Work Text:
Peter Nureyev knows he’s going to die when he feels his limbs go fuzzy, fingertips stilling and going cold. Juno Steel, his miracle, his cure mother, is still a few days away, but there’s no point in praying for it. He talks in sleep these days, (Rita catches it on the security footage), calling out for Juno and, oddly enough, for Mag, for the first time in decades.
As much as he hates to admit it, he’s going to miss the stale air of the Carte Blanche, miss late night cups of tea with Buddy on the observation deck, trading knives with Vespa over the dinner table, altering deguises for their next heist. He’ll miss playing cards with Rita, losing every time. He’ll miss trading crime stories with Jet, planning future heists that now they’ll never get to.
Most of all, he misses Juno, misses the memories of the corners of his lips, the way Peter could make him blush with a brush of his fingertips. He misses trying on a new lipstick, smudged against Juno’s neck within minutes. He misses pressing his cold feet up against his lady in bed, he misses having someone next to him in bed, period. He’s glad Juno’s not here to see him like this, but wishes he could hold him, one last time. Just to say goodbye. Nureyev would be lying if he hadn’t thought of a million ways to say goodbye, and had written some down back when he’d been able to hold a pen (most of them had gone something along the lines of “Sorry I died, it wasn’t your fault. Xoxo, p.n” , his prose and poise had packed up and left sometime after his memory and energy). Juno will find these half-baked notes eventually, will probably wear holes in it tracing the indents of his handwriting.
He can feel his organs shutting down one by one, flicking off the lights before leaving for vacation. Peter’s breath rattles, shakes as he chokes on a sob; he can taste the carbonated exhaustion on his tongue. He curls up the same way he did that night in the hotel, clinging to the memory of Juno Steel left in the sheets, the same way he did the night Juno found out. He half expects his detective to burst through the door at any moment, slip some cure mother into his IVs and pray. He doesn’t.
Instead, Peter Nureyev does his mourning and gets on with it, lets the last tears he’ll ever shed over Juno Steel out before he’s caught with them, does the crying, and the whimpering with imperfect, wobbling execution. He’s a fool, for getting the both of them in this situation; for all he knows, Juno could be dead already, trapped in some Martian tomb without Nureyev to hold him back from blowing himself to pieces. Maybe they’ll see each other in whatever hellscape they’re certain to end up in, maybe they’ll catch up with Miasma and Croesus Kanagawa over a bowl of soup. He’d never taken the time to think about religion, and he certainly doesn’t have the time to now. Peter Nureyev decides to himself, on his last, stuttering breath, that they’ll see each other again, despite how chaotically unfair the circumstances.
They will, they have to. Nureyev needs to believe that he isn’t dying as his heart rate flattens to a plain, as he melts through the Carte Blanche. They will, they have to, he’s sure of it.