It's funny, Peter considers one day, watching Juno watch the window as the ship draws nearer to another new planet, getting his first look at a place he's never been before. It's funny, the way things work out.
Because this was what he'd wanted, back before waking up alone. That quiet look of wonder on Juno's face was just exactly what Peter Nureyev wanted, over and over again. He'd had the foolish idea that Hyperion and all the ways it clung to Juno would fall away if Juno could just see how big the universe was, and what luck that Peter was just the person to show him. He would give the wonderful, infuriating, enthralling lady a grand tour, and if that wiped those shadows in Juno's eyes away for just an instant, it would be worth everything.
It was a lovestruck kind of dreaming, Peter can admit to himself now. He doesn't regret it, doesn't begrudge that past him the lovely, optimistic plans, but he does wish he could say something to that Peter. There's no rush, maybe. Remember the man you were for a month three years ago, Almy Fletcher, who knew how to transplant a living thing to somewhere with more space to grow without ripping it out by the roots, possibly.
Rita will track you down and there will be consequences, perhaps.
Juno must feel his gaze, because he turns to look back at Peter and that wonderstruck expression falters and unfolds into something sweeter. "What," he asks, his eye flickering between Peter and the floor as if the attention on him is unwarranted.
Peter grins with a thrill of anticipation. "Just admiring the view," he says, and he isn't disappointed - Juno groans with all of the fond exasperation of someone who's heard that line a few dozen times already. Peter laughs, Juno accuses him of being a sap, tells him to stop before he has to leave the room to escape Peter's awful, sugary bullshit, and notably doesn't follow through on the threat.
He admires the view often. If every person contains multiplication tables, as Rita once informed him, then he has his pick of windows through which to view Juno's heart.
You weren't wrong to want it, he thinks to that outdated version of himself, the one that's now grown in sometimes painful, ultimately worthwhile ways. It's worth having. It's unquestionably worth having. But you never would have thought you could have more, would you?
The first time Juno laughed on the Carte Blanche - the real thing, happy and loud like he'd startled himself with the sound - was after Rita said something to him. Peter hadn't been close enough to hear what she told him, wasn't close enough to Juno again to ask, but he'd passed by the door just in time to hear it. Just in time to glance over and take in the sight of Juno Steel, grinning and more at ease than Peter had maybe ever seen him before. It delighted him, in a way that Peter hadn't been ready to admit yet. It bothered him.
It was late at night, and he was alone again, when he realized why.
Peter couldn't make Juno laugh that way. Not without work. Not without time. Rita didn't even have to try, had Juno soft and emotionally unarmed as they'd shared snacks and watched something awful on the screen that Peter couldn't have talked him into sitting still for even if he'd been given a month to work with. Rita knew Juno better than he did.
It wasn't jealousy; Peter could have handled jealousy, could have thrown it out as a ridiculous quirk of his own heart. It was the realization that, for every good thing they would have had together, alone among the stars... there would have been less of that laughter. There would have been less of that smile, by the simple logic that Rita and all of the years she and Juno had between them would have been absent.
He hadn't considered the roots before tugging. He hadn't considered that the shadows in Juno’s eyes hadn't overcome him yet because someone else had put in the work of careful tending. Peter supposed he was out of practice with that kind of thing.
So Peter steps back sometimes, to watch who Juno is with other people. It's quite a sight. Because Juno contains multitudes, and there are different pieces of him that the people around him reveal. Windows upon windows, showing all the sides of one person still in the process of growing. Deadpan exchanges with Buddy first thing in the morning, the uncertain look before he presses the gas on Jet's instruction and almost drives the bike right through the wall of the ship, the rapidfire series of insults following the rapidfire series of shots while he and Vespa argue again about a hair's breadth difference in their aim. Rita and her movie nights, that slowly expand to include them all, like the inevitable blast radius of an explosion - and the way Juno eases into something gentle surrounded by that warmth. These are all the things Peter knows about Juno in tandem with other people.
And sometimes, Peter catches Juno looking at him like he's seeing him for the first time. Like maybe, there is more to Peter Nureyev than Peter Nureyev can reveal on his own.
You dreamed too small, Peter confides to his past as Juno takes his hand, brings him along past windows showing broken-away hints of the universe, to the other people in their lives that Peter had never planned to have. It's funny, all the things he'd never thought to ask for. You just didn't know it yet.
aro/crack/attack: you know I have to do it to em. nureyev, juno, rita
OHHHH FUCK. WAIT. LET ME LOCK IN. Ok Juno is automatically exempt from crack because he’s already transgender. So that’s one thing decided.
Well. I’m gonna go obvious and say aro Rita because she’s pretty much ALREADY aro. But we’re making it official. Thennnn I will crack Nureyev’s egg and do grievous bodily harm to Juno 😁
*whispers* Also tragific where some corporation blows Hyperion into oblivion leaving Juno purposeless and practically catatonic with depression and then Peter scoops him up and drags him on heists across the galaxy and over the course of the next year breathes life back into his bones
