, tired pride, motioning for her to go on as he applied a thin layer of salve and started to bind it with the smart tech bandages that wrapped tightly around her arm with no effort from him. They’d hold it fast and safe, healing the torn and blistering skin underneath until barely a trace remained.

But Bianca wouldn’t forget this. This would be another one of her memories, the ones that would come up when least welcome and stop her in her tracks when she thought she was safe.

Juno contented himself with doing what he could for her now. He helped her up, though her legs were still shaky, helping her take shuffling steps to her bedroom, the one they still kept exactly as she’d left it the last time she visited. Neither he nor his husband could ever bring themselves to move anything around, happy to admit to themselves that they were just waiting until their daughter came home again. So the old stuffed animals were still lining the bottom of the bed, the books were still piled on the nightstand, there were still soft blankets ready for her to sink down onto.

“Right,” Juno brushed a hand over her curls, “Now water, painkillers and lots of rest. Got it, kiddo?”

“Yes mama,” she sighed, leaning into his touch, “Um...I think I want to see daddy now.”

He saw the guilt flicker through her dark eyes and he softened it with a kiss to her forehead. He understood the instinct to protect people you cared about, feeling like you couldn’t let them see you cry or fall or hurt because you’d see just how much they cared about you and it could be so scary. Knowing so much of someone else’s happiness rested with you.

He left her to get settled, needing to take a few deep breaths as soon as the door closed. Just a little longer.

Nureyev was just stepping out of their room, his long hair pushed back from his face with a band that had probably once been Bianca’s. He looked calm, content, and his whole face lit up when he saw his wife walking towards him. Having to watch all that unravel, that would hurt Juno as much as any of it.

He tried to speak clearly, concisely, only repeating again and again that she was fine, that there would be no lasting damage or even a mark. But he wasn’t sure any of it actually got through after he finally said the words ‘Bianca’s been shot’. Because that was when he pushed past him and started running down the hall. Cursing under his breath, Juno took off but couldn’t hope to catch his husband on those legs, only getting there when the bedroom door was already open.

He was braced for tears, he was braced for the anger that sometimes came when Nureyev was feeling too much to hold within himself and had to lash out to try and grasp some control. He was braced to have to pull his husband out of there.

What he found was his husband and his daughter embracing as tightly as her wound would allow.

“I’m sorry, daddy,” Bianca was sniffling, har face pressed to his shoulder, where it had always fit so perfectly ever since she was small, “I know you said to check, you said and I thought I did but…”

Nureyev shook his head, his own voice thick but steady, “No, no, it’s okay. You did nothing wrong, as long as you’re okay.”

“Promise?” Bianca mumbled, still sounding a little like a child wondering what her punishment would be.

“Oh my treasure,” Nureyev drew back to hold her face in his hands, “I promise. All I care about is that you’re whole and well and...and next time, you will see it. You’ll get better and better every time, just like I did. I just couldn’t be more thankful it was no worse but...next time will be better.”

Bianca’s face flooded with obvious relief, she’d clearly been worried her daddy’s first response would have been to ground her. Juno had to admit, he’d expected it too.

Nureyev only touched her bandages lightly, checking everything was in place, “But...if you wanted to stay here for just a few days just while you healed? We could make room for you?”

Bianca gave a tired smile, rolling her eyes, “Only if you could make the room, of course.”

Juno leaned against the doorframe, giving them a few more moments together before joining them, giving Bianca some time before having to endure both of her parents fussing over her. As he watched Nureyev draw Bee Bee back in to hug her tightly and let her rest against him, he felt other times overlapping it, other times he’d seen that light in Nureyev’s eyes, the smile he saved only for their babies, the way they clung to him and looked to him for safety. He felt the years they’d spent together as parents, the memories sending warmth running through his chest, soothing the anxiety still gnawing there, giving him a few more hours before he’d need to release it. Hopefully Nureyev would be in his arms by then.

Memories were funny things for Juno Steel. But some were everything.

[anamelessfacelessnerd]

My 2021 projects:

I know it’s already March, but better late than never right? So here’s what I’m working on this year:

A 8 installment TMA s1 polycule fic based off of “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

A multi chapter WTNV/TMA/TPP crossover

TMA s1 Scooby Doo AU

A TPP gala fic in three acts (act one is posted)

The honeymoon portion of my Dad Spencer Reid series (also already started)

A B99/Hannibal/CM/SVU crossover Survivor AU (and possibly other Survivor fancasts)

A Hannigram parents AU

A Gerrymichael pregnancy AU

Several oneshots including: a cute fluffy/smutty Bouquet fic, a TPP fic based on teenage Juno, a Jupeter fic based off of “Cherry Wine” by Hozier, and so much more

[stubbornjerk]

2020 Fanfiction Review

tagged by @northisnotup. i. thanks, dad.

i... am horrified of having to round all this up because 2020 feels like it’s like 7 years crammed into 1 but here we go.

Fics Written This Year:

I wrote a lot in 2020 before quarantine. I transitioned between fandoms too, which is expected since I’ve been doing that consistently for the past five years since I began writing as a hobby. So from Good Omens (of which I wrote half of my stuff for this year) , I transferred onto Penumbra (which has monopolized most of my writing stuff this year and shall remain so until I see fit).

This year alone I published fifteen (15) things, two of which were poems (one poem I didn’t count because I wrote that in 2017). There’d be a lot more but we don’t talk about that.

According to AO3 (minus the collabs where I was the artist or voice for something), I wrote around 145.7k words this year, ignoring the 57k I have discontinued and deleted and will remain in my laptop’s memory drive until the heat death of the universe.

Takeaways from your kick-ass writing, or kick-ass lack of writing, during a year more focused on survival than perhaps any other:

Well, I was fortunate enough to have no significant struggle with the quarantine since where I live, it’s illegal for me to get out of the house at my age without a pass. I did still have school to do despite that. I did as much writing this year as I did in 2015-2018, when I was still in junior high, which is mostly because apart from picking up art as a hobby to healthily space out my writing time, I also gave myself a rigid schedule to work around. Well, for the most part. 

Like, while I was writing halcyon days, I was also writing and drawing for the TNA minibang that I did with Ger and Jeans at the same time, while also writing some fluff on the side like the Andromeda piece I did for Stes on the earlier days of halcyon days, while also still taking time to draw something indulgent and dumb between everything. So, take my “rigid schedule” with a grain of salt. I find that I like to be busy so that I’m barely conscious of the progress that i have for most projects. 

Otherwise, I start doubting if it’s even something people would read. 

[long and haunted stare at all 57k of my unpublished work]

Most surprising fic you wrote this year:

I don’t think I have one specific thing I’m surprised I wrote this year? It all feels like something I would have wanted to read or write as a challenge, or something I expected to have come from me specifically. 

I think in terms of structure, the most surprising thing I wrote this year would be my poem, three doors | tatlong pinto, which isn’t really fic because it’s a poem but I digress. I never really thought I would be publishing poetry for anything fannish.

In terms of actual fic, I think it’d be my birthday fic bridges to burn, because I’ve never really tried to blend both my art and fic before? I wrote most of the fic around the illustrations I already made beforehand, then decided that they’d illustrate the fic itself instead. It was an interesting experiment, to say the least.

How you grew as a writer this year:

I would like to think that I was as poetic in my prose as I used to be but I know that’s not true. Some of my more recent writing is very poetically structured and I think that’s due in large part to how I wrote halcyon days, which had to be poetic because of the nature of the AU source material, Hadestown. 

Well, that and the fact that for some reason people have grown to like my simplistic poetic prose? So I’ve been trying to develop that further.

What’s coming in 2021:

I have three to four things definitively lined up for 2021 and, since I’m in like, two events, it’s gonna be a doozy.

My bang fic is the one I’m most apprehensive of since it’s very personal to me and I kinda want people to receive it well but I also feel like that’s hoping for too much because it’s a) self-indulgent, and b) so incredibly niche and not really serving much for the current state of TPP fan content that I don’t see it going over well. But we’ll see.

I have maybe two completely new VesBud things I’m planning? Depending on how I’ll be handling the first two months of 2021, I will have to see how I’m going to fit that in my timeframes.

I have one JuPeter one I’m planning for an upcoming birthday that I’m very excited to work on. It’ll come out on February, keep an eye out for it.

And the last actual thing lined up is going to be the sequel to Vespa Ilkay and the Case of the Murderous Mask, which will have its own two-parter podfic as well, if we can help it. So if you liked our little VesBud-centric reverse AU, that’d be something to look forward to!

I... don’t really have that many people I can tag on tumblr for this kjshfd most of the writers I know and are mutuals with are on twitter so.... if you wanna do this, i’m tagging you? you, who is currently reading this? whatever

[mollymauk-teafleak]

that thunder in your lungs

A valentines day present for @spiky-lesbian, love you so much, glad you like this! From our Jupeter dads au but a little bit in the future 

Also on Ao3 where you can find the other fics featuring their daughter

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Nureyev rarely felt so free as he did on a job.

It was almost giddying, wearing someone else’s face and someone else’s name, knowing that in a few hours he wouldn’t exist and could do anything he liked until then completely free of consequences. The waiting between jobs, the planning, that was the hard part, where he could only be himself- something that had never been an entirely safe haven. When he worked, he was unstoppable.

Or he had been. This time was proving to be very, very different.

Nureyev was dressed to the nines, armoured in makeup and jewels that weren’t his own, wearing a pretty, airy, glittery name and a life to match. His brightly painted nails were filed to points and his fingers had that greedy, confident itch to them, the security in knowing they would soon be holding something that didn’t belong to them. He should be having fun.

But he wasn’t. He carried a knot of anxiety inside him, one that refused to shift even as the plans came together and clicked comfortably into place.

Because across the almost sickeningly fancy party, a stunningly beautiful young woman moved through the crowd, looking devastating in her sharp tuxedo, hair pulled back into twin clouds of curls behind both of her heavily pierced ears. She was turning heads left, right and centre, pulling people’s gazes into her orbit as she sipped champagne and breezed through circles of young socialites like some glittering comet.

Which was not exactly great. Given that she had just as little right to be here as Nureyev did.

He stifled a sigh and made some excuse to the gaggle of people he’d been keeping at the edges of, leaving them to their idle and irritatingly wrong chatter about modern art. He made for the drinks table, meeting the young woman’s eyes and giving her a brief, stern look, giving her little choice but to head that way too.

Once there, he poured himself a tall flute of blue champagne and took a long pull until she appeared, leaning casually near him, enough that they could have an inconspicuous conversation under the lilting music.

“Having fun, daddy?” she hummed softly, eyes shining with innocence, “Your dress is very pretty.”

“I’d be having more fun if you were sticking a little closer to our directive, sweetling,” he muttered with what he thought was rather impressive patience, “...and thank you.”

Bianca tilted her head so the fine threads of gossamer thin gold that she’d weaved into her curls shone, “I don’t know what you mean, daddy. Seems like everything’s going well to me.”

He took a long, slow breath, “Darling, no one whose met you tonight is going to forget your face in a hurry. And seeing as we’re here to steal a necklace off the neck of the host, that isn’t a good thing. We need to be inconspicuous.”

“In that dress? Aw, daddy,” Bianca rolled her eyes in that infuriating way she’d inherited from her mother, like Nureyev had no idea what he was talking about, “I’m only having fun. This is my first proper run out, I’m just looking to enjoy myself. There’s so many pretty girls...”

“As long as it’s not at the expense of your safety, that’s fine,” Nureyev frowned, rolling his eyes and making a show of refilling his glass so the irritated note in his voice would be covered by the trickle of the drink.

“You’re so silly, daddy,” Bianca grinned playfully, “You told me all the time how much fun you had at places like this!”

Nureyev knew she was right and it only made his mouth set tighter, “Just...just be careful. We have to grab the jewels and be gone in another hour.”

“Of course I’ll be careful, daddy,” Bianca stood up straight, her gaze already roving over the crowds, her deep brown eyes lighting up with a mischief he knew all too well, “That’s what you taught me, right?”

And then she was off, she’d caught the eye of a young woman her age who was already smiling in welcoming anticipation. Nureyev was left to fume silently while letting none of it touch his face. He couldn’t decide which of the two of them she was being irritatingly similar to, himself or Juno, but it was raising his blood pressure to unsafe levels. Likely they were both partly to blame.

There was nothing for it then but to make his usual sweeping circles of the party- fortunately these private orbital stations had large, open rooms with few places to conceal nasty surprises- and be as twice as alert as he normally would be.

If you’re this bad now, how on earth are you ever going to let her go out on her own? A voice that sounded like his wife questioned in a voice that wasn’t unkind. Nureyev frowned and let his eyes pass lightly over her again, catching the moment as the latest girl who’d fallen into her orbit touched her hair and complimented it in a way that made his daughter grin dazzlingly.

He wasn’t a fool. He knew his daughter wouldn’t be content to stay with them on the Carte Blanche forever, only pulling jobs with one of her parents or her aunts watching like hawks from the opposite corner. She was too good for it and he was very aware of that, recognising the hunger in her eyes and the sparks of her brilliant mind. One thing Nureyev was certain of, he would nurture her talent and he would be ready to let her go.

It was just so hard.

Looking at her now, he couldn’t help but think of the very first job he’d ever taken her out on. She’d only been a few weeks old, small enough that he could hold her in one hand. Driven to desperation by only having one craft he was truly good at and now needing to feed two people rather than one, he’d strapped her to sling across his chest, made sure her face would always be covered by his own body and planned a very simple heist. It had only been breaking and entering to pilfer the jewellery box of some fabulously rich socialite without the sense to even post a proper guard, it was as easy to him as going to the supermarket would have been for someone else.

But still, Nureyev had been more terrified for that job than he had been to steal his very first apple from a street cart on a Brahman street at just five years old. He’d checked, double checked, triple checked every possible facet of the task and still it hadn’t felt like enough, his heart had been in his mouth every moment of the simple, smooth as silk job.

It had all fallen into sharp relief then, as Nureyev had agonised and fretted over things he’d been certain of how to do since before his twelfth birthday. He wasn’t just one man anymore, with only himself to look out for and worry about. There had been that second heartbeat, just a flicker against his own, stronger one, leaning towards his for support and comfort. There was his daughter.

Nureyev hadn’t run away from the change then and he wouldn't now. He’d gotten very good at accepting it but he didn’t have to like it.

So rather than giving his daughter another stern reminder to stay inconspicuous, he let her have her night. He got himself another glass of champagne and leaned against one wall to watch her sparkle, tasting pride with each sip of her drink. Melancholy too, but he could put that to one side for now, save it for a good, long cry in his wife’s arms when they got back to the ship. All part of being a father, he supposed.

Though time was soon ticking on, it always seemed to go so fast when wrapped in sparkling lights and fine drinks and dancing. Nureyev knew the telling off they’d get if they went back to the Carte Blanche without this necklace, seeing as it had the map to the family’s personal safe engraved in it’s stones. They couldn’t exactly drain the thing if they didn’t know where it was.

Bianca had been dancing with a succession of beautiful young ladies and as soon as she whirled out of the arms of the latest, Nureyev gave her another steady look and inclined his head. She pulled a bit of a face but was back in their same position at the drinks table before too long.

“Do we have to go already?” she murmured in a regretful tone, swirling her glass to watch the glitter dance inside the liquid.

“Go?” Nureyev gave her an uncomprehending look, “We haven’t even done what we came here to do! Would you like to go back to your Auntie Buddy empty handed and tell her you spent the whole party socialising, sweetling?”

His daughter gave him another smug smile and this time he knew it was all his traitorous genes at work, “Oh sorry, I tried to be obvious. Check your pockets, daddy.”

Nureyev did, as subtle as he could be, sinking his hand into the pockets of his sleek figure hugging dress and finding cold, square cut stones. He didn’t need to bring them out to know it was exactly the necklace they were here to acquire.

“I...how…” he could only stand and blink, not really caring how idiotic he looked.

Bianca grinned, clearly delighted with herself, “Careful, daddy, you’re being rather conspicuous.”

He quickly rearranged his face into indifference, though his daughter clearly knew him well enough to read the mix of shock, awe and incredulousness in his posture and keep grinning into her drink.

“Well. In that case, yes, we really do need to make a sharp exit. Any goodbyes you’d like to make before we do that?”

“Oh, I got all their numbers, don’t worry. Shuttle in five minutes?”

She didn’t wait for his reply, sauntering off into the crowd.

The trip back to the ship was a quick one, the Carte Blanche hovered behind one of Jupiter’s moons just a little ways away from the private station, happily cloaked in one of Rita’s shields. Bianca sat in the passenger seat, looking a little shamefaced now she was out of the music and the glitter, like she expected a telling off.

Instead, Nureyev waited until they’d passed out of any possible signal range the station might have and turned to her, reaching over and tucking a curl of hair behind her ear.

“You did very well tonight, darling,” he smiled, “I’m proud of you.”

“Yeah?” Bianca’s whole face illuminated, her smile returning.

“Of course. You did magnificently. And…” he cleared his throat and swallowed, “If I seemed a little...hard on you, I apologise. I suppose it’s hard for me not to worry about you. Please don’t take it as me thinking less of your skills, I just…”

“I get it, daddy,” Bianca’s voice softened and she leaned into his hand, “It’s okay.”

“Yes,” Nureyev smiled tiredly and nodded gratefully, “And whenever you choose to go out on your own, you will be amazing. I know you will.”

Bianca’s cheeks darkened and she smiled coyly, “I mean...I’m not in any rush, right? There’s still a lot I need to learn. Mama still says my aim needs work sometimes and Auntie Rita’s only just started showing me how to take down firewalls and Auntie Vespa said she’d teach me how to set a bone…”

“Of course,” Nureyev couldn’t help but feel a wash of relief as he leaned over and kissed her forehead, “Of course, my darling.”

But the day would come. And Nureyev would be ready, as ready as he had been to turn his life upside down and inside out for the tiny baby she used to be.

He could never stop worrying about his Bianca. But he would never stop being proud of her either.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

I will love you if I never see you again (chapter five)

Again, thanks and sincere apologies to my lovely beta readers @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian. Again, I am just so, so sorry.

Please consider leaving a comment on Ao3, it really means a lot to me!

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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It had been four days, not even a full week, and Nureyev was already losing his mind.

Bianca only howled louder when he picked her up, this time right in his ear. Nureyev winced, jostling her, patting her back, feeling the anger of her flushed skin through the thin cotton of her pyjamas. He tried to fall back on everything he’d learned, everything he’d frantically researched on the long trip back from Brahma into solar planet space with an hours old Bianca curled up in one arm, everything he knew worked from times when she’d fallen ill or gotten herself in a state. But the truth was she’d never acted quite like this.

She wasn’t sleeping, she wasn’t eating right, she was acting out in a way she just hadn’t before. She’d always been so good, quiet enough that Nureyev had pulled countless scores with her strapped up against his chest in a sling, calm enough that she’d never once given them away even in situations tenser than he’d ever wanted to get her in.

But ever since they’d lifted off from the Cerberus Province, she’d been in some holy terror. There was just something about the Carte Blanche that Bianca did not like and refused to cooperate with.

Nureyev dodged a flying fist and took her over to the window, hoping the sight of the stars would help calm her down, help her realise that this was no different from their previous hops between planets, just a little longer and with slightly more comfortable accommodation. When observed through the tight circle of the porthole, it was hard to believe they were even moving, the stars not even seeming to creep past. It was like looking up from the very bottom of the sea.

But Bianca was having none of it. She only cried, sobbing ‘dada’ miserably over and over against his shirt, the silk of which was now soaked beyond saving. It was like she was begging him, desperately trying to make him see and understand.

But he couldn’t.

Nureyev held her closer in spite of the noise and the flailing, sighing deeply. He felt like he needed to apologise but when he wondered what for, so many unpleasant thoughts crowded on the end of his tongue that he couldn’t pull away fast enough, as if from a burning stove.

Thoughts like why he’d ever assumed he could do this, why he’d ever thought he could be a father. Why he’d ever thought subjecting a young child to this kind of life, essentially reenacting all the wongs that had been done to him, had been a good idea. He could tell himself his intentions were good until he was blue in the face but didn’t they all say that?

Wouldn’t Mag have told himself the exact same thing?

The name was enough to make himself start and he pushed it away, trying to force it into its box. But it was so hard, when he was so tired and empty and wrung out. He needed his wits about him to keep his mind in order, like prison guards with unruly tenants, and right now whatever wits he’d ever had were in pieces on the floor.

When it was clear the stars weren’t working their usual magic, Nureyev stood, not really knowing why but needing something to do. Perhaps a shower would help cool and soothe her or maybe a walk around the ship, though that would only make her distress echo through the halls all the more and Nureyev got the feeling his good will with the rest of the crew was eroding fast.

Except with one of them.

He’d been keeping his distance in an attempt to be respectful but it was impossible not to feel his presence like an itch. In the captain’s ridiculous family meetings, every glance the former detective stole in his direction felt like someone had flicked him on the ear. He’d stopped bringing Bianca to those things, not just because she screamed through them and made the transmission of information rather tricky but because that single brown eye kept dancing everywhere but on them, expect for those moments where he would slip. Those mistakes seemed to come more frequently than either of them would like. His secretary too, the one with the bright purple hair, would be looking too and would often glance furtively at her old boss, like she was waiting for him to do something or say something, like the silence was killing her. But Juno would set his jaw in that damn stubborn way and turn his eye elsewhere.

But it wasn’t just that, it was Bianca herself. Nureyev had assumed a month when she was so small she was barely aware of anything around her wouldn’t have left such an imprint. He’d assumed because that felt so much more sturdy than simply hoping. But every time Juno was in her eye line, she would wriggle and attempt to make escapes Nureyev himself would never have dared. She would babble and bounce and coo, even stretch her arms out towards him.

As soon as she started, Nureyev would quickly bundle her off, making some excuse out loud or in his head that no one would really believe. He’d walked away from dinners the captain had insisted he attend, strategy meetings, he’d turned back out of the kitchen when he’d needed a coffee more than he needed air in his lungs. He’d left Bianca in their room when she’d been crying, breaking his heart in the process of closing the door.

Nureyev was being a fool, in short. And on top of that, he was being a poor member of the crew. The captain had talked about them as a cohesive unit, working together to achieve the impossible, each one of them part of the chain. And he was the weak link, he was the hinge who stuck, the corner that broke away.

It was hurting his professional pride as much as it was his sense of identity. Some mornings, in the blissful few hours when Bianca’s exhaustion made her snatch a little sleep, he would stagger to the bathroom. Looking at himself in the mirror, flyaway hair and bleary eyes and no makeup, he would struggle to recognise himself.

He could look at that man and tell himself he was Peter Nureyev, but what good were the words when he didn’t have the credentials?

Back in his own mind, in the present moment with a distraught daughter chewing miserably on his shoulder, Nureyev decided it was late enough to attempt a walk, maybe take her up to the observation deck. He’d been so excited to show her the view from beneath the blown out dome of the ship, he bet you could almost believe you were completely suspended in space, floating amongst it all. Sure every time he’d attempted it for her, she’d just cried but maybe this time it would work.

Nureyev went to get her a coat, it was cold when you were surrounded by nothing but metal and the vacuum of space. Her booties too, in case she wanted to be set down, he needed to have something between her soft little soles and the grating. And of course her cat had to come…

Nureyev stopped, holding two of those items in his hand and realising he had no clue where to find the third. It must have been abandoned in the kitchen after the most recent of the meeting disrupting tantrums. Maybe once she had it back, she would calm down.

He pulled on her little coat and shoes, taking twice as long as usual with her flailing about, and went for the door, glad to at least have a goal in mind, a reason to move and make the dark thoughts chase him rather than sitting there as an easy target.

He found his momentum thrown off when he trod on something soft in the dark hallway, making him stumble and Bianca lurch in his arms. He looked down, fingers twitching towards the knife at his belt on pure instinct, and saw the very cat he’d been about to hunt for. There was a note tucked under the ribbon around its neck. Once he’d adjusted to the simulated night of the Carte Blanche, he could read the handwriting from here.

Found on the kitchen table. Thought B might be missing it- J.

Part of Nureyev didn’t want to take his foot off the thing but he did, bending and rescuing it from underneath his heel. The note came with it, as well as the knowledge of Juno’s thought, his care, his attentiveness. Everything that might be contained with those glances he gave them and all that might be behind them.

He folded the note between his fingers and put it in one pocket, wishing he could do the same with the thoughts crowding his mind. The cat he passed to Bianca, who’d been startled by the near fall and was clinging to him with tight little hands, sniffling quietly.

“Look who found us, little treasure,” he murmured, trying a smile.

Bianca looked at her cat, eyes wide and wet and bottom lip still pouched out. She reached out a hand to close around its neck, slackened by all the times she’d held it there while she slept or while she rested against him or while she threw it around happily. She held on tight, like she always did, since the one time she’d dropped it as they’d been creeping around a cathedral in search of some ancient scrolls a buyer had expressed interest in and Nureyev had been forced to break one of his rules of thieving and revisit a crime scene to retrieve it the next day.

For a moment, he actually hoped the tears had run their course and the much loved toy had been enough this time. For a moment. Namely, the moment right before Bianca threw the cat fully in his face, knocking his glasses askew and began her wailing again with renewed force.

Nureyev gave a deep, long sigh and started his walk to the observation deck, leaving the cat on the bedroom floor for now.

It had been a week now, but fortunately for everyone on board the Carte Blanche, there was only so much little lungs could take. There had to be some time, whether it was ten minutes, twenty or, if the stars were aligning, maybe even a full hour, where Bianca just physically couldn’t howl anymore. Nureyev tried to get as much done in that time as he possibly could, feeding her and himself in those snatched moments, risking journeys outside of his room safe in the knowledge that someone wouldn’t try and push them out of the airlock and have done with it. Probably the green haired medic, when he’d gone to her to ask if there was anything physically wrong with Bianca, she had looked positively murderous after his daughter accidentally caught her on the jaw with a swinging foot.

It wasn’t to say that things went back to normal when she wasn’t crying. There’d be a distance with Bianca, as her breathing would hitch and she’d tremble with the aftershocks of her tears. Nureyev would try and wipe the tears from her cheeks, he’d make funny faces and dredge up his most ridiculous voices he’d ever used for his personas, he’d tell her she was his treasure and he loved her but he wouldn’t get the response she used to give him. She’d just slump against him, boneless and sad in a faraway kind of way. In a lot of ways, it was worse than when she was filled with her fury.

But she needed food and that was something Nureyev knew he could fix. So, with the lights on the ship simulating a late dusk, he walked with her down to the kitchen. Even if she could toddle on her own sometimes, he did not look forward to the day when he would reach down to her and she wouldn’t answer by stretching her arms up towards him, hands opening and closing. Even as exhausted as he was, as much as his muscles ached, he carried her gratefully.

He was tired though. He couldn’t remember being so exhausted and feeling so helpless, not since the day Bianca was born. Even when she slept, he couldn’t, losing himself in just gazing at her, like studying her face would make it all click and he’d see how to help her. So he dragged himself rather than walked to the kitchen, not able to rouse enough energy to put on the usual straight backed swagger he’d made part of his identity. He actually slouched his shoulders, God help him.

No one else was in the kitchen which was for the best. Nureyev had grown far too used to living alone to be fully adjusted to other bodies in his space yet. And he was so tired, it was very likely he’d put a hole through his alias that he couldn’t afford.

He worked efficiently with one hand, putting together Bianca’s meal of paste of various colours. It looked entirely unappetising but his research showed it was one of the best brands out there in terms of vitamins and minerals for healthy growth. He sat down on the sagging old sofa, balancing her on one knee, the brightly coloured plastic tray on the coffee table. There was no fight in her tonight, she accepted each spoonful and raised barely a coo at his spaceship noises. Maybe she’d had enough of spaceships, living on one. And she didn’t eat as much as he’d like either before burying her face against her cat, who was apparently back in her good graces, and accepting no more.

Nureyev sighed and acquiesced, setting down the spoon, “Well, we��re going to try again in a bit...you need your energy, little treasure.”

Bianca just murmured indistinctly, the cloth cat’s ear in her mouth, the remnants of her last spoonful staining his fur orange.

He could get up and go back to his room, he should before someone else came in. But his legs were so leaden, he felt so strangely heavy and empty at once. Just a moment to let go and let his muscles slacken but of course not his hands, never his hands.

He just wanted a moment.

The next thing Nureyev was aware of was a shifting softness against him, the whisper of cloth. He frowned a little, turning his face into the pillow under his head, about to slip back into sleep, his consciousness just rising to the surface before sinking back under.

Almost. Instead it froze solid and his eyelids snapped open. Where was Bianca?

Nureyev shot upright, too fast, his vision swimming. He was asleep, how could he have fallen asleep, what sort of father fell asleep when he was meant to be awake watching his child…

When his brain finally stopped spinning in his skull, the first thing he registered was a high sweet sound that soothed his panic but did nothing for his confusion.

Bianca was laughing. She was laughing.

Nureyev whirled around to see her, sitting up on the rug, her face bright with delight, grasping up at something. Her cat, being wiggled in an odd little dance and chuntering in a silly voice. Held by Juno Steel.

He was grinning, the eye he still had crinkled in the corner with those creases that had knocked Nureyev off his feet the first time he’d seen them. He walked the cat back and forth in the air, letting Bianca grab for it, making it talk. He was dressed for sleep, slouchy faded trousers and a shirt that was hanging off one shoulder, slippers on his feet that were clearly a gift from Rita. But he’d never looked so animated, as he sat cross legged and played with Bianca.

“Gonna have to try harder than that, Chainmail Warrior, if you want to defeat this beast,” he challenged, moving it ever so slightly closer to her grasping hands, clearly ready to let her win in just a moment, before her delight turned to frustration.

Bianca giggled, seeing victory within her grasp, rising up a little onto her knees, nearly overbalancing. But if she did, Juno would catch her. Nureyev knew he would catch her.

“Bianca…” he croaked, sitting up further. He realised there was a blanket over him, a blanket identical to the one he’d been provided but also different. Juno must have taken it from his own bunk. Same for the pillow that had appeared under his head.

Juno jumped, as if caught red handed, turning to him anxiously. Bianca snagged the cat when he wasn’t looking, hooting loudly in excitement, though her face dropped quickly when he didn’t praise her immediately.

But she followed his gaze, realised Nureyev was watching them and only smiled the brighter, “Dada!”

This is how it could be, Nureyev thought, some part of him that had been in control when he was asleep, if she was ours rather than mine. I could be waking up and looking at them both and seeing love in their eyes, being theirs…

He slammed that door shut as fast as he could mentally make himself move. He needed no more scars.

“Uh, sorry...Ransom,” Juno still looked guilty, like a kid caught in the middle of doodling on his desk, “You weren’t asleep for long, promise, I came in just as you were nodding off and decided you could use the rest so...so I was just keeping an eye on her. I was gonna put her back and walk away after an hour so you could wake up and…”

His eye slid down and Nureyev followed. Where Bianca’s tray of congealing food had been, instead there was a plate of food, the same pasta dish he’d seen Juno make for the rest of the crew but had always turned away before he could even offer some to him. It was still steaming and smelled good enough that his stomach woke up.

“I would have done it, it’s just I thought it should cool down and we could play a little longer and...sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you…” Juno had shrunken in on himself, seeing his explanation wasn’t getting listened to, bracing himself for more anger.

But Nureyev couldn’t find any. He shook and kicked every box, trying to wake some up but there simply was none. Which meant he could only feel sad and that hurt so much.

“Apologies, Juno,” he eventually said, voice a bad imitation of his usual self, “That was a lapse on my part and…thank you for stepping in. I’ll take Bianca now.”

Though he hadn’t received the blow he’d been expecting, Juno still looked forlorn at that, “I don’t mind keeping an eye on her while you eat? When’s the last time you did that, I’ve never seen you actually-”

Stop it, please stop it. Don’t do this to me again, Juno Steel.

“Ah yes, very kind of you,” Nureyev burst out over him with false cheeriness, the only shield he could gather at such short notice, “Perhaps later, come Bianca…”

He lurched up, realising in the back of his mind that the smell of Juno’s skin would cling to him for who knew how long and what was that going to do to him, and reached for his daughter. She only looked sorrowful, eyes darting between him and Juno, beginning to whimper.

Juno groaned, dropping his voice, “Nureyev…”

Don’t, not again, not again…

He shook himself, starting to find some of that anger but at who he couldn’t say. He moved forward and plucked Bianca up off the rug, muscles already tensing like an animal ready to run. He was halfway turned, Bianca was halfway to another meltdown, when Juno spoke, voice barely a whisper.

“What can I do to prove I won’t hurt you again, Nureyev?”

He froze, the only sound left beyond the constant soundtrack of the creaking ship being Bianca’s stuttering pre-cries. His voice sounded so lost, so quiet. Heavy, like someone who knew exactly what they’d done wrong and couldn’t see a path away from the person he’d been. But still trying, still groping for some sunlight.

Please, Juno Steel.

“I don’t know,” he eventually whispered.

He wasn’t looking but he felt Juno sag, felt the fight go out of him. He heard him get up, with a muted groan at some old ache in his limbs. He heard him walk up behind him, saw him come into view, the bowl in his hand.

“Please take it,” he sighed, holding it out towards Nureyev’s free hand, “Eat something. You look like death.”

After a pause and half a hundred petty, vindictive actions quickly dismissed, Nureyev took it.

“Thank you,” he said in a quiet voice. He’d gone hungry far too many times in his life not to take food when it was offered with good grace.

Juno just nodded, still looking even more hurt than when Nureyev had exploded at him. He leaned in, kissed Bianca’s forehead and his eye dared the thief to deny him. He did not.

“Night, Bee Bee, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he murmured, managing a smile for her as he patted her cheek. It fell away immediately when he raised his face back to Nureyev, “Goodnight, Ransom. We’re on that job together in two days, remember, the auction? Don’t fancy going in with a partner about to faint. So get some sleep.”

Nureyev’s heart sank at the thought but he didn’t let it show on his face, “Of course. Who do you think I am?”

Then he did smile for him, a sad and tired kind of smile with no sincere humour in it, “I know who you are, Peter Nureyev. I mean it, get some rest.”

He turned away first so Nureyev wouldn’t have to. Juno Steel was full of mercies tonight, it seemed. His footfalls echoed down the corridor even after he was out of sight, only disappearing with the click and thunk of his own door opening and closing in quick succession.

Bianca, no longer about to cry, only pressed into him and mumbled softly, a collection of muddy syllables that weren’t quite a word yet. But when they were, the word would be mama.

Nureyev straightened himself and shifted her slightly so he could hold her more securely. However much sleep he’d been able to snatch let him run around and force a lot of it into boxes, filing it away, reordering his mind. Maybe the time would come to open them again but the time certainly wasn’t now.

There was the job. Zolotovna’s auction and the Gilded Globe of Reaches Far. And there was all the preparation that came with the job, the busy hours, sitting on his bed combing through his comms on sites that were never meant to be accessed, the crafting of a seamless personality, all while Bianca played contentedly on the floor or sat in his lap just like old times. There was the work, the chance to prove himself. The chance to feel like Peter Nureyev again.

Juno Steel would have to wait.

As much as he’d missed her, Nureyev had to admit, rather guiltily, that he was glad Bianca was sleeping when he returned from the auction. He was exhausted and he was glad of the opportunity to just sit down and kick his shoes off, rub his aching feet and turn the events of the night over in his mind. With one hand resting tenderly on her sleeping shoulder, he tried to examine the ache inside himself with a distant eye. Unsuccessfully, every time he leaned in, it would reach out and take hold of him and he’d be unable to deny it was a part of him. He could try and shake it off but it would only spread and cling harder.

He had come so close. There was no pretending it hadn’t happened, Nureyev had considered it. Signing himself away, agreeing to whatever Zolotovna would have asked of him, his pride and place on the team and even his sexuality be damned. Just to have things be easy. He told himself firmly that of course he’d have made Binaca part of it, he’d have come and collected her first, he’d come so close because of her. He told himself that and under no circumstances would he press further, far too afraid of what might be beyond that.

But he hadn’t. Because he’d looked at Juno from across the ballroom, looking like one of the most distant, most beautiful stars had come loose from the sky and decided to attend the party, and he’d thought again of everything they could be. And he’d remembered who he was. He wasn’t Monsieur Dauphin, he was Peter Nureyev.

And he’d come home.

Bianca yawned, turning over in her sleep, her dark curls spreading around her face like she was underwater or floating in space. Rita had been watching her while they were at the party and said she’d been a dream, falling right asleep twenty minutes before they came back. Nureyev tried to just be grateful.

“Well done,” he murmured to her softly and he’d repeat it when she woke up, “Well done...Bee Bee.”

It was worth a try. It was a pretty cute name, actually.

Nureyev leaned in and kissed her forehead, just as a knock came on his door. Still dressed in his elaborate, expensive suit from the auction, just barefoot, he decided he was decent enough and went to open the door.

Buddy stood in the hallway, looking relaxed as ever, as if she’d been anticipating their success all along. She didn’t even greet him, just looking past his shoulder into the room, smiling softly at Bianca.

“She really is a peach, isn’t she?” she hummed with all of the familial pride of a grandmother, which Nureyev had always found a little presumptive but it wasn’t in him to argue tonight, “Mind if we have a talk, Ransom? Come in the hallway, I wouldn’t want to wake your little roommate. We all know what would happen then and everyone’s ear drums are only just finished healing....”

Nureyev frowned. Maybe he was in the mood to argue. But he did as she asked, closing the door gently behind him.

And they talked. Well, mostly Buddy talked and he listened, both as Ransom and as Nureyev. But sometimes it was good to listen. He had the feeling he’d not been doing that enough lately.

When the captain left him, it was a few moments and a few deep breaths before he went back inside. Bianca still slept soundly, hugging her cat to her chest, face buried in it’s fur. Nureyev smiled and wondered if she dreamed of stars.

He’d only managed to take off his tie and his jacket before the second knock came. This one he’d been expecting.

Juno Steel had taken off his dress and clearly showered, judging by the way his hair sat a little flatter than usual, but the remnants of glitter still dusted his cheekbones, catching the simulated almost dawn. He wouldn’t get that out for weeks. And he still wore one set of the earrings, studs in the shape of stars, looking simple on their own without the rest of the gold that had dripped from his ears all night. Had he forgotten they were there or did he just like them and wanted to keep them? Suddenly Nureyev’s heart was aching to know.

“Uh, hey...Ransom,” Juno looked awkward and so different, with it all stripped away. But he still sounded the same, “Can we, ah...talk? I know you weren’t ready before but it feels like we...ought to.”

“I agree completely,” Nureyev said simply, closing the door behind him.

“Now, before you slam the door, let me...wait, what?” Juno blinked, starting a little, “What did you say?”

Nureyev took a breath and steadied himself, “I agree that we should talk. And I also agree that I didn’t want to before though I’d say you’ve put it very charitably. I was...not kind to you, Juno. To say the very least.”

Juno still wore the expression he’d had in the split second before he’d gone over on his heels on Zolotovna’s red carpet, “I mean...after what I did to you and...and Bianca…”

“That was a mistake,” Nureyev shakes his head, pushing his glasses up his nose with his forefinger, a nervous tic he’d thought he’d trained himself out of in his teenage years, “A mistake with motivations and I’ve made far too many of those myself to judge you as harshly as I have.”

Juno shuffled from one foot to the other, “I...I just want to show you I’ve changed, Peter. And I know that sounds hollow the second time around and I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to but…”

Nureyev cut him off with a hand, “The last time you hadn’t changed, you were the same lady who left me in that hotel room.”

“And...and now?”

He bit his lip, making himself look into his dark eye, reflecting the gold on his cheeks like they were still in that ballroom but now with their own names and their own faces, “And now…”

That was when the third knock came. The one neither of them had been expecting. The one so loud it was impossible to pin down the source, so loud each of them felt like it was coming from inside their skulls. And then came the tearing.

Screeching, screaming metal erupted around them and both of them were thrown as the ship tilted dangerously. Nureyev felt himself cry his daughter’s name but it was lost in the shuddering wrenching, the burst of pain as the back of his head connected with the left hand wall and he lost his vision for a few moments. It wouldn’t have made sense anyway, the axis of the universe lurched sickeningly so his feet were above his head and the ceiling was the floor. The only thing that did make sense was the strong grip on his arm, his one anchor.

It didn’t last forever, the Carte Blanche eventually settled, shuddering like an animal in pain as it rocked back to the position demanded by its weight distribution. The back of Nureyev’s head felt wet but it was a far away, detached part of his mind that noticed that. Everything else was focused on one thing.

“Bianca!” he shouted, pouncing for the door, wrenching it open while the same untethered part of his brain wondered why it seemed so heavy when it didn’t before.

Yawning, sucking, hungry emptiness. His eyes saw nothing but blackness, peppered with stars, raw edges of a room that wasn’t there any more, simply gone like something had come along and taken a bite out of the ship.

No…

Familiar, strong hands yanked him back and the door closed, “Nureyev, you can’t!”

And then he was fighting, all semblance of composure and cool gone, screaming his daughters name, screaming for Juno to let go, he had to get her, he had to go save her, why didn’t he see?

And that floating, detached voice murmuring that it was too late, it was far too late. She was gone.

“Nureyev, we’ll figure it out, we’ll figure something out, I promise, but you can’t go out there!” Juno shouted, never once slackening his grip, taking every blow and scratch even as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and his lip swelled. Had the crash done that? Or had he?

Don’t stop, don’t listen because then comes the realisation, the truth, that’s when you break.

There were echoing footsteps coming towards them, multiple sets, Buddy barking orders, Rita mumbling fretfully, Vespa snarling.

It was only Jet’s voice that mattered, cutting above the rest.

“It was a drone,” he projected his voice out, not shouting, he never shouted, “I saw it from the cargo bay, an unmanned drone. It took her.”

Nureyev stopped, laser focused on him now, eyes still wild but sharp, “What did you say?”

Jet didn’t flinch, even when confronted by a man half insane, “Your daughter, the drone took her. It sealed her inside itself then tore the room away as it disconnected. The intention was likely to make you think she was dead.”

Nureyev felt the panic pressing against his fury, threatening to break through and render him useless, “Where is it going? Where?”

“That I cannot say, it had no identifying features,” Jet continued implacably, “But it was a short haul vessel, built to travel no more than a day. Wherever she is being taken, it is not far.”

“Then there isn’t a second to waste,” Buddy jumped in immediately, eyes hard with determination, “Check the security tapes, every single angle, there has got to be something about that drone that we can identify. Contacts on nearby planets, I want eyes open in every seedy port where someone would take something they didn’t want other people to see, every smuggler’s den. If someone has any favours owed, now is the time to call them in.”

Nureyev tried to follow along, he swam towards the actions, the need to move and do and fix. But he was drowning in images of Bianca, sobbing in terror, crying out for him, trapped behind cold glass and adrift in space, not knowing if he would come and save her. And he didn’t know either.

That was when the universe tilted again, this time in total silence, as he sank to his knees, fists clenched tight on the metal floor, the grating digging impressions into his skin. His eyes burned and his vision swam and his lungs were inert in his chest, unable to take in any air. All he could hear was his daughter crying.

But then there were those hands on his arms, that stabilizing, firm presence by his side. Juno’s face was drawn in agony, eye wide and fearful but still he clung tightly to Nureyev.

“We’ll get her back, Peter,” his voice was steady, despite the tears in his eye, “I promise. Whoever took her, we’ll find them and we’ll bring her home. I know we will.”

Nureyev looked at him, hands finding his forearms and gripping on tight. He recalled another time like this, racing across the Martian desert, facing the enormous maw of an ancient tomb and every horror they could imagine within. He remembered a man, so far from who he was in that moment, saying they would make it through. He’d been right, that man, and here was Juno Steel with the same fire in his eyes, making the same promise.

His lungs heaved in his chest, taking in the stale air, still sharp with the ozone that had rushed in through the open door. As he always did when things grew too chaotic to handle, he told himself the facts.

He was Peter Nureyev. This was Juno Steel. And they would bring their daughter home.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

I will love you if I never see you again (chapter one)

Huge thank you to my amazing betas, @minky-for-short for getting me into this podcast in the first place and @spiky-lesbian for letting me pass the gift on

Please consider reblogging or leaving a comment on Ao3, it means the world to me and it’s completely free! 

---

Warning: Trans pregnancy not seen but referenced, mentions of depression

Juno deeply regrets leaving Peter Nureyev in that motel room.

He told himself if was necessary. He told himself he was needed elsewhere. He told himself he was a hero.

Now, one year on, he is depressed, lonely and struggling. But Peter Nureyev is about to come back into his life, despite his own best judgement, and show him that their night together was more significant than Juno knows.

---

He wondered how much of his life he would spend taking footsteps that lead away from where he wanted to go.

Every time his heel hit the pavement, he would label himself again, burden himself with something fresh. They piled on top of each other, filling the inside of his skull until it ached.

Coward. Selfless. Idiot. Selfish. Heartless. Hero. Needed. Broken.

That more than anything else. How else to describe a person who was walking away from last night, choosing a cold and lonely dawn and a cold and empty future over everything currently fading into a sickly orange light above his head and someone to share it with. He couldn’t bear to look up and see those stars, not just because he still wasn’t used to seeing them through one eye, shifted in a way he knew they shouldn’t be, blurry and further away than he knew they really were. He was scared to turn his face to them and see the possibilities he was crushing under his boot with every step. Other planets, other worlds, other people he could be. And the two hearts he was breaking, all outlined in the stars like a needlepoint.

So he kept his eye to the pavement beneath him and continued on.

It was colder than it had any right to be, the warmth that hadn’t started as his own leeching away through his coat. It was the kind of cold that made him think he wouldn’t ever get warm again as he tried to force his mind to focus and figure out how he was going to get home.

And then back to normal. Back to who he’d been before.

The thought was the last straw needed to send the tears tumbling down his deliberately expressionless face, dripping from his chin to fall to the pavement below, as pointless and fruitless as rain on Mars.

He heard. Of course he heard.

And yet when he opened his eyes, he still hoped and he was duly punished for it, heart breaking all over again when there was no one in the bed next to him. Just rumpled sheets that had once curved around a human body and freshly emptied space.

He didn’t cry. That wasn’t how he’d been raised. Crying brought noise, attention, commotion. Crying was unprofessional. Potentially messy emotions were meant to be folded up small and filed away somewhere dark and deep for some unspecified later date, a time where he could be himself and didn’t have to be someone else. Whenever that would be.

So he didn’t cry. Instead he stared down at his own hands and told himself he was not thinking about where they had been just a few short hours ago, what they had discovered and held, what beautiful things they had moulded, along with a second pair of hands that were now just ghosts of warmth on cooling sheets. He sat and he stared, gaze hard and level until it began to blur. In that moment he lost sight of his clever, clever hands and realised how much hurt was inside him. Yawning, cavernous depths of it in his narrow chest, so easy to fall into and never be seen again.

But he couldn’t let that happen.

He told himself who he was, who he had made himself into after so much hard work. He spoke his name into the fading darkness and told himself what that meant. That was the only thing that got him out of the bed, onto his feet, back into his clothes. Back out into the world.

But under the veneer of his sharp smile and neat hair and nice clothes, he felt sick. Sick with anger, sick with a desperate need to get off this godforsaken planet and never see it’s dust and mountains and broken promises ever again, sick with grief above all else.

And he stayed sick for some time.

- A Year Later   -

Juno would say he’d had a bad day at the office. But that would imply that he’d had something that could be called a good day sometime in recent memory.

But they’d all been the same. Stumble in after very little sleep and no breakfast, beyond what had made his breath smell of stale alcohol. Give no answer to Rita’s hopeful greeting but to growl whether any new cases had come in. Look through the painfully anemic list and curl his lip at every one, muttering that they were pedestrian, boring, stale after each one. Slump listlessly in his chair and try to decide which he would take, just to get Rita off his back. Get sweaty and shivery at the thought of actually picking up the comms and speaking to a client. Realise it had gotten dark. Go home with no new cases, no progress made and a pitying look from Rita that made him want to scream.

So, yeah. A bad day. A long, long string of bad days that had no end that he could see.

And somehow the worst part of each one was walking home.

He would have stayed at the office if Rita would let him but she firmly ejected him at the end of every day, insisting she wasn’t working in the same space as someone who didn’t shower. Only the fact that she wouldn’t leave until he did actually got his feet out of the door.

It was a typical chilly Martian night, air stale and cloying as it always was under the shields. Juno always felt like he was in a terrarium, something caught by powers far above him and set down in an artificial habitat to be viewed as a source of entertainment. But, then again, it was nice not to die of radiation poisoning.

The bottled weather and stale air wasn’t the reason Juno hated walking home. It was that walking wasn’t enough of a distraction. He couldn’t figure out how to listen to things on his comms and was too proud to ask Rita, watching the people walking past was likely to get him punched in the face for looking at someone funny. Just a long, lonely walk with just his own head for company, nothing to look ahead to but a miserable night in his cramped little apartment drinking himself to sleep. A sad, lost lady alone with the shadows in the corners, thinking if he stayed still and quiet then his memories wouldn’t find him.

And he would feel that heaviness in his chest, like his lungs were turning to concrete, the heaviness that came with the words in his head.

This is what you left him for?

He’d thought Hyperion needed him, like he was some hero from a bad North Star stream. No smarter than he’d been at nine years old again with tin foil wrapped around his skinny chest, pretending to be Andromeda. In real life, heroes could shoot straight. Heros had two eyes. Heroes didn’t bellow at their secretaries for problems they’d caused themselves. Heroes weren’t afraid of anything, much less the idea of a quiet moment.

A car went past closer than it should, roaring and sudden and shaking him out of his thoughts. He didn’t know when his breathing had gotten heavy or sweat had begun dripping between his shoulder blades despite the cool night. He ran his fingers through his hair, told himself to snap out of it and pushed on, walking faster.

Juno tried desperately to occupy his mind, making lists for groceries he couldn’t afford and jobs he wouldn’t get to at the office and going over cases he solved years ago, as he walked through puddles of streetlight. But it was a flimsy shield and he knew it; just beyond the thin veneer of a busy brain sat the thick clouds of grey fog he’d glimpsed, the ones that could dull him and numb him until he drowned without ever fighting back.

He’d always managed to catch himself in time, drag himself out of the other side, get back into the office, try again even if he knew it would go the same way all the others had.

And Juno dreaded the day where he couldn’t even manage that.

He was at his apartment building now, chanting the ingredients for stew his mother would make on her good days under his breath, each step of the method taking him up one of the far too many stairs he had to climb. Step by step, no other thoughts allowed.

Juno was as far as serving the stew into two identical bowls and making sure your greedy brother didn’t get the one with extra pieces of carrot as he took out the key and slotted it into the door. It always needed a shove to get it going, the damp and general lack of attention had warped the wood. Thought it could also have been the many times it had been battered by things trying to get in or out.

So many things that Juno had long ago developed the habit of entering his apartment assuming something was going to attack him, shoulders tense, legs locked, hand on his blaster.

A habit he’d lost after becoming depressed and ever since touching the blaster he could no longer use made his chest uncomfortably tight.

So when he realised there was someone sitting on his ratty sofa, eyes trained on him and something in their hands, Juno was entirely unprepared. And very embarrassed.

“God damn-” was all he got out, hand scrabbling at his belt because if he couldn’t aim for shit anymore maybe he could at least throw it at them, before the shadow stood up and spoke in a voice he knew, a voice that had teased him and cursed him and, last he’d heard it, held him so safely and made him feel so much.

A voice he’d never thought to hear again, since he left it in a dark motel room.

“Juno Steel. I’d apologise for the theatrics but...well, it’s me.”

It was a long time before he could find any words at all, lost in picking out the things he recognised in the shadow, the slope of a nose, the wink of a golden chain in his ear, trying to figure out how it made him feel.

“Nureyev...what...I don’t understand…”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, Juno,” Nureyev stood, not as smoothly as Juno would have expected, like something was weighing him down, “I didn’t anticipate needing to talk to you again after...everything but things beyond my control have forced my hand. We need to talk.”

Juno still felt much like a rabbit staring down the lights of an eighteen wheel truck, flicking on the lights and coming to stand in the doorway, keeping a fair distance between him and Nureyev.

The man who had offered to show him the stars and he had refused.

He was holding something, something wrapped in blankets that he was clutching to his chest like it was the most precious thing in the world. That struck him as odd immediately, an odd thing in a flood of odd things, but his eye caught on it anyway.

He had seen Nureyev work a few times, he’d seen him steal keys and ancient martian masks and legendary, semi sentient getaway cars, things he wanted and things he needed. But he would never let it show when he held them, or had them under his hands. He never had this look of protectiveness, that grip in his fingers like he was going to pull a knife on anyone who tried to take it from him. Because if he showed he wanted it, then that was a vulnerability. That was a connection.

Nureyev’s voice was a practised kind of steady, like he too was surprised to find them here but wanted Juno to flinch first, “You can relax, Juno, I’m not here to kill you like some jealous spurned lover from a bad stream.”

“I never...I never thought that,” Juno said honestly, it had never crossed his mind that Nureyev was going to hurt him. Though it would be hard to argue he didn’t deserve at least a slap.

“I’m here to make a request of you, actually,” Nureyev stepped forward, so he’d tower over Juno a little more.

Though a little less than he should have. He wasn’t wearing heels. He had worn heels to rob a train that moved at a thousand miles an hour but he wasn’t wearing them now, just flat, plain shoes to stand on Juno’s peeling, cracking floor. No corset either, just black trousers and a loose black shirt that looked silky in the low streetlight coming in from outside. He was dressed so...so un-Nureyev.

“You need something from me?” Juno squared his shoulders, aware that he was staring, “What?”

Nureyev’s teeth still flashed when he spoke, in that way that had first snagged Juno nearly three years ago now, “I need you to hold something for me. Something very, very, very precious to me.”

Juno frowned, “You don’t have any other place to stash stolen goods? Don’t you have a whole network for that thing, buyers lined up before you pull a job?”

Why are you antagonising him, Steel?

Nureyev squared his thin shoulders, thinner than Juno had last seen them, “Not what I’m asking, Juno. This will go easier if you don’t jump to conclusions before I’ve even opened my mouth.”

Juno folded his arms defensively across his chest, “Look, Nureyev, whatever it is, I really don’t think I’m the one for the job. We clearly don’t...work together as well as we thought we did.”

That curled his lip, “Oh, I agree, Detective. However I don’t have a choice. You are the only person I can trust with this.”

Juno’s frown deepened, about to open his mouth and snap something back that would only turn the conversation sourer when the package of blanket in Nureyev’s arms shifted and made a noise. He started, about to demand to know if Nureyev had actually brought a cat into his apartment, when the thief turned away and spoke softly to it, moving back the soft material, voice low and soothing.

Not a cat. A child.

“Nureyev, what the hell have you done?” Juno croaked, jaw dropping.

It was clear his assumptions were wrong in a heartbeat when Nureyev rounded on him with more fury in his eyes than Juno had ever seen. More fury than he’d ever thought could be held in eyes usually so still and placid and clever. The child, blinking large dark eyes sleepily, seemed to pick up on it, face creasing unhappily and turning their face against his chest with an unhappy noise.  

“Whatever you are thinking, Detective, I suggest you stop,” he snapped, baring his teeth, “And think about what kind of man you know me to be. Whatever possessed you to leave me in that motel room, you must know I am not the kind of thief you are imagining.”

“Nureyev, easy, I...I get it,” Juno held up his hands, feeling scared of the man in front of him for the first time, “I just don’t understand…”

“Then think,” he took a step forward, “Use that brain you claim to have that I have seen so little evidence of. You can do basic mathematics, yes?”

Juno blinked, static rising loud and so distracting in his head, even as his PI’s eye looked at what little of the child he could see. Dark hair. Skin the colour of turned earth on the home most humans had never known. He couldn’t place her age exactly, all babies looked the same to him, but she was clearly brand new, barely more than a handful of months. And it had been a year since he’d last seen Peter Nureyev.

The static was deafening now and he was swaying slightly on his feet.

“Oh, god damn it…” he rasped.

“Are you there yet?” Nureyev’s voice was flat and unimpressed, “Or do you need me to draw you a diagram?”

“Nureyev, I…” Juno’s hands came up to grip his hair, a tic he’d thought he’d shaken off, “I’m so, so sorry…”

“A little late for that,” Nureyev narrows his eyes, “And unnecessary. My choice was my own. I’m not here to ask you for anything permanent, I don’t want money, I don’t want you to make an honest man of me or anything so trite. And I certainly don’t want your pity.”

Juno tried to take that in, still mostly preoccupied with the static in his head, “Then...then what…”

Nureyev’s jaw set, expression awkward for the first time, “My...my getaway from the last job I pulled wasn’t as clean as I normally manage. I allow myself some leniency for being rather...preoccupied but still. There are consequences I don’t usually have to deal with. Consequences I cannot put my daughter in the path of. I need somewhere safe for her to be while I deal with this and cut the loose ends. Somewhere safe with someone who fully understands how vital it is that no one learns of her existence. Do I make myself clear, Juno?”

Juno knew an answer was expected of him but all he could focus on was the words that had seized his heart, “A daughter?”

Nureyev looked down at the baby in his arms, something softening ever so slightly in his face, almost too small to catch, “Yes. Her name is Bianca Nureyev.”

Juno swallowed hard, still feeling ice water run through his body instead of blood, “It’s...it’s a real pretty name.”

Nureyev had an expression on his face like he was trying very hard not to care about Juno’s opinion of her name, “It is beautiful. And above all, it is precious. I trust you remember how much I value my own name? Well know that I would rather climb this very building and scream my name at the top of my lungs for all of Hyperion to hear than have my daughter be common knowledge.”

The name you trusted me with. The name you valued less than me.

Juno didn’t know what was worse, when he’d thought he’d never have Nureyev’s trust after he’d left or this, suddenly finding himself being handed it again.

“Nureyev…” Juno’s eye slid guiltily around his apartment, all the decay and mess that was so clearly visible, thrown into sharp, uncomfortable relief in the glare of the naked bulb overhead. Nureyev had been here a while, certainly long enough to see the take out containers, mostly untouched and left to rot, the case files piling up on the little used bed, the newspapers gathering dust, the empty fridge and reek of a place that hadn’t seen fresh air in too long.

His expression confirmed it for Juno, “Believe me, if there was any alternative, anyone else I could leave her with...god, if there was any way to avoid this entirely, I would take it. But she’s in danger every second she’s with me and I can’t have that. If I’m going to do this right, I need a clean break. And, ironically, the process of acquiring one is often messy.”

“I mean...I’ll try but…”

“Oh no,” his voice was a knife’s slice into darkness that hit home, “You will not try, detective. You will do this. You said you’re sorry? Then prove it. Help me make something of the ridiculous mess we got ourselves in by pulling yourself together for a month or so and making sure my daughter is safe and well until I can come back for her. It is, quite literally, the least you can do.”

Juno eyed the baby girl in Nureyev’s arms, now looking back at him with a curious awareness, like she was some kind of explosive. Long before he’d made a complete, smouldering mess of his life, the sight of young children with their parents had made him feel sickly. On the street, at the park, on the rare occasions a client would turn up with one on their hip, they gave him prickly sweats and an itchy feeling down his spine, a directionless kind of panic.

He wanted to shout at every parent he passed, everyone with a tiny hand in their own, to get in their face and yell at them do not fuck this up, do you have any idea of the damage you can do?

And the thing was he knew exactly how much damage he was capable of. After all, look what he’d managed to do without even thinking. A baby girl, looking at him with his own eyes, his own vaguely exhausted expression. Fragile as new blown glass, incomprehensible as distant stars.

But he’d wanted to be a hero, a year ago. He’d amended that recently to a smaller goal, simply wanting something other than the heavy, grey fog.

Maybe this way he could have both.

Juno held out his arms.

Whether it was relief or agony on Nureyev’s face, he couldn’t say, it was gone too quick to pin down. He simply slung a large bag from his shoulder, setting it on the floor.

“She has a week’s supply of everything in there. Clothes, diapers, her formula. You’ll need to buy more when it runs out, this was what I could gather at short notice. Also her books, clothes and toys...the cloth cat is a particular favourite, if she’s crying, she probably wants that...”

Juno nodded, “Right, yeah. No problem.” He noticed his arms were still empty.

Nureyev was hesitating, something he’d never seen him do. He was poised to pass his daughter over but had frozen halfway through, like his muscles wouldn’t move any further. There was a long pause before he sighed, pressed the gentlest of kisses to his daughter’s head and quickly eased her into Juno’s arms. Immediately, he boughed under the weight of her.

“I’ll be back, my treasure…” he was addressing her, lines of pain cracking through his mask, eyes swimming for a fraction of a second before they turned to him and turned to flint, “Keep her safe. Promise me, Juno Steel.”

“I promise,” he tried to make his voice sound sure. He failed.

Nureyev looked like he would snatch her back for a second before straightening, “Well, that will have to do.”

Like it was breaking his heart to stay any longer, he turned on his heel and went for the door without a glance back. It shut behind him with a click and Juno heard him taking the stairs, upwards rather than down, to do god knew what.

And he was left holding a baby he hadn’t known existed until a minute ago, with a brain full of static.

Like an actor who’d forgotten his lines, he rocked on his heels and shuffled awkwardly for a few moments before turning to look at Bianca, sitting uncertainty in his arms.  

“So, um...hello?” he tried, “I’m Juno.”

Bianca looked up at him with her creased little face and big, wide eyes and decided that he was definitely not Nureyev.

So she opened her little rosebud pink mouth and began to scream for all she was worth.

Juno slumped down onto his sofa.

“Yeah. Me too, kiddo.”

[mollymauk-teafleak]

I will love you if I never see you again (chapter three)

Look...I’m sorry. I’m just sorry. 

Huge thanks to my beta readers, @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian, sorry I made you both cry at work, love you

Please consider reblogging or leaving a comment on Ao3, it really makes my day! 

Chapters: 1, 2, 3

----

Juno was exhausted, down to the marrow of his bones, but sleep didn’t find him. He didn’t want it to, either.

The apartment was in almost total darkness but for the squares of streetlight that came in through the bared windows, sharp and distorted cut outs of yellow that only put the shadows in sharper relief. One fell right across the top half of Juno’s face, on his remaining eye. He could have got up and drawn the curtains at any time but he didn’t.

He didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to see.

He’d put Bianca’s moses basket on his bed, taking up the half that was really meant for another person but would always just be where he sprawled himself as he tossed and turned through any number of nightmares. He held himself very still, ready to set her down if he started to nod, frightened of pushing her off the bed in his sleep. But sleep didn’t find him.

Juno was too lost in looking at her, focused the way he would focus on his work, a problem to solve that would consume him until it became unhealthy. He couldn’t have looked away even if he’d had a mind to. He just laid awake and watched the rise and fall of her tiny chest inside her sleep suit, watched the play of muscles in her face as she dreamed and shifted in her sleep. His arm was still draped over the edge of the basket from where he’d gotten her to drift off by slowly opening and closing his fingers just above her head and letting her grab for them. Sometimes, when she moved just right, the tips of his long, scarred fingers would brush her tufts of wispy black hair or the powder soft skin of her face. And whenever that would happen, he would feel a tug in his chest he didn’t want to feel.

It was so easy to think that Nureyev had simply woven Bianca from starlight, that he’d stolen her into existence and Juno had never even been part of it. When he told himself that it was easier to breathe. He didn’t feel that numbness in the very edges of himself that signified panic setting in and taking root, that had always made him want to run and put his fists up, ever since he was a kid. It didn’t send a thousand questions running through his mind that he knew he’d never be able to pin down and solve.

It made it easier to know that this was all temporary.

If you didn’t have something, you couldn’t lose it. And Juno had lost so much already.

But whenever he felt her hair under his fingertips and that tug of a connection being pulled, he would become aware of the small part of his mind that was already doing just what he knew he couldn’t do, trying on labels to see how they fit, seeing Bianca in a way that would only cause hurt to everyone.

Which is why he didn’t want to sleep. If he wasn’t keeping a short, careful leash on his mind, who knew what could grow and spread and what it could ruin.

And he was also enjoying watching Bianca sleep.

So Juno stayed still and stayed quiet, keeping his eyes on the sleeping baby, listening to her feather light breathing. And sleep didn’t find him.

“You are in a mood today.”

Bianca answered with a miffed sounding string of nonsense sounds, waving her hands in the air.

“Yeah,” Juno nodded, “You are definitely in a mood.”

He’d ran through all the usual fixes, feeling like Rita hacking the office computer into something it was definitely never meant to be while he’d sit at his desk with his comms and forget how to work the volume again. He’d fed her, he’d changed her, she was fresh from a nap. He’d held her, cuddled her and walked around the living room so many times that he’d probably worn a groove into the floor. It seemed like she was just determined to be fussy this afternoon, squawking for some kind of entertainment but pushing away everything he offered.

He was starting to feel a lot of sympathy for anyone who’d ever had to deal with him when he was in one of his difficult moods.

“Well, there’s a dust storm warning so we can’t go to the park,” Juno drummed his fingers on his cheek as he thought, “And that’s a pretty damn powerful scowl, little lady, but I doubt it can stop a hundred kilometer per hour wind. Fifty, maybe. But not a hundred.”

Bianca made it clear what she thought of that, making a kitten-like yowling sound that Juno amused himself by mimicking back to her. She looked at him in complete and total shock for a second before scowling even harder. Juno pulled the exact same face, scrunching up his broad nose and furrowing his brow exaggeratedly. Bianca didn’t find it as funny as he did.

“Let’s see if we can find a stream for you or something,” Juno eventually sighed after she’d burst into annoyed wails, “I don’t know where the kids channel is but...maybe if I just push some buttons, I don’t know…”

He plonked her down on the sofa, propping her up so she didn’t fall over or roll away in her indignation. He picked up what Rita called his ‘dummy’s remote’ where she’d put clear labels on every single button telling him what it did, after she’d gotten exhausted of his constant questions. He flicked through channels, looking for something that looked vaguely soft and kid friendly, quickly scrambling past several screens full of bursting blood or bare skin, wondering if he should be covering her eyes. He’d never had cause to worry about the moral state of the stream network before but he was starting to see what people were complaining about.

And in the flickering flashes of colour and nonsense, clipped noise Juno suddenly saw familiarity that connected with the blunt force of a punch to the gut.

A tall, powerful woman hefting a sword as tall as she was with ease, speaking with a voice that propelled him backwards to a different time entirely. Suddenly he was sitting cross legged on the fraying, stained carpets that came standard with every house in Oldtown, eyes wide and heart full to bursting, not even hearing the shouting from the other room or feeling his brother tugging on his sleeve or knowing everything around him was falling apart, as long as the screen was still on and he could still hear that voice.

For a few blissful hours, feeling brave. Feeling strong and sure and certain and like he mattered.

Juno went to press the button again, everything too sharp and too real all of a sudden, wanting that woman and that music out of his current moment as quickly as he could. But as soon as he did, the screen changing to show some documentary about the history of dome development, Bianca shrieked in dismay.

Juno turned to look at her, seeing her waving her hands and babbling with clear upset, pedalling her little feet.

“Really?” he groaned, “There’s nothing else you’d want to watch?”

Bianca blew a long, loud raspberry. Even someone who’d only had a baby around for two weeks could see what she was trying to say.

Juno sighed heavily and flicked it back, filling the screen with Andromeda the Chainmail Warrior. Andromeda and the Sea of Sinners, if he was any judge. He knew that soundtrack anywhere, he’d hummed it so many times while scaling the sofa with a collider on his toddler curls, swinging a stick from the park with abandon.

Bianca made a cheery little hooting noise, shoving her fist in her mouth and gumming at it contentedly, happier than she’d been all day. Juno pulled a face, trying to focus on how relievingly content she was, rather than the uncomfortable tightness in his chest at half of his brain still being in his past. He tried to only hear her happy murmurs, her gasps when the screen would fill with colour, and not the long dead voices crowding in his head.

Eventually Juno reached over and cupped the back of her head. He told himself it was to support her better as he noticed her starting to curl in on herself but as soon as he wound his fingers through her airy curls, he felt his heartbeat slow down to a much more comfortable level and the air came into his lungs so much easier. The voices seemed further away, like they were almost back in the past where they belonged. Almost.

Bianca had no complaints, leaning back into his palm, dark eyes still on the screen. She was as hooked as Juno had been the first time he’d heard that voice.

He wondered if she felt brave. If she felt like she could do anything, watching Andromeda fall again and again but still manage to get back up and win with ten minutes of runtime to spare. He wondered if the music made her burst with energy too, if everything she wore would suddenly feel like chainmail, if anything she held would become a sword.

Juno knew he was being facetious. She wasn’t old enough to be thinking any of that stuff, she probably just liked the noise and colour, but it was so hard to see the attentiveness on her little face and not think of the toddler he’d been, equally as swept up in the bliss of it all.

But Juno didn’t want it to be as temporary for her as it had been for him. His joy had been so short lived, life had quickly squared up to show him how powerless he really was, how it had all been a silly daydream, how no fantasy could protect him.

He wanted Bianca to feel strong all the time. He wanted her to know she was brave and true and that nothing could harm her. He wanted it to be real for her, in the way it never had been for him. He wanted her to win.

And he knew he would do anything to make it happen.

Juno sighed softly and ran his thumb across the crown of her head. Was this what it was? To want the world to be so much better for them than it had ever been for you? To be willing to break your fingers reshaping it all for their sake?

Was it supposed to hurt? Was it supposed to terrify you?

Juno felt every single day go past. At first, it had been like carving a tally into a prison wall, just trying to survive every one.

Now he wasn’t sure. But he certainly felt it still.

He jumped at every single shadow he saw from the corner of his eye. Every time he walked back into the apartment with an armful of groceries and Bianca on his hip, his heart stayed in his throat until he could turn the light on and see an empty sofa. Any footstep he couldn’t immediately place or scrape at the door set his teeth on edge. And as the weeks turned into a month, it only got worse. Even worse that he couldn’t decide whether he was anticipating or dreading, unsure of what emotion would flood him when the sword finally fell.

Juno should have known all his paranoia would never prepare him, that Nureyev would find a way to still make it a shock.

Juno woke up with a head that felt like it was full of cotton wool, shaken from deep sleep and looking for something to hold on to. He sat up, blinking and running his hand through his matted hair, lurching towards the moses basket to check on Bianca, as was habit now.

He didn’t believe what he saw at first, thinking he was still in a nightmare. The blanket was dented, rumbled, moulded to a little body that wasn’t there. She wasn’t there.

Juno was on his feet while his brain was still gaping in horror, moving before he really knew where he was going. A raw and frantic kind of panic he hadn’t felt since the worst day of his life fired through his nerves as he surged forward, throat ready to cry her name.

And then he stopped dead, seeing the silhouette in the living room, outlined in the streetlight glare. Sharp and angular, he would know it anywhere.

Nureyev hadn’t noticed him yet, for all the crashing he’d done. Juno didn’t think he’d have noticed a sandstorm sweeping in through the window, he clearly only had eyes for Bianca. He held her to his chest, speaking softly, lips pressed to her head, clasping her like he was never going to let her go. There was so much love in it, in the way he held her and the gentleness of his tone, that for a second Juno couldn’t breathe.

He hadn’t known love like that could really exist.

He waited to see what he would feel, looking for an emotion he could name. Nothing obliged him.

“Nureyev,” he eventually murmured, scared to shatter the scene before him, like he was seeing something he wasn’t meant to.

Dark eyes turned to his, looking dangerous before he registered him and they smoothed into calm professionalism, like they were at a business meeting that just happened to take place in the middle of the night in a dark room.

“Ah, Juno. My apologies, I never meant to involve you in this but I must have lingered too long.”

Juno blinked, still unsure if he was sleeping or not, “What? You...you were just going to take her? Leave me wondering?”

Nureyev’s expression could only be described as careful, mouth falling open to show his sharp teeth, “Why, Juno, I appreciate your dedication to the favour I asked of you. I would have left a note.”

Juno swallowed hard, taking a few steps forward, “So the...the complications you were dealing with, that’s all over?”

“As if they had never been,” Nureyev answered airily, as if Juno had asked for the time, “My reputation is restored to its usual spotlessness. And so I continue on into the stars, dear detective.”

Juno felt his throat tighten, “Already? You know...you can stick around a bit. Have a drink or whatever.”

Nureyev gave him a long look from behind his neat, cat eye glasses, “I would have thought you’d want her out of your hair.” His voice sounded more clipped now, like he was watching a play go on longer than he’d like.

“Come on, Nureyev,” Juno’s voice heated, “I spent a month with her, you’re going to leave without so much as a thank you?”

“Forgive me, have I committed a faux pas? What wine do you bring to the good lady who promised you his heart then left you not an hour later, with child, and has now reluctantly done the bare minimum while you had to go bloodily clear a path back to anonymity?”

Juno flinched, patience evaporating like water on a hot stove, “Fine. You don’t have to be an ass about it.”

He turned to sulk back to his bed, heart hammering sickeningly, pulsing anger through his veins. But there was a soft, sad sigh behind him.

“Juno,” Nureyev said, voice quiet, “I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. It’s been a long night and...and, well, I don’t think I’ve quite forgiven myself for leaving her here. But I am grateful to you.”

Juno turned back, heart straining towards that softer, kinder Nureyev he’d known who had apparently magically reappeared in his darkened living room, “You’re welcome...look, just take a damn seat, would you? You look exhausted, you can rest for an hour at least.”

Nureyev still hesitated, though he was rather outed by the bruise like shadows under his eyes and the way his hands trembled lightly, like holding himself in his usual position was exhausting him. Eventually he took a seat with an expression like he’d have preferred to put a towel down first.

Juno rolled his eyes and went to the kitchen. He’d started actually stocking it in the past few weeks, now when he opened the cupboards and reached in, he actually saw tea and cans, clean mugs and packets rather than spiderwebs, dust and maybe a rat. He picked up two teabags, accepting that he wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep tonight.

“See?” he looked over at Nureyev, clearly assembling the mugs of tea where he could see them, “Not poisoned, you can watch me.”

Nureyev tisked, most of his attention still on Bianca, “Dramatic…”

She’d nodded back to sleep, though her hand was still fastened on the front of Nureyev’s shirt like she would never let go. So gently, Nureyev removed it, pressing a soft kiss to the curled little fingers before easing her into her basket with practised ease, leaving his hands free to take the mug that Juno offered.

“No wine?” Nureyev hummed in a tone that reassured that he was joking, he was clinging to the heat of the tea like a lifeline.

“Nah,” Juno sat as far away as the sofa would allow, “Got rid of the booze after you dropped Bianca off.”

Nureyev stilled, eyes flickering to his and suddenly the distance between them felt like nothing, “I see.”

Feeling awkward, Juno looked away and cleared his throat roughly, “She’s, ah...she’s a good kid.”

“I know,” Nureyev said softly, with all the conviction of a parent, “She looks...well. Thank you, Juno, I do mean it.”

“Like you said,” Juno shrugged, “Bare minimum.”

Instantly, the air between them froze so hard and fast it was a wonder their breath wasn’t visible. Juno cringed internally, cursing himself. Why did he always have to do that? Why was the first word out of his mouth always confrontational, pushing away anyone who got close?

He tried to save himself, adding quickly, “I just mean...I had it easy. You’ve been doing it all on your own since...you know, since then.”

Nureyev sat a little straighter, clearly already building one of his walls, “Well. When I make a decision, I give it my all. There’s no sense in doing it any other way.”

Juno risked a glance over to him, “But this isn’t stealing a mask or robbing a bank or whatever. It’s raising a kid. And you just...you just decided you were going to do it?”

There was a pause, like he was deciding how much to say and how to say it. Juno realised somewhere in the middle of that pause that he had no right to any of this information and was about to take it back when Nureyev spoke, his voice soft and far away.

“I’m a selfish man, Juno. I act purely in my own interest, as you’ve observed. And the decision to keep Bianca was a selfish one, I can’t pretend otherwise. Please don’t think of me any other way.”

Juno felt his hackles rise though at what he couldn’t say, “I’ll think of you how my head tells me to think of you, Nureyev. I think you’re brave and selfless and...and everything you’ve done for Bianca is amazing. Believe me, I know shitty parents and you are not that, you are everything she deserves. She’s lucky. And if you don’t like me thinking that then...well, you’ll just have to deal with it.”

Nureyev looked at him, hands clasping and unclasping, “Detective, I have to say, you are one of the strangest and most perplexing people I have ever met on this and every other planet.”

Juno shrugged, unsure of how else to respond, still working on whether it was a compliment or not, “Well...I just don’t like to see you beating yourself up over nothing. You owe Bee Bee more than agonising over her existence.”

Nureyev’s eyes widened and he sat back, “What...what did you just call my daughter?”

Juno flushed red, “It’s what Rita calls her, shut up, it slipped out.”

Nureyev shook his head, caught between laughter, indignation and bewilderment, “My god…”

“Shut up!”

He spread his hands placatingly, “Fine...and you are right, detective. It is far too late to be second guessing myself. Whatever reasons I had for keeping her, they don’t change what I have to do now which is to make the best life I can for her.”

Juno watched his face set into determination and confidence, as he’d seen it do so many times before, the set in his shoulders and upward tilt of his chin that had told him from the very first time he’d met him that Nureyev could do anything he set his mind to. That he could will things into being, change the shape of the world with sheer conviction and hard work and a clever plan. He would do right by Bianca, Juno knew that. He could continue to be the galaxy’s most notorious thief and would do it with her in tow.

But still, he had to open his stupid mouth.

“All by yourself?”

Nureyev looked at him, really looked at him, with eyes that had seen the stars and yet had still seen him as the most beautiful thing in the universe. Juno was reminded of the night they’d had together, how he had held him and touched him and made him believe in things he’d thought only existed in stories. Moment after moment, like fireworks going off against a dark sky, and Juno had wondered if the goddess he was named for had ever received worship so complete and devoted.  

He’d made him think that hope didn’t have to be more pain than it was worth. He wanted to feel that way again.

Acting without thinking, as he’d made a habit of all his life, Juno closed the distance between him and Nureyev and kissed him. Every time before it had been the other way around but this time he kissed him.

It was a heartbeat before Peter’s hands came to rest on the side of his head and tilted him to deepen the kiss, press their mouths together more earnestly. Mirroring their first kiss but with the roles reversed, Juno pushing, Nureyev following, Juno throwing, Nureyev catching.

And he could see it so clearly. He could be Dahlia Rose or pick a new name entirely, as long as it matched with his. He didn’t have to feel the fog inside him any more, he didn’t have to feel like he was pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll right back over him but he had to keep going because there was no one else to push. He didn’t have to be what a whole careless, unfeeling city needed him to be. He could be what he chose, he could feel happy as a default and not as a shock. He could be part of a family, father, daughter and mother.

And that was what ruined it. That single word. That word with all it’s bitter memories and bruises that had never really healed and broken promises loomed up over him and stared him down.

And he flinched.

Nureyev felt it and drew away, seeing it written plain as day on Juno’s face. And the walls came up higher and thicker than ever though not fast enough that he missed the heartbreak in his eyes, no less painful for it’s familiarity.

He stood up and turned away, so fast it was like Juno’s skin was burning him suddenly. He pressed his fingers to his temples and bowed his head, “Why...why is it always you, every single time, of all the people in the goddamn universe, why are you the only one who can hurt me…”

Juno winced, “Peter…”

“Don’t!” he snapped, whirling round, “Don’t you dare, Juno Steel!”

Certain things were known to be true. Rain fell downwards, the Sun was the centre of the Solar System and Peter Nureyev did not cry. But there it was, his eyes glassy and shining in the light with fire and unshed tears that were moments away from spilling over. And it sent Juno reeling.

“You know something?” Nureyev stepped forward, looking like his hand could go to the knife at his thigh any moment, “I wanted to call you so many times. Even when I couldn’t leave that goddamn hotel room on Brahma, my hand itched every day to go to my comms and call you and tell you everything. When she was being born and I’d never felt so alone and I thought I was dying, I came two presses of a button from doing it. Because part of me always wondered, always hoped, if I’d told you, if I’d dialled that number burned into my brain and told you I was pregnant would it have made a difference? Would it have changed your mind? And now I know.”

Nureyev wouldn’t let his tears fall but Juno did and they burned on his cheek, “Peter, I’m sorry, but this isn’t fair, you’re angry at me for not wanting something I’m just not ready for…”

“Do you think I was ready?”

His shout filled the small space and then Bianca’s cry shattered the night, piercing and frightened and heartbreaking. Both of them went for her at the same time but Nureyev bared his teeth so fiercely that Juno recoiled instantly. He softened as soon as she was in his arms, curling around her protectively and murmuring softly to soothe her, standing.

“My treasure, it’s okay, everything is fine, I’m here now…I’m sorry, daddy’s sorry...”

Eventually her crying stopped, turning to spluttering as she buried her face against his front like just the smell of his cologne comforted her and allowed those delicate, long fingered hands to hold her. Juno felt a stab of absurd jealousy that made him hate himself even more than he currently did.

Nureyev took a deep breath as soon as Bianca was calm again, it came out as a shudder. And when he looked up, there were no more tears in his eyes.

“I wasn’t ready to be faced with the decision that fell into my lap,” he spoke coldly, like he believed in his words with all his heart because it was the only thing he could do, “But I didn’t get the luxury of pushing it away. And I made my choice, for whatever reasons. And I am living with them as best I can.”

Juno slumped on the sofa, feeling like his limbs were made of lead, “Peter…”

“You know my father, Juno, don’t you?” Nureyev bulled past his words, sensing there was nothing behind them, “You saw it all, you know everything. He was soft, he was kind, he was brave and he thought the world of me. And he was a lie. A fantasy cooked up by some two bit con artist who wanted to use me for his own gain. The father I’d hung all of my hopes and dreams and personality on was a complete fiction.”

The pain in his voice was so raw and so real, Juno was consumed with the twin urges to hold him and turn and run from him.

“But I have made him real,” there wasn’t a shake in Nureyev’s voice any more, “I have remade myself into that lie from the ground up and I have brought him to life and stepped into his skin. All for her. All for my daughter. So don’t you dare dangle false hope in front of me now and yank it away. Don’t you dare ruin everything I’ve made for her with your cowardice.”

Juno looked at Bianca, perfect and beautiful and so fragile, clutching Nureyev but looking at him with uncertainty, not liking the raised voices and the sharp words, not liking that he was crying. She could become anything she wanted to be but whatever it was, it would be amazing.

And he would see none of it.

“I think you’d better go,” he rasped, voice thick and heavy with tears.

“I agree,” Nureyev’s voice was clipped and professional again, like the outburst embarrassed him, “Goodbye, detective. Enjoy saving Hyperion City.”

He shouldered the bag of Bianca’s things he’d apparently already packed and quickly made for the door. But as he did, Bianca piped up, squawking, reaching her hands out over her daddy’s shoulder. Reaching for Juno.

Nureyev’s expression turned to ice, seeing his daughter straining to reach the man who’d broken his heart three times now. His eyes snapped to Juno to see what he would do.

Juno looked at her, swallowed hard and turned away towards his bedroom. The fog inside him had never felt so thick, thick enough to choke him, enough that you would get lost in it and never find your way out. Already he could feel his senses dulling, the inability to care settling over him like a wet blanket, like the worst kind of drenching rain.

“Bye kiddo,” he murmured, not looking back.

He heard Nureyev’s noise of satisfaction, sounding ever so slightly forced, and Bianca’s soft sound of dismay. And he heard the door shut.

He walked back to his bed and laid on his side, staring into nothing, not feeling the salt dried onto his cheek, not feeling the ache in his chest. Not feeling much of anything.

Rita would be shocked at his call the next morning, telling her sharply that they were reponening and to get herself back to the office. She would see his absent arms, the downward turn to his mouth that had returned when it was so close to disappearing forever. She wouldn’t ask where Bianca had gone, she wouldn’t ask to come over for dinner again, though it made her heart hurt so fiercely. She would nod and go sit back at her desk.

Things would return to normal, Juno back as the PI trying to do some good in a city where the word had lost all meaning, He would throw himself into cases where he’d rejected them before, just to have something to do. And he would fall into something bigger and more dangerous than he could imagine.

But that was for later. For tonight, he would lie there and recognise the raw edged hole in his heart that he couldn’t feel. And exhaustion and a desire to simply not be conscious any more would eventually claim him.

And he would dream of birdsong and soft dark hair beneath his fingertips.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

THE LAST CHAPTER WAS SO BEAUTIFUL AND NOW I NEED YOUR HEADCANONS ON MASTER THIEF BIANCA (if you feel like it of course)

Awww thank you so much!! Oh, I have a lot of head canons about this lady

So Bianca very much follows her daddy into a life of high stakes crime and I would argue she’s even better than he is. She uses the fact that she’s lil (like her mama) and a girl to play on people’s expectations so they’ll underestimate her and then she robs them blind. She strictly goes after people with lots of wealth and very little morals 

Because of her job, she can’t always tell her daddy and mama when she’s coming home for a visit. Sometimes Juno will be cooking and Bianca will just appear and flop on him and ask why he isn’t making her favourite? Juno never startles, he just smiles and says cos someone didn’t call ahead again 

Her little brothers love hearing about her work and always beg for stories when she’s home. I think her brother Sephy actually grows up to be a writer and writes a bestselling kids series about a super cool secret thief, daughter of a grouchy PI and trying to track down her missing father who taught her everything she knows. Bianca loves to read them, laugh herself silly and call him to insist it wasn’t like that at all! 

ANGST: Bianca has gotten into a fair amount of danger, especially very early on. One time she showed up at her dads’ apartment, bleeding from a blaster wound to her side. Juno found her first and patched her up before he’d tell Nureyev she was there, it would horrify him to see her like this. Nureyev won’t let her go back out there until he’s run her through a lot more training

Whenever she comes home, her and Nureyev play rangian street poker for him to win information about where she’s been and what she’s been up to. He’s asking her about her marks and her loot and she’s asking things like ‘how’s mama’s new sourdough recipe’ and ‘did you guys decorate in here again?’ They’ve always played games like that, she knew how to play chess at age six. The idea is that she plays until she’s good enough to beat him fair and square, then they move on to Nureyev cheating and Bianca has to still win AND tell him how he cheated, then it moves onto them both just cheating 

Aaaaaand the big one! So Bianca decides to rob a rich art dealer and poses as a model for his main client, his daughter, so she can steal valuable records and such. But over time, she realises that his daughter, whose called Desta, is actually really unhappy here and he’s exploiting her and treating her cruelly. So Bianca decides she’s taking Desta with her and whoops, they fall in love 

[mollymauk-teafleak]

I will love you if I never see you again (chapter four)

A huge, endless thank you to my beta readers @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian who are amazing as always

Please consider leaving a comment on Ao3 to let me know what you thought! It takes two seconds, is completely free and makes me smile so much!

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4

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Nureyev had always loved the stars. They’d been an escape to a small, scared boy with no home, no safety, no guaranteed next meal, nothing but a name. No matter where he had wound up sleeping, however empty his stomach was, how close the last laser shot had sounded, as long as he could see the stars he could imagine something better. A thousand other plants, most of which had never had a single human step on their surface, so far away he could blot them out with a thumb. Surely with all of those chances, all of that possibility, there just had to be something better than this. And as long as Peter knew that, he could keep going.

He’d always loved the stars, he’d needed them as much as he needed food and oxygen, he’d needed the escape and possibility. But he’d never thought they were beautiful until he saw them through his daughter’s eyes.

Nureyev tried to give Bianca routine where he could. So much of their life was completely uncertain, though not in the same way it had been when he was a child. Nureyev was endlessly grateful for that and there was no amount he wasn’t willing to part with to keep it that way. Their uncertainty was more about what planet they would end up on, what hotel they would stay in, what names he would give for them at the front desk. It was about the endlessly rotating faces around them, people slipping into roles rather than actual personalities, everything always shifting and changing. It would be so easy to lose yourself in all of that, feeling like you were becoming as ephemeral and insubstantial as everything else. Nureyev knew that well.

So he tried to anchor them whenever he could. And this was one of the ways he did that, one of Bianca’s favourite things.

The shuttles that ferried people around the solar system were microcosms of the planets they served. One floor of almost sickening luxury built to hold the scant few people who could afford it and the rest of the pot bellied space vessels given over to much grimmer quarters for everyone else. Nureyev had treated himself to a seat on the upper floor a few times, always after he was feeling smug about a particularly high profile job. But, in truth, he preferred sitting in the lower decks. The view was better there. No over attentive staff, no distracting screens on every surface vying for your attention, no live entertainment on the longer flights. No assuming that the majesty of space itself, the stars winking in the darkness, the faraway galaxies smudged against the sky, wouldn’t be enough to hold your attention. You could sit down there, feel like no one and stare out at space that held it all together.

Nureyev always got a window seat and sat his daughter on his knee, ignoring the adjoining seat he had to purchase for her. Bianca would usually sleep through the noisy takeoff, making her daddy marvel at her ability to snore through the racket of interstellar engines blasting burning fuel just a few meters away but wake up immediately in a soft, comfortable bed if he so much as shifted while holding her.

But as soon as they were surrounded by space and that eerie silence descended, Nureyev would gently nudge her awake, knowing she wouldn’t want to miss a second of it. No matter how many times she’d seen it before, whether it was their tenth or fiftieth or thousandth journey, it never seemed to dim the awe and delight on Bianca’s little face as she would stand, wobbly and uncertain on her little legs, in her daddy’s lap and press her face to the reinforced glass, making her indistinct babyish noises of excitement. As she got older, they began to coalesce into words, mostly just repeating ‘stars’ and ‘bootiful’ to herself in a whisper, clutching Nureyev’s sleeve tightly like she was worried he couldn’t see them and needed to be shown.

And then she would grasp at them, her fingers brushing against the window, like she was trying to pluck them from the vast expanse that couldn’t really be called a sky if you had no ground to stand on. Like she could open her adorably chubby little hand and see one twinkling there, as small as it appeared from their vantage point, and hold it out to her daddy, a gift of one of the shiny things she knew he liked so much.

Her little face would crinkle in disappointment after a few failed attempts, though it wouldn’t stop her trying again next time. Nureyev would smile and touch her cheek lightly and remind her that he didn’t need stars. He had his most precious treasure, better than anything else the universe could produce.

It didn’t matter how many times he had to remind her. He would mean it wholeheartedly, every single time.

Then he would help her find a more comfortable position and tell her the stories, ancient and crumbling thousands of years before now but still living on. He would tell her about Andromeda and Cassiopeia, Delphinus and Orpheus’ lyre and the mistakes of Orion. Too young to understand nine words in ten, she would still listen attentively and fix her eyes on the stars, in love with the worlds her daddy painted with them. Whether the journey was an hour or ten or a day, Bianca would listen and sleep and listen again, almost eerily quiet and well behaved. A child who had learned very early on that when her daddy asked her to be still, she had better listen or alarms might start going off.

Nureyev would always have a destination in mind for them, it would never do to step off a shuttle and not immediately know your next move. If he’d thought himself careful before he had Bianca, then afterwards he was nothing short of fanatically meticulous. Maps of whatever city they arrived in, shortest routes in and out of major buildings, dedicated assessments of how lax the police force were in certain districts, he kept all of it behind his eyes as he’d walk through the streets with his head held high and Bianca in her sling, sleeping or peering out silently but curiously against his chest.

Never the same hotel twice, even if it was a planet he’d been on before, there was no sense in taking silly risks. There never had been but there was even less now. Fake creds, fake names, fake ID, basic stuff he’d learned so long ago and had hammered into him so many times that it was part of his DNA, like the instincts that told him to pull in air and to walk upright.

Bianca would always seem hesitant at first, though she’d never cry. The unfamiliar smells and too bright, too packaged newness of their suite would bring out nothing more than hunched shoulders and maybe a soft whimper, if it was especially late or their last escape had been particularly harrowing, though those were becoming very few and far between to Nureyev’s relief. Still, it would make his chest ache.

Fortunately they had another little ritual. Nureyev would sweep the blankets and pillows off of the bed, merrily ruining their crisp whiteness and dumping them onto the floor. As it happened, the skills he so prized as a thief- clever hands, adaptability, dogged determination- were also incredibly useful when it came to constructing a blanket fort, no matter the shape of the room, the amount of materials they’d been left with or how exhausted he was.

It didn’t need to be big, just perfectly sized for him and Bianca, the top of his head usually scraping the roof of it.  No matter the colour of the light that filtered through the sheets or the noise from the city outside, no matter what dirt of what planet sat beneath them, as long as they were in their little den, curled up close like a fox and his cub in a cosy bolt hole, they felt like they were home. Bianca would open up like a flower, lying on her back and cooing happily, kicking her little legs and mauling her poor cloth cat, carefree in a way she only ever was when she was truly safe.

And she would look up at Nureyev like he hung the moon. Like he’d made the stars she loved so much.

And Nureyev would know he’d found that something better he’d dreamed of as a child.

He hadn’t thought it would still hurt so much. He’d been pretending for so long, longer even that he’d known where they were going and who they were going to collect, even longer than he’d been practising his smile in the mirror and dredging up memories he’d wanted to bury, deliberately plucking them up out of their boxes in his most vulnerable moments as training exercises.

There had been more than Nureyev had thought. His face as he’d commanded, demanded, that a towering, insane Martian anthropologist let go of Nureyev with undeniable fire in his eyes. His furrowed brow when he was just a few clicks away from solving a case, that moment of held breath before he made everything make sense. How he’d looked in the hospital with the bandage over the fresh ruin of one eye, how he’d looked so scared and so young, wracked with nightmares and clinging to Nureyev’s hand. How he’d looked in the shadowy light of his apartment, leaning in eagerly for a kiss before Nureyev had even told him to come here.

How he had looked at Nureyev’s daughter when he’d woken up and she hadn’t been there, eye wild and dangerous and full of the same fire as before, even with one where there had once been two. A face Nureyev himself had worn so many times. A father’s face.

Nureyev had let these memories loose where he’d once held them so carefully. And he’d beaten each one, forced it to be small enough to carry. He’d let them tear at him until he was a wash of internal wounds and forced them to heal. He’d said his name over and over, hearing the sound of it until it became just another word.

So why had it still hurt so much?

“Hello Juno. It’s been a while.”

It had come out as smoothly as he’d wanted it to, unconcerned and light as if the two of them had simply bumped into each other at a coffee shop with nothing in their past thornier than perhaps an awkward conversation at a birthday party. All of it perfectly orchestrated, right down to the way Nureyev perched on the Ruby 7 like a cat, to the way his lips fell open just so, making his smile a perfect mix of predatory and indifferent. I could pluck you from the sky and snap your neck in an instant, little bird, but why would I bother?

But inside it had felt like drowning.

Because he was there, he was standing right there with his ridiculous expression like he didn’t understand anything going on around him in that ratty, out of style overcoat that Nureyev wanted to burn and partly wanted to pull around him just to feel how warm it would be. Still with the eyepatch, clearly totally unconcerned with matching it to his outfit, with a tiny duffle bag over one shoulder that apparently contained all the trash from that sad little apartment he’d thought worth taking into space.

Juno Steel was standing in front of him, close enough to touch within a few strides, and Nureyev wanted to run.

But he couldn’t. He needed this job, he needed to be part of this crew. So he’d had to smile his practised smile, eye him like nothing mattered and never show that it burned like bad whiskey.

At least Nureyev had been able to make a quick exit after that, pointedly excusing himself from the hand shaking and the secretary’s loud introductions. He’d done as Captain Aurinko had asked and his own pride had demanded and he’d come off the worse. He didn’t need to do any more. And there was somewhere else he needed to be.

His bunk was as far from the others as the layout of the Carte Blanche would allow, for good reason. Bianca hadn’t taken well to settling in one place for so long, especially somewhere that creaked and groaned with decompression like some irritated beast, where there were other people she didn’t know, where things were just different. Where she could tell something was bothering her daddy that he wouldn’t share and wasn’t fixing. Neither of them had been getting much sleep lately.

Fortunately, when he pushed back the door, his daughter was still napping, curled up in their blanket, her fists pressed up against her face. Now a year and a half old, she’d become such a person. He knew that was a silly thing to think, she’d always been a person. But she’d solidified somehow in the year and change since he’d first held her and hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with her. Her arms and legs were now arms and legs rather than chubby things she could only fling about gracelessly. Her shapeless dark fluff had turned into curls that flowed and bounced. Her face still had babyish roundness but she had more expressions now, her eyes had an awareness when they weren’t closed in sleep. She had more control, more personhood than she’d seemed to before. She could wobble a few hesitant steps, she could babble the half word dada over and over and break his heart.

She was growing, more and more every day. It made Nureyev thankful for moments like this, when he could just sit by her and watch her be still, on momentary pause, like maybe he could keep her this small forever. Like she would never outgrow his arms.

Nureyev sighed and told himself he was being maudlin, leaning back against the wall. But he was finding it hard to muster up any other emotion, knowing Juno Steel had weaseled his way aboard their fresh start and was rattling around in this tin can with the rest of them.

He would have argued, offered to find any other one eyed former detective, even if he had to put out the other eye himself. He would have walked and found some other ship full of colourful misfits to take him and Bianca around the galaxy.

But his options were limited and his time was running out. And how many other thieving crews would make a man with no name and a toddler welcome? Buddy had been more understanding than Nureyev had dared hope when he’d admitted that it wouldn’t just be him joining the crew of the Carte Blanche. Maybe it was her strange ideas about them being more family than crew, perhaps she thought a baby would cement that or at least be a nice ornament to her tableau.

Nureyev didn’t care. He’d found somewhere Bianca could be safe long term, somewhere he could be sure she’d still be if he had to leave for a few hours on a job. Not painlessly, of course, but dependably. And that was the best he thought he’d get.

Juno arriving took all of that, screwed it into a ball and threw it with bad aim at a wastepaper basket. And now all the boxes Nureyev kept for things he couldn’t deal with felt about to split and even looking at his daughter, soft and sweet and sleeping, made his chest feel tight in a way he couldn’t stand. Looking at her, all he could see was the eyes that were a brown so much darker than his own, practically black, and the curls that didn’t come from his fine, silky hair. The darker skin and the broad nose and the scowl she could bring out sometimes that gave him a double take. All he could see were the parts he hadn’t given her, the proof that she hadn’t come from nowhere. The parts that made it complicated.

Nureyev reached over and pushed back a delicate curl of hair that had fallen over her face, leaving his fingers there a few seconds longer than was necessary. Bianca shifted gently and calmed, her face relaxing a shade more than it had been before, as if the brush of his fingertips had been enough to soothe her and chase away bad dreams.

His love for her struck him fiercely, as it always did, like low, constant embers flaring up into a roaring blaze.

Her DNA didn’t matter. It never had. Juno’s contribution had been all of a second, a throwaway moment neither of them had noticed. Her eyes, her hair, it wasn’t Juno’s. It was hers.

She didn’t need him and neither did Nureyev. They had never needed anything but each other.

Seized by some kind of mad energy, the need to do something and be good at it, Nureyev got up, using all his cat burglar instincts to not rock the bed in the slightest and wake up Bianca. Maybe he would mend the dress she tore last week or try and salvage the blanket he’d been attempting on and off to knit for her since she was born. Something that would push Juno Steel entirely from his mind.

Until he opened the door and came face to face with him.

Juno immediately looked as guilty as any criminal he’d ever caught, hand frozen halfway to knocking, jaw opening but no words coming out.

Nureyev, too caught off guard to manage his emotions, scowled, “Who told you this was my room?”

Juno’s eye darted from left to right, “Buddy? She gave us a tour…”

“Well, I don’t know why she’d think that was relevant,” he tried to keep his face impassive while internally running around frantically for something to hold on to.

“Well...her exact words were ‘if you’re wondering the sound of the baby crying is coming from, it’s Ransom’s room third from the left’...is that what you’re calling yourself? Ransom?”

Nureyev could have throttled him, “Would you like to announce that a little louder, Juno Steel?”

Immediately he flushed, biting down on his lip like that could have stopped the words from coming out, “Um...sorry, yeah...I didn’t...sorry.”

“Did you come to my door just to loudly announce my trade secrets? Or is there another reason?” Nureyev dropped his voice to the appropriate level, low and quiet so as not to reverberate down metal hallways. And not to wake sleeping children.

The detective- former detective- was truly flustered now, as Nureyev liked him. Seeing him from the top of the gangplank had been disconcerting, seeing Juno Steel back in his life. But now he was up close, stammering and blushing in his doorway, it threw Nureyev for a whole different reason. Not because it was the same Juno Steel he’d known.

Because he was so different.

He stood straighter than he had before, though not in a way someone would square up for a fight. His eye was clearer, like there weren’t so many shadows behind it. There were more lines on his face but he wasn’t settled into them as a default, they sat there rather as a map rather than a guide, not as inevitable. He looked older, which wasn’t surprising as it had been a year since they’d laid eyes on each other. But it was...different. The difference that didn’t come with time but with experience.

Juno Steel had grown, it was written all over his face. And Nureyev didn’t know what to do with that at all. The nerve of it.

“I wanted to talk to you, Nureyev,” Juno swallows, like he was mentally starting over, “Because...well, I thought it was obvious?”

“You thought incorrectly,” Nureyev said, biting the end off each word, “I see nothing we need to discuss.”

Juno looked dismayed at that, “Really? We’re just going to pretend none of it happened? Look, you’ve got every right to be upset with me…”

I don’t, Nureyev thought, chest clenching at the words. Because if you’ve changed, you’re no longer the lady who broke my heart, you’re someone new, someone who has his demons under control and there’s every chance you’ll find your way back in.

“...but I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of reflecting and...and there’s a lot of damage I’ve done that I want to start fixing. I was an asshole, Nureyev. I mean, I still kind of am but I’m trying. And...and I need to start with you. And her.”

No. Don’t you dare, Juno Steel.

Nureyev stepped forward, giving Juno barely a second to jump back out of his way. He was about to close the door, like he could close off Juno’s words as easily but that was when they both froze, instincts firing at the soft sleepy babble.

Binaca was sat up, the blanket rucked up around her waist, hands pawing at it like a content kitten. Her hair was a bird's nest, her eyes still heavy with sleep and confusion, mumbling indistinctly for her dada.

Nureyev heard a soft inhalation from Juno, eyes flickering over to see his scarred face lined with grief of all things. Grief for the countless moments in between now and then, perhaps, the ones he’d missed. That he’d turned his back on.

Bianca seemed to wake up more, her eyes widening and her little mouth opening. Her arms came up and stretched out, fingers grasping like they grasped at the stars. But not for Nureyev.

For Juno.

Nureyev shoved the sadness aside as hard as he could, not caring if it went in a box or not, just needing it out of his way, dredging up anger to replace it. He shut the door as he’d been planning, bringing it too with a dull slam.

“Listen,” he rounded on Juno, who was still standing there in some kind of shock, hurt clear on his face, “I am not interested in anything you have to say. I think two times is more than enough for someone to hurt you before you say no more. We will live on the same ship, we will work as the same crew but that is the absolute extent of my involvement with you. Is that clear?”

Juno looked ready to argue, some of the lady Nureyev had known resurfacing on his face. Good, he thought, show me this isn’t real. Show me it’s an act. Then I can go back to being angry with you and it can all make sense again. I’ll feel safe.

But then it faded and the resigned grief was back. And Nureyev felt something inside him, buried deep, crack with the knowledge he’d caused it.

“Fine,” Juno sighed heavily, “You’re not ready, I can understand that.”

“Not ready implies that this conversation will be happening in the future,” Nureyev’s voice was acidic, “Am I not being direct enough with you? I have no interest in your justifications for your behaviour. By all means, repeat them to yourself over and over as many times as you wish, however long it takes to be comfortable with your choices again. But do not bother yourself to repeat them to me, I have no need. It would imply that I care.”

Juno winced, as Nureyev had wanted him to right up until the second after he did it. He looked so wounded, like his words had punched a pinhole right through him. Nureyev refused to feel the pinch of regret at the back of his mind.

“Welcome to the Carte Blanche, Juno Steel,” he said coldly, going back into his room and slamming the door again. It wasn’t gentlemanly but there was little else to be done.

Bianca’s arms dropped sadly to her sides, eyes full of dismay. Her bottom lip began to do that wobbling dance that signified tears in the very near future.

“Darling,” Nureyev groaned, folding his arms around her, bringing her close to his chest, “Please, no. Everything’s okay…”

Bianca disagreed, mumbling unhappily against him, repeating ‘dada’ over and over like she was looking for answers. The front of his shirt began to grow damp with tears he’d caused.

Nureyev sighed shakily, trying to martial his thoughts and control his emotions, trying to feel more like himself. He buried his face in his daughter’s hair, inhaling her powdery baby scent, reminding himself that Bianca Nureyev existed and as long as that was true, he couldn’t fall apart.

After a while, he felt strong enough to sit back, like his spine and lungs would hold him up again. A moment later Bianca’s hands reached up to his face, patting his cheeks softly, cooing gently. Nureyev smiled, somehow, and kissed her searching little fingers. It was nice, he had to admit, to have someone there after he slipped away from himself.

The Carte Blanche hadn’t lifted off yet, still sitting on what passed for a dock in the Cerberus Province. But the stars were visible, unfiltered, without the fading, swimming effect of any dome and Nureyev could see them through the little circular porthole window on the far wall. As deadly as the stars were, uncovered like that, it was beautiful.

He felt the small boy that still curled up in the darker parts of his mind, one of his older boxes, stir. He felt him ache, looking at those stars with a desperate, fierce kind of hope that they held something better that could be his if he could only reach far enough. Nureyev shut him out too, after a moment. He didn’t need that any more. He would just keep moving forwards.

And he wouldn’t be alone this time.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Yooo so im curious, in your jupeter dad au, would nureyev taken the kids with him when he snuck away, or would they be with juno after escaping in the ruby 7....or would they have been taken in by dark matters with the rest of the carte blanche crew

You know, this is one of those situations where canon has very much messed with this AU because this is a) a very good and b) a very hard question! 

I think Nureyev's priorities really shift after he has kids, they become the top of his list. And I honestly think he would do his absolute best to take them with him, maybe even at Juno’s expense just because he knows Juno can take care of himself? His babies can’t (they kind of can, he just can’t admit it), they need him more? So I honestly think he’d take them but...but...if he couldn’t...

I think he would just have to put his faith in Juno that Juno could keep them safe and kind of group them in with Wife in whatever mental game that boy is playing

It would absolutely break his heart though and he would probably feel guilty for the rest of his life 

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Do you imagine that jupeter still has their little family eventually in your royalty!au? I loved the one from your last fic

They do have their family!

I think the way it works is that Juno does return to his home planet after a maybe a decade of being a master thief with Nureyev and during that time they join the Carte Blanche like in canon and work with them. 

But they do have to go back for rrrreeeeasons and basically launch a coup and afterwards Ben asks him to stay because he misses him a lot. Juno has grown and matured and he’s a lot more sure of himself and he’s a lot happier and he thinks yeah maybe I am ready to give this a go? And Nureyev pipes up with ‘and you already have an heir on the way’

And Juno’s like ‘Yeah! ...wait, what?’

So they have their little Princess Bianca and she’s every bit her lovely self and Juno makes sure she’s happy and she never feels the pressure he did and he makes sure she has choice in her life. And then later they have their twins because they just love them a lot and they’re good dads and they’re happy. 

You can read my royalty au here, comments appreciated! 

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Ooo jupeter aus??

In typical Me fashion, its a Dad AU. where they are dads.