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Book Review: The Case of the Murderous Mask (Bruno Bronze) ★★★★★
Hyperion City’s most reclusive author and staple of the bestseller lists, Bruno Bronze, has done it again in his latest mystery that will thrill both old and new fans alike. The Case of the Murderous Mask, inspired in part by the very real theft of the Death Mask of Grimpotheuthis from the Kanegawa estate several years ago, succeeds in bringing to the table everything Bronze’s fans have come to expect from him over the years: mind-boggling twists and turns, a caper pulled straight from the headlines, and a brilliant battle of wits between a world-weary detective and a criminal mastermind rivaling any Bronze has penned before. As usual, Bronze knows what his readers want and he doesn’t fail to deliver.
Though the names and key details have been changed, the parallels between fact and fiction have already started raising questions about the business dealings of the Kanegawas, namely the ethical quandary of how they obtained the real-world mask from a city-sponsored dig for a private collection. As always, this newest Bruno Bronze novel will be the talk of book clubs and true-crime enthusiasts across Mars, so don’t hesitate to preorder your copy before the book lands in stores next week...
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Hyperion City’s most infamous author—low-key celebrity, de facto enemy of the state, and pulp crime fiction icon—is currently lying face down at his desk, surrounded by empty coffee cups, dirty plates, and a screen showcasing his latest, very unfinished manuscript. It’s still open from the night before, just like he’s still laying slumped over in the same position he’d fallen asleep in. He doesn’t have to look up to know the cursor is still there at the end of the last sentence. Blinking. Taunting him.
Writer’s Block: 1. Juno Steel: 0. He’s barely even awake and it’s already losing for the day.
For most of his career, Juno’s response to writer’s block has been to throw himself so hard into his work that, eventually, something or other has to break. It’s worked for him so far, getting him through book after book.
His secret is this: he does research when the words won’t come, looking for real-world inspiration in the news and in old case files from days gone by. Being a crime author means finding new, exciting twists to keep him and his readers entertained, and nothing is weirder or more interesting than the truth.
Not that he writes the truth, such as it is. Usually all it takes is an initial spark, one detail he can run with and make his own, and he’s off to the races penning an original story with only its heart based in fact. And as for the more subversive side of his books… well, there’s never any lack of corrupt officials or back-alley dealings for him to shine a light on. That’s never been the hard part.
That signature combo of twist-filled criminal escapades and sharp-tongued takes on the politics of Hyperion City is what has put him on the bestseller lists for decades. It’s also what has painted a very large target on the back of his assumed name—and dammit, if he’d known he’d get even a little bit famous doing this then he wouldn’t have taken Mick’s suggestion and published his work under the name Bruno Bronze. Of all the pseudonyms...
It’s too late now though. Bruno Bronze—AKA Juno Steel—is practically a household name to bookworms across Mars. For better and for worse. It’s a good thing almost no one knows the two men are one and the same.
“Mistah Steeeeeel!”
He’s jolted back to something resembling full consciousness by the singsong voice of Rita: his agent, friend, and probably the only reason his true name has stayed under wraps where it belongs. She’s good enough with computers that every bit of communication between Juno and his publisher, from edits to his royalty payments, is encoded and decoded and reencoded (he really doesn’t know how it all works) from here to Ganymede and back. In all this time almost no one has come close to finding out Bronze’s real name, and not for a lack of trying.
“Sorry for just barging in, but I bought those fancy doughnuts you like on the way over, and I was knocking but you didn’t answer, and I would’ve waited but then I’d be stuck outside and it sure is hot out, so the frosting might’ve melted and…” she trails off when she walks in, Juno blinking blearily up at her.
“Oh.” She grimaces. “Another night of writer’s block, huh?”
“What was your first clue?” Juno feels something stuck to his cheek and reaches up to peel it off: a sticky note, likely scribbled on at some point the night before in a desperate attempt at inspiration. It just says cigarette holder, FAKE! on it, the word FAKE! underlined three times. He can’t remember what the hell it’s supposed to mean and lets it flutter to the floor.
“Rita,” he intones as she comes over and puts the takeout box on the corner of his desk. The heavenly smell of fried dough and pure sugar wafts out of it even with the lid shut. “You want to remind me why I decided to do a train heist this time around?”
“You said it was something new and exciting!” Rita immediately answers with her signature enthusiasm, either not catching his sarcasm or not caring to acknowledge it. She’s really into this newest one, tentatively titled The Train From Nowhere. “Said you didn’t want the next book to feel stale.”
“Yeah, well I really wrote myself into a corner here.” Juno drags a hand down over his face, feeling every hour of sleep he didn’t get in the skin around his eyes. “I’m doing all the research. Used those files you dug up for me and read more about trains than I ever even wanted to know, but—” He gestures fruitlessly in the air. “There’s an angle here I’m missing. I know it.”
“Sounds like you need a good brainstorming session. Good thing I brought coffee too! Hold on, I left it in the kitchen—” She darts out the door and Juno lets his forehead thump back against the desk. He can’t even be mad at Rita for waking him up. He’d told her to go ahead and come in today for their usual check-in. Now that he thinks about it, he’d scheduled lunch with Ben later too.
Look at him go, two different social engagements in one day. He should probably get a medal or something.
Rita comes back with the coffee and, after a doughnut or three, Juno is feeling a little less like a dead body and more like a half-dead one. It’s good enough.
“So,” Rita is continuing her train of thought, little star-shaped sprinkles stuck to her fingertips as she sets down her coffee, “This one’s a head-scratcher. No way the train could’ve been stopped on its way from point A to point B? Even for a second?”
“Supposedly.” Juno glances over at his pile of notes on the real-life train robbery that inspired this one: the Utgard Express. Its very existence had been something of a fairy tale before it’d been brought to a halt and relieved of several high-value artifacts by an unknown thief. No one had ever figured out how they’d done it, or who ‘they’ could have been… even though Juno has his theories.
“Well we know it’s not impossible! Somebody did it, so…” Rita sits back in her chair, nose scrunched up in that particular way it does when she’s really thinking hard. The other thing she always does while brainstorming is snack, which is why Juno isn’t surprised to see her reach for another doughnut.
“Parachute?” she asks.
“Thought about that. If they’d had magnetized boots on then they could have landed on the roof, but…” Juno shakes his head. “That’s not taking into account how fast this thing moves. They’d never be able to time that right without falling so fast they’d break all their bones on impact.”
Rita hums as she shoves half the pastry into her mouth at once, eyes dead-serious. You’d think they were planning a real heist rather than reverse-engineering a real one.
“Maybe they bribed somebody onboard to stop—”
“Train was fully automated.” Juno checks his own fingers quickly for sprinkles or icing before dragging them back along his scalp. When Rita gets food on her face or hair, she manages to make it look endearing. Juno, on the other hand, just looks like a mess. “Nobody on board, not even a conductor.”
“Yowza,” Rita mutters to herself. “Well that makes this a real pickle. Oh oh, I know! Let’s try what your detectives always do—” She squares her shoulders, eyes bright with excitement. “—and get into the mind of the criminal! This is another one from your Nameless Thief file, right?”
Juno feels a wave of embarrassed heat crawling up his neck and clears his throat, though he keeps his expression as stern as he can. He can't help but get a little touchy about his extensive file on a person who may or may not exist. He didn't just make it all up with nothing at all to go off of, there's at least a little substance there, but still. It doesn’t help that Rita loves talking them up like they’re an old friend rather than Juno’s personal conspiracy theory.
“Just for fun Mr. Steel, please?”
Juno sighs heavily. Must not have done so good with the poker face after all. “Alright. Fine. Shoot.”
It’s not like he even knows if the thief is real. Probably they’re the result of too many sleepless nights digging through old case files. It’s just a hunch. But it brought Juno here, to the Utgard Express, like it brought him to the last handful of cases that had inspired his novels. The theory is simple, if implausible and impossible to prove: that all these brilliantly executed unsolved crimes he keeps digging up, committed in disparate places across the galaxy, are all the work of the same master thief.
“Okay! So let's pretend I’m the thief—probably ruggedly handsome or unbelievably beautiful, and y’know Mr. Steel I really wish you would reconsider that romantic subplot with the P.I.—”
“Rita.” Juno can feel a headache coming on. Rita is a good friend who goes above and beyond the parameters of her job, but she does tend to get carried away.
“I know, I know. Just keep it in mind, alright? Star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of the law…” she leans back in her chair, hand over her heart, and Juno can’t help it: he flicks a sprinkle at her, hitting her right in the cheek. Rita gasps like she’s been shot.
“Mr. Steel—!”
“Focus, Rita.” He leans back in his own chair and eyes the drawer in his desk where he keeps the file. The Nameless Thief. His totally unprovable, highly improbable muse. If they’re real, like Juno suspects, and if they had committed this robbery, the way Juno thinks…
If he really gets into their head and thinks about this the way they must have, takes in all the angles and contingencies they should have accounted for…
…Yeah. He’s still got nothing. The reasonable thing to do would be to tweak the troublesome parts of the case and make it easier to write—but Juno has taken it as a sort of personal challenge to try and come up with fictional answers to each Nameless Thief crime without changing the actual mechanics of the crime itself, far as they’re known. He doesn’t think he’s ever once gotten it right, but trying to actually solve the cases isn’t the point. It’s all in the hypotheticals, which still have to work within the confines of reality to a point. Otherwise…
Otherwise it’d just be too easy, and Juno is notorious for always having to do everything the hard way.
“Fine, fine. So I’m the thief,” Rita is continuing, “and I want to rob this train—”
Juno’s comms chooses that moment to go off.
“It’s Ben,” he tells Rita, scanning the short and emoji-ridden message from his brother. “Doesn’t want me to forget I’m meeting him today. I should probably start getting ready now if I want to make it there wearing something other than yesterday’s clothes.”
“Aww, dang.” Rita huffs. “I didn’t even get into my nanotech theory.”
“Your what ? No, wait—” Juno holds up a hand. “Put a pin in that. If we get going now then I’m really going to be late for this thing, and you know how Ben gets when I make him wait.”
“I mean, you do kind of do it a lot...”
“I get distracted, alright? Books don’t write themselves. Not unless you’re a rich socialite with a good AI to do the thinking for you.”
“Still angry about that one time Cecil Kanegawa’s book beat you for the number one spot on the fiction list, ain’t ya?”
“Shut up Rita.”
---
Juno’s life might have gone a lot differently if Ben hadn’t found the rough draft of his first novel and insisted he look into getting it published.
“This is good, Super Steel,” he’d said, perched on top of Juno’s kitchen table. “Really good.” His legs were crossed and hanging off the side, the leftover half of a sandwich Juno had meant to eat for dinner in the hand not holding Juno’s tablet. He’d immediately regretted giving his brother a key to his new place. “How long have you been writing for?”
“Give me that,” Juno had snapped, trying and failing to snatch the tablet out of his brother’s grasp. He’d just come home from a double shift at the HCPD and was in no mood for Ben’s antics. All he’d really been in the mood for was a shower, that half a sandwich, and whatever sleep his fickle brain would allow him to get.
However Benzaiten Steel, in his usual fashion, was not one to be deterred. He’d peppered Juno with questions (and made him a new, whole sandwich to give him better incentive not to disappear into the shower with his middle finger raised) and helped him figure out the part of the mystery Juno had been stuck on, and from there…
From there, things had just sort of snowballed.
Ben finding out naturally meant the rest of their friends found out too, and soon Sasha and Mick were both giving Juno their opinions. It’s good, Sasha said in that disaffected way of hers, but don’t you think the whole setup is a little too easy to figure out?
It’s great, Mick had told him in a separate conversation. I read it three times and still don’t get how the detective solved the case!
It helped that Juno had been miserable at his job, stuck behind a desk more often than not and caught like a fly in a web within a corrupt power structure. He enacted the justice he couldn’t with his own hands in his stories—good guys beating the odds and clever criminals almost getting away with impossible crimes right up until the very final hour.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one in Hyperion City who was hungry for that sort of thing, because his first book was an unexpected bestseller. It shot him to fame under his assumed name and he’d quit the HCPD, tired of trying to play by rules that benefitted no one but the people who needed help the least.
A lot of things have changed since then, but Ben’s busybody tendencies aren’t one of them.
“Juno!” He calls out and waves Juno over to their table, as if they ever sit anywhere else at this old greasy spoon. The booth still has their names scrawled on it in marker from when they were obnoxious tweens, there to loiter more than eat.
“You look like you were run over by a hovercar this morning,” Ben quips cheerfully as Juno sits, his eyes devoid of the dark circles that so often plague Juno’s. Based on his clothes, he’s either just coming from dance practice or is planning on heading over to it after this. “Spend another night staring at an empty screen?”
“It’s not empty,” Juno shoots back, dragging Ben’s mug of lukewarm coffee over to his side of the table despite his brother’s protest. He grimaces at the first taste of it. Augh. He always forgets how sweet Ben takes his bean juice. “It’s just not finished.”
“And your deadline is…?” Ben’s smile is knowing as he props his head up on his hand, watching as Juno shoves his mug back across the scuffed tabletop. He catches it before it can slide right off the edge and all over his lap.
“Funny, didn’t think you were my editor. Don’t you have enough to deal with keeping your own career on track?”
“I know how to use the calendar on my comms, unlike some people.”
Juno scoffs, making eye-contact with the waitress across the room and raising a hand. She nods and disappears into the back without having to be told he’s after some coffee. The perks of being a regular.
“I don’t need my comms to know when my appointments are.”
“Okay then, riddle me this: what day is it today?”
Juno opens his mouth to answer, frowns as his mental calculations come up short, then shoots a glare at Ben’s answering laugh. As he continues chuckling and leans back against the seat, Ben's strappy top shifts, giving Juno a glimpse of the blaster scar marring the left side of his chest. Just a few centimeters off from his heart.
It’s a familiar sight by now, but still. Seeing it always brings back memories, even if just for a moment. Blood. The smell of singed skin. Their mother’s hateful shrieking as Juno had knocked the still smoking blaster out of her hands.
He’s glad Ben doesn’t feel the need to hide it. He really is. It hadn’t always been that way, and it had hurt seeing his brother shy away from looking at his own reflection. But now, years later, it’s no longer a symbol of the violence that had been done to him. It’s a badge now, one of pride that he’d not only survived, but had thrived despite what their mother had tried to do.
Juno would never risk taking that way from Ben, even if just to mention how the scar makes his own heart ache in sympathetic pain each time he catches sight of it.
“This new one’s really got you stumped, doesn’t it?” The sound of his brother’s voice brings Juno right back to the present, practically a lifetime away from that fateful day. “You always get all frazzled when a mystery has you stuck.”
“Frazzled is a strong word. Annoyed? Sure. Sleep-deprived? Yeah, but that’s just my baseline. My body wouldn’t know what to do with a solid eight hours of shut-eye at this point.”
Ben raises an eyebrow, clearly ready to argue the point—but then something behind Juno catches his eye. Curious what could have cut Ben off mid-heckle makes Juno turn around to look, and he’s only half-surprised to see it’s the holo-screen up in the corner. They usually just have sports or local news playing at a volume easy enough to ignore.
It’s showing a press conference with the mayor at the moment. Pilot Pereyra. That isn’t such a shock either, seeing as they really like hearing themselves talk. More jarring than that is seeing the name Bruno Bronze flicker by in the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Suddenly Ben’s distraction makes perfect sense. One of the reporters at the Q&A must have brought up the new book.
“It’s slander,” the mayor is saying with an almost comical amount of vehemence. “And with every new copy of this trash that gets published, Hyperion City’s faith in its institutions is shaken to its core. It’s a threat to the very foundations of our city’s safety, which is why we’re continuing to petition Jetstream Publishers to reveal the coward behind the pseudonym.”
“It’s libel when it’s written down, jackass,” Juno grumbles while Ben thanks the waitress for the coffee. He’s too busy glaring up at the mayor’s perfectly contoured face to even get annoyed at Ben for ordering his omelette for him. Not that he doesn’t get the order right, but the request for the cook to “make a little smiley face on top of the eggs with some hot sauce? Don’t worry, he’ll love it—” would usually get him at least a swat to the back of the head.
Once the waitress is gone, their collective attention goes back to the livestream.
“They’re still not over you calling them out on wasting public funds on that Free Dome expedition are they?” Ben sounds amused, but he’s lowered his voice just the same.
“I didn’t call them out on anything.” Juno turns back around to face his brother, who is dumping another sugar packet into his newly refilled coffee and watching Juno closely. Juno knows that intent look well. His brother is worried, even if he won’t say so.
“A character I wrote that just happens to look and act the same way as Mx. Mayor might have just pulled the same bullshit is all,” Juno insists, nonchalant. “Not my fault people noticed.”
“They had to after the attention reopened the internal investigation. Juno…” Ben purses his lips as he sets the empty sugar packet down on a pile of its brethren, way too big for the couple of cups of coffee he’s presumably had today. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful, right?”
“I am being careful,” Juno insists, impatient already with his brother’s concern. It’s not like it’s a bad thing, he’s damn lucky to have Ben around to worry, but he hates the feeling of people fretting over him. He isn’t always the best at taking care of himself and staying out of trouble, but that’s no one else’s problem but his own. “This always happens right before a new book pubs, and Murderous Mask is out in a week. It’ll pass.”
“Yeah, sure, but… it keeps escalating, doesn’t it?” Ben leans his weight forward on the table, arms loosely crossed. “Bronze has a lot of enemies already, and the list just keeps getting longer. Feels like something has to break. You have a plan for if that happens?”
“Not even Jetstream knows my actual name, Benten. They can do all the asking and the bribing and the hacking they want. It won’t go anywhere.” Juno sighs, sipping from his blissfully black coffee. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Since when did you get so worried about my work?”
“Since you somehow turned one of the most boring jobs in existence into a real-life political drama,” Ben shoots back, his grin returning full-force. “Leave it to you to take something like writing a book and run it right off the rails.”
Whatever else Ben has to say after that is lost to the sound of rushing static in Juno’s ears.
The rails.
“Every train runs on a track,” Juno says out loud, eyes widening. He hadn’t even thought about it before. How had he overlooked something so basic?
Then again, that’s how the Nameless Thief cases always go. You can turn them inside-out looking for the most complex answer, but it’s usually something brilliant in its simplicity. Not easy, no, it’d take a genius to actually pull it all off, but they’re nowhere near as convoluted as one might expect.
“Uh… Juno?” Ben is looking at him like Juno just started speaking fluent Martian. “You alright there?”
“Napkin.” Juno gestures to the holder on the table, his other hand digging around in his coat pocket for one of the pens he always keeps there. Except he doesn’t feel any in there this time, he must have lost the last one—
But then there’s Ben coming to the rescue, a bright blue gel pen in his hand as he gives Juno a knowing grin.
“Oh, I get it now. Inspiration striking?” He pushes over a pile of napkins too, just as the waitress comes over with their plates. “You could just take those notes on your comms y’know.”
“Lost all my work last time I tried that,” Juno reminds him, already scribbling ideas down on the first paper napkin. He’ll need to know what kind of rails the Utgard Express used, how they worked, how someone could make them not work and where they’d get the tech from—
He spares a quick glance up at the food just long enough to see the smiley face on his eggs, and the exasperated look he shoots his brother is met with a blindingly bright grin and a laugh that Juno has never once taken for granted he’s lucky enough to keep hearing.
---
Juno’s affinity for writing is an unfortunate trait he has in common with his mother. He doesn’t like to think about it much, the way his all-nighters mirror hers. How some of the ways he likes to outline his stories match the way she’d frame her own, even if he only half-remembers those moments she’d explained her new ideas to her sons. She’d been so bright back then. Happy, fueled by the thrill of creating something new.
Still, it never is far from his mind as he works that his decision to write rather than pursue law enforcement as a career has made the arts something of a Steel family legacy now, even if almost no one knows Juno is actually part of it. For Sarah, it’d been scripts. For Ben, his dancing. And Juno…
Juno has spent the past week completely immersed in the Utgard Express case, buried in notes and pounding away at his keyboard. He already knows more than half of this is going to have to be cut, or at the very least condensed. But that’s the magic of a first draft, that mad dash towards making sense out of the chaos of an idea. It doesn’t have to be neat. It’s messy and free from the more concrete, logical work of editing that comes down the line, and he lives for it.
It’s like making and solving a puzzle at the same time, the thrill of which Juno owes in no small part to his thief. These cases he keeps finding light a spark in him like little else does. The mystery of it, the questions, the flawless execution—there’s nothing else out there like it.
And as he does his research, he of course continues to add notes to the standalone file he keeps in his desk drawer, the solitary item there bulging almost too big to fit now: the Nameless Thief research. A running record of an impossible person. The types of marks they go after. The places they target. All the little things, circumstantial at best, that tie those cases together and flag them in Juno’s mind as the thief’s work.
Some people have normal hobbies like cross-stitch or watching streams. For Juno, his free time spent not writing, eating, or sleeping is spent creating a profile of the universe’s most incredible (if true) criminal.
He’s flipping through the file when Ben calls, late enough that Juno knows he didn’t forget a meet-up but early enough to not get flagged as an emergency. Juno answers and sets it to speaker.
“What’s good, Super Steel?”
“Good timing, actually. I’m taking a break right now.” Juno turns a page of the file, fingers skimming over a clipping from a printout of an article about the theft of an infamous car. “Kind of late for you to be making a social call.”
“Hiya Juno! Wait, can he hear me? Ben, tell Juno I say hi—” Mick’s voice filters in the background, and Juno can practically see in his mind’s eye the enthusiastic wave that goes with it. He shoots a knowing smile at his comms.
“You and Mick are out, huh?”
“It’s just drinks,” Ben says with a familiar kind of denial, one that’s part of an old pattern by now. Juno has been sure for years that something has been brewing there. He knows it with a sibling’s instinct, and similarly hasn’t stopped giving his brother shit for it ever since he caught on. Sasha insists he’s wrong, but Juno knows better.
Ben firmly denies there’s anything more than friendship between him and Mick though, and Juno has to wonder if he’s somehow missed the way Mick watches him with a hound dog’s eyes, affectionate and yearning all at once—minus the laser vision hound dogs are known for, of course. It’d be one thing if Ben knew and just wasn’t interested, but another thing entirely for him to just not catch on.
Juno has suspected for a while they might actually be together and Ben just hasn’t told him to keep him from having the satisfaction of having been right all along. Or maybe that’s just Juno’s ego talking.
“Sure it is. And you’re calling me on your date why?” Juno’s grin widens at the exasperated sound Ben makes on the other end of the line.
“You know what? Maybe I shouldn’t invite you out tomorrow. Let you sit inside on the big day eating takeout alone in your sweatpants.”
“The big day?” It takes Juno a second to remember what Ben means: tomorrow is the publication day of The Case of the Murderous Mask. Reviewers have had their copies for a while now, but it’ll officially be let loose on the world as of the next morning.
“It’s just another pub day. Had a few dozen of them before, and if nobody finds me out and puts a hit out on me soon then I’ll have a few dozen more. Not a big deal.” Juno absentmindedly turns the page in his file as he speaks, eyes only barely skimming the text. He doesn’t have to read it to know what he’s looking at. There’s nothing there he hasn’t already read through several times over.
Juno can’t be sure, but something tells him Ben is rolling his eyes at him on the other end of the line.
“Whatever, just humor me then and let me take you out on the town. 7 P.M. The Asteroid Belt. You still remember where it’s at?”
“Ben, I don’t know if they’ll even let us in there anymore. There’s other clubs.”
“Why don’t you let the twin with taste make the judgment calls, huh Juno? Trust me, you won’t want to miss it.”
There’s just a hint of a bye Juno! from Mick before the call cuts out, and Juno is left once again with just himself and the Nameless Thief file for company.
---
Juno’s morning is spent fielding several congratulatory emails from his team at Jetstream, on top of the excited calls and messages Rita sends as she watches mentions tick up about The Case of the Murderous Mask on social media.
Juno, for his part, doesn’t really pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing. He likes knowing what people think, sure, but how many likes a new meme format based on the book got on some website doesn’t interest him in the least.
Despite Ben’s invitation, Juno is tempted to stay in that night and keep working on The Train from Nowhere. His mention of this to Rita has her unexpectedly putting her foot down though.
“You worked too hard on this one to just sit inside tonight! Besides, the manuscript will be there when you get back. I mean, probably, unless somebody breaks into your apartment while you’re gone and steals it. I saw a stream like that once, this writer’s work gets plagiarized by the interstellar mob and—!”
Twenty minutes later, Juno knows the entire plot to The Pen is Mightier than the Blaster and has been thoroughly convinced to go with Ben later. He even makes an effort to get a little gussied up. Why not? He hasn’t gone out anywhere in ages. Might as well make it count.
When he does finally get to the familiar, ramshackle facade of Oldtown’s most infamous club, he’s surprised to see more than just Ben there waiting. Rita’s there too, done up in glitter and neon, standing beside a stoically amused Sasha, a beaming Mick, and—to Juno’s surprise—Allesandra Strong. She’d been the only person who had ever actually figured out his identity without him telling them outright, even if it had been by a technicality. It’d been lucky for them both that they'd ended up friends.
“Surprise!” Rita throws up her hands with a grin bright enough to rival the sun. “Didn’t see this coming, did ya?”
“Not even a little,” Juno admits, feeling thrown off-kilter. Not in a bad way, just… he can’t remember the last time he did this. Went out with a group of friends. Had a whole night out set up in his honor. “What’s the occasion? I mean yeah, the book just came out, but I’ve had a lot of books come out. We don’t do this every time.”
“Told you he didn’t remember.” Allesandra smirks, and Juno is about to get in a smart retort right back when Rita pipes up, seemingly unable to contain herself.
“But not every book is the twentieth one a lady publishes, now is it?”
That makes Juno’s thought process stop completely. Twenty. His twentieth book.
For once, Juno does feel well and truly at a loss for words. He doesn’t write a series, they aren’t numbered, so he hadn’t really noticed. Probably someone had mentioned it before at some point, but it had slipped his mind in the process of writing the actual thing.
“So, to celebrate—” Ben walks up and loops his arm through Juno’s. “We’re getting you away from that desk for once in your career. Thank Mick and Sasha for the idea.”
“For the record, I thought we should just do dinner,” Sasha admits. “But I was told that was—”
“Bor—ing !” Mick laughs, but the sound dies in his throat at Sasha’s glare. “I mean, it was a great idea. Really fun Sash, no kidding. But when’s the last time we got the gang all together, huh? All of us in one place?” He looks from person to person, and Juno realizes he’s not sure they’ve ever all even been together in one place like this before. In smaller groups, sure, but not all of them at once.
“So I thought, hey, while we’re doing this anyway we should make it last as long as we can, right? And dinner, you know that ends at some point, you can’t just sit in the restaurant until it’s 2 A.M. or... if you could, why would you want to, the staff would probably get pretty peeved—”
“I think I get it Mick,” Juno says, cutting off the ramble. And he does get it. A whole night for them to just get lost in for however long they want. It doesn’t sound like the worst thing.
As he’s thinking this, it takes Juno a second to realize the group has gone quiet around him. Watching him expectantly. Waiting for him to give his blessing or shoot this down, maybe?
“If you’re all wanting some sappy speech about the value of hard work and the power of friendship or something, you’re barking up the wrong lamppost,” Juno points out. He rubs at the back of his neck, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “But… uh, yeah. Thanks, still, for this. And that’s all you’re getting out of me until I’m at least a couple of drinks in.”
“That can be arranged!” Ben crows as he drags him towards the entrance, the rest of their entourage not far behind.
---
Thankfully no one at the door recognizes Ben, Sasha, Juno or Mick from the nights they’d spent here in their 20s. All for the best. Juno would really rather not answer to any of the trouble they’d gotten into back then, even two decades down the line, and he definitely doesn't want to see what they’d fine them now for all the property damage plus interest.
The place is mostly the same inside: a little bit more polished, the drinks a little bit pricier, but altogether still the best dive to dance and drink the night away in this side of the line between Oldtown and the rest of the city. The mix of people inside reflects that, the glitzier partygoers mingling freely with the Oldtown regulars. Without thinking, Juno’s feet take him straight to the bar. Muscle memory. Nothing like it.
It’s chaos with all of them trying to order something at once, so Juno lets the shouting and good-natured bantering wash over him as his eyes scan the room. This part of the club is better lit than the rest, though not by much. He can see just enough to tell that most of the seats at the bar are taken, and—
And then he sees him.
Juno doesn’t know where the idea came from that purple is a royal color, but the way the stranger wears his silk top makes him a believer. He’s lounging on the barstool more like it’s a throne than a rickety wooden thing ready to collapse, one hand holding a drink, the other resting on the bar. Impeccably manicured nails tap out a steady rhythm while Juno watches, transfixed.
It takes him a second or two to realize he’s not the only one staring. The man’s eyes have locked back onto him in return, and they’re all Juno can see for a moment. Magnetic. Intent. His lips, done in the same purple as his clothes, spread into a sharp, hungry smile.
Juno doesn’t think he even breathes for a solid minute.
“Juno! Did you hear me? Did you order already, or—?”
Mick’s voice breaks the spell, and Juno suddenly remembers where he’s at and what they’d been doing. He glances away, gives Mick his order, and then quickly turns back.
Like a phantom, the man at the bar is already gone.
---
It’s all something that, once upon a time, Juno never would have allowed himself to imagine: a life doing something he’s halfway decent at, surrounded by people who actually give a damn. About him. The nihilist in him still regards the whole thing with suspicious eyes—do they actually care, how long will this last—but tonight he’s able to take that little voice in the back of his head and shove it down somewhere deep and dark. It’ll rear its ugly head up later, but for now?
Now he’s taking shots with Mick, Sasha feigning at being unamused despite the telltale tick at the corner of her mouth.
He’s allowing Ben to drag him out onto the dance floor, their hands thrown up towards the ceiling, their fingertips splashed with neon light.
He’s playing cards with Rita and Alessandra, and even while he and Alessandra argue about which one of them is cheating (the answer is, of course, both) the tone is playful and without real bite.
It’s all so easy, and that’s how Juno knows it won’t last. Nothing this sweet and simple does. But that also makes it precious, and he’s going to enjoy every second of it.
He doesn’t know quite how long they’ve been going at it when the way his head is spinning moves from exhilarating into somewhat nauseating. He extricates himself from the group and eyes his options for a place to catch his breath. Not much around here, honestly, unless he wants to share a too-small booth seat with a total stranger or risk his lack of balance on a barstool.
For one fleeting second, he almost hopes to see that same stranger from before there at the bar again, smiling that same pointed smile right at him. He’d risk taking a fall to the tiled floor for one more glimpse.
But the man isn’t there. Of course he isn’t just waiting around, perfectly posed like a model and waiting for Juno to show up. Juno is just drunk on cheap spirits and his friends’ optimism. It’ll pass.
In the end, he slips out through an emergency exit he knows from previous visits to the club won’t set off a single alarm and makes his way up the long, rattling staircase to the roof for some fresh night air. Juno, Ben, Mick and Sasha used to sneak up here all the time when they were younger, right up until the time he and Mick had accidentally fallen asleep there and woken up at noon the next day. They’d gone back down to an empty nightclub, accidental trespassers.
That’s also how they found out the security system hooked up to the rest of the exterior doors works just fine, and will go off when opened from the inside just the same as it will when broken into from the outside.
Point being, none of them has been up here in ages, and Juno is hit with a potent mix of nostalgia and a familiar bittersweet fondness as he takes in the view.
There’s Oldtown, stretching out in front of him with its mismatched lights set against the contrast of deep pits of darkness, the streets directly surrounding the club especially vibrant at the peak of their nighttime business. Beyond all that is the rest of the city, the lights of the high-rises glittering like dust-covered diamonds in the hazy air.
It’s beautiful. It’s flawed. It’s his city. Juno would never admit to the sentimentality out loud, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Beyond loving what he does, it’s the other reason he writes. To do a little good by this place. Much as any one person can, anyway.
He has just finished lighting up a cigarette when he hears the door opening up behind him. Probably Ben or Mick, or maybe Rita if the others had told her about it.
But the person standing there isn’t any of the three.
It’s the man from the bar, his clothes still distractingly well-cut on him and his makeup still perfectly on-point. To look at him, you wouldn’t think the guy could even sweat.
Meanwhile Juno swallows hard and tugs at the collar of his own shirt, hyperaware of how it’s sticking to him after hours of drinking and dancing in a badly ventilated room.
“Oh, I… pardon me.” The man looks surprised to find him there, his eyes going wide. He glances from Juno back to the door. “I didn’t think there would be anyone else up here. If I’m disturbing you…”
“No,” Juno says quickly. Way too quickly. “No, I uh… I’m just out here for a smoke.” He holds up the cigarette as evidence. “And there’s plenty of roof to go around.”
“In that case…” The uncertainty on the stranger’s face shifts to a secretive little smile, and he walks right up to Juno despite the observation he’d just made. There’s plenty of roof, yet he’s here. Beside him. Close enough to reach out and touch.
Part of Juno feels a small thrill as the man lounges against the railing at his side, the profile of his face sharp enough to cut glass as he looks out over the city. Another part of him is, predictably, suspicious.
What are the chances someone else would take a chance opening that door and come all the way up here?
If he came up here for you, that can’t mean anything good.
Who do you even think you are, assuming he came up here for you at all?
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The man’s voice startles Juno from his thoughts. He’s grateful for it. He doesn’t like devolving into a sad drunk. “I knew coming up here would be a good idea.”
The way his eyes cut to Juno when he says that, gaze sparkling with mischief, makes his mouth go completely dry in the best possible way.
“It… the view doesn’t disappoint,” Juno manages to say, his eyes locked on the ones locked on him. There’s a change in the air suddenly, a tension that hadn’t been there just a second ago. He can feel it sparking over his skin, staticky and electric. “At least not tonight.”
“Is that so?” Is it Juno, or has the man leaned in a little closer? “And what is so different about tonight?”
Your smile, Juno thinks to himself. Gratefully the schmaltzy words don’t make it to his mouth.
“No blackouts tonight in Oldtown,” he says instead. “Happens sometimes, especially if there was just a sandstorm or something. Isn’t half as nice when the power’s out and you can’t see a damn thing in front of your own face.”
The stranger lets out a surprised laugh that is just unfairly pretty. “There’s a lot to be said about good timing,” he muses blithely, a hand disappearing into his pocket. It returns with a pack of cigarettes, and Juno can only watch as those long fingers extricate one from the pack.
“I seem to have forgotten a light,” he admits, voice pitched low like he’s admitting to something else entirely. Juno doesn’t point out that he hardly seems to have taken the time to look. “Could I…?”
His gaze has fallen to the cigarette in Juno’s hand—which is also in the vicinity of his lips as he’d been taking a quick drag. Juno almost chokes on the smoke.
“Yeah, I’ve got a lighter—”
There it is: that laugh again, smooth like silk. “Oh no, my dear. That won’t be necessary.” He puts the cigarette to his lips and leans in. Juno is hit with another smell through the smoke—some cologne he doesn’t recognize that makes his pulse trip in an uneven beat—as the end of the stranger’s cigarette touches his own.
It takes a second for the heat to transfer. Juno feels dizzy and untethered for reasons he knows have nothing to do with the alcohol in his system as they stand there, leaning in close, not a sound aside from their own breathing and the distant beat of the bass downstairs.
“There we are.” The man steps back, and Juno takes the moment to try and compose himself. Sure, it’s been a while since he did the whole meet-somebody-at-a-bar thing. It’s been a while since he did anything in the vicinity of wanting to kiss a stranger. That’s no excuse for feeling this affected by a pretty face, is it?
Even if it’s one hell of a pretty face.
“You appear to be lost in thought, Bruno. Cred for your thoughts?”
Juno almost doesn’t catch it. Like an idiot, he stands there wondering just what about that sentence strikes him as wrong right up until it’s too late to do anything about it.
“Wait.” He frowns. “What’d you just call—”
He tries to take a step back, and it’s only then that he feels the tug at his wrist. Handcuffs. The end not attached to him is closed around the railing, effectively trapping him where he stands.
His most paranoid thoughts are validated when the man flashes him a sharp-toothed grin and swoops in, moving around him, grabbing Juno’s free arm and wrenching it painfully behind his back. He sees a flash of metal out of the corner of his eye: a knife. The man has a knife. It settles against his jugular soft as a kiss, and Juno is cursing himself a million times over for having let his guard down for even a second.
Bruno, he’d said. So this is it. Someone has found out about his pseudonym and probably ordered a hit on him. Who was it though? Pilot Pereyra? Someone in the Kanagawa family? It doesn’t really matter, he’ll be just as dead no matter who put the money down for it. He’d just like to know who to curse with his last breath is all.
“Y’know, most of my fans just ask me for my signature.” He goes for quippy and gets more than halfway there, even with his tone strained as it is. “This is a first.”
“Isn’t it also the first time a fan has ever even seen that pretty face of yours?” He sounds so damn smug about it, which Juno supposes he has a right to be. He’d played Juno like an expert, a master of his art, barely even having to make an effort at all to pluck his strings. And Juno, stupid and drunk and more than a little lonely, had tripped and fallen right into his hands.
“Yeah, about that. How’d you find me out?” Juno takes pride in the steadiness of his voice while the rest of him is in panic mode. There’s got to be a way out of this. If he could somehow dislocate his thumb without tipping off his assailant, he could slip out of the cuffs, but how the hell is he supposed to do that discreetly?
“I have my ways, dear Bruno. Or should I just call you Juno?” He laughs that beautiful laugh again, and it’s even more unfair now than it had been before. “Don’t tell me you made the name rhyme on purpose.”
“Friend of mine came up with it actually.” Friends. That’s going to be his saving grace: one of his friends might have seen him come up here, or they could otherwise figure it’s where he wandered off to. If he can keep this guy talking long enough then they might come looking. If he’s extra lucky it might even be Sasha or Allesandra, someone capable of actually putting up a fight.
Or the man might just cut his throat at the first sign of company and be done with it. There’s no real way to tell.
“As interesting as that is to know…” The knife shifts minutely—purposefully—against his skin. Juno swallows hard. “It’s not what I went through all this trouble for.”
“You sure? I’ve got a whole list of facts like that. Pretty sure the Martian Daily did a Top Twenty Things You Didn’t Know About Bruno Bronze piece once, and I spent so long trying to come up with something interesting to add to it that I have the whole thing memorized—”
“You really do go on, don’t you?”
Juno hisses as more pressure is put on his arm, the angle already causing his shoulder to ache. It’ll hurt like hell if he’s alive at the end of this.
“That’s perfectly fine with me," the man continues, "although I would like to shift the focus of our conversation if it’s all the same to you.” He sounds so casual, like he holds people’s lives in his hands every day. Probably does if he’s a hitman.
“Sure, fine. Whatever. Not like I can go anywhere.”
“Quite.” Juno can hear the grin in his voice. Dammit, he’s enjoying this. “Now, your books. You’ve been basing them off of real crimes for some time now, which I’m aware is no secret. I’ve been an avid reader myself for years, but it wasn’t until your last few releases that I noticed a new pattern.” The knife at his throat taps against Juno’s skin without the force necessary to cut. Embarrassingly, he’s less worried about the knife just now and is more hung up on I’ve been an avid reader.
Is it weird to feel flattered that your would-be murderer is a fan of your work?
But the man in question is still talking, and what he says next sends Juno’s thoughts grinding to a halt.
“You’ve been basing all your latest books on the escapades of the same thief.”
He pauses as if to give Juno a moment to respond, but when he opens his mouth to reply nothing comes out. How could he have known that?
“Even more interesting to me,” the stranger finally continues, “is how you could know intimate details of those heists that only the thief himself is privy to. I don’t think I need to make it any clearer how vested I am in finding out how you came upon that information.” He taps the knife against Juno’s throat again, reminding him anyway. “Now I doubt you would have been able to manage this on your own, so if we could start with your contacts…”
“Wait. Hold on a second.” Juno almost shakes his head, barely stopping himself before he can move too much and risk getting cut. “What information? I make up anything in those books that isn’t public record. The cases are real, sure, but the rest—haven’t you ever heard of creative license?”
“Now now, Juno. We both know that isn’t true.” The man leans in closer, as if imparting a secret he doesn’t want anyone else to overhear. “When I tell you only the thief would know these things, I mean it. I wouldn’t have come to Mars for a mere coincidence or two.”
And that’s when it finally clicks. There’s a swooping feeling in Juno’s stomach like vertigo, the same feeling he’d get dropping from the tallest point of a rollercoaster.
“You…” He can’t believe he’s about to say this out loud. “You’re the thief, aren’t you?”
The man—the Nameless Thief—lets out a pleased hum that under different circumstances would kick Juno’s body temperature up a few degrees.
“I could be,” he muses. “Or perhaps I’m simply a hired hand, a scapegoat should this all go wrong.” Juno lets out a huff, not believing that for a second. “Regardless, my question still stands.”
“Don’t think you’ve asked me any questions, actually.” Juno is even less capable of controlling his mouth under pressure than he is when he’s calm, a fact he remembers in a half-delirious haze. This is the thief. The thief. He was right all along, for all the good it’ll do him now.
“Your attempts at stalling, while admirable, are starting to wear on my patience.” He simultaneously tugs Juno closer and runs the blade of the knife feather-light over the column of his throat. “Tell me how you knew the details of those heists. Quickly now.”
Juno lets out a breathless laugh that sounds more than a little unhinged to his own ears. “I told you, it was all public record. Could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble and jet fuel getting here if you’d looked that up first. Maybe tell me what details you’re talking about before calling me a liar?”
For a second he’s worried he’s pushed his luck too far. The man behind him is silent, his grip unrelenting.
“Alright then,” he finally says. “If this is how you want to do it. The Case of the Murderous Mask. Remind me how the thief pulled that one off?”
“Murderous Mask? ” Juno knows he’s already on thin ice here, but he also can’t stop himself. “That just came out today. You already read it?”
“I got my hands on a reviewer’s copy months ago,” the thief explains, tone clipped. “It’s part of the reason I’m here. Now, go on.”
“Glass syringes.” Juno is pretty proud of that one actually. He’d wracked his brain for almost two weeks trying to figure out how someone could get into a DNA-encoded lock like that without being one the people the door was programmed for. He could have gone the obvious route, sure, could have pinned it on someone from the family, but it would have been a boring conclusion to an already interesting case. “Hid them in the door and used them to collect the samples he needed to unlock it later. What’s your point?”
“That rather is my point.” The thief’s voice has lost its teasing lilt, becoming dead serious. “How did you know?”
Yet again, Juno finds himself completely unmoored by this conversation.
“I…” It can’t be. He couldn’t have been— “Are you saying I got it right?”
For once, the thief at his back is quiet. That scares Juno a lot more than the banter had, so of course he fills the silence himself.
“You said it was more than a couple of coincidences. What else?” He keeps going without waiting for the man to answer. “The Thief Among Us ?”
“Most of the larger details were wrong, but the method of entering the homes themselves was accurate,” the thief finally says, a strange new tone to his voice that Juno can’t place. “Few things are as valuable to the rich than their pride. I knew none of them would admit to how it all really happened, letting a thief rob them blind under their own noses—but you knew that of course. That’s how you wrote it.”
“Shit,” Juno says quietly, in a bit of awe despite himself. “The Kitty-Cat Caper ? What’d I get right there?”
There’s another pause before the answer comes.
“The bomb was incredibly overdramatic, and no animals were harmed. I’m a thief, not a monster. The cloned cat, however, was correct.”
Juno can’t help it—he tilts his head back and laughs, the stars above blurry and indistinct from both the cover of the dome and his own inebriation. He’s sobering up quick though between the threat to his life and this startling realization.
“You’re actually serious about this aren’t you? You think I… what? Used some all-seeing eye to spy on you and steal your secrets?”
“I couldn’t figure out a way you did accomplish it that made any sense. It’s why I went through the trouble of finding you, at no small expense.” Juno feels the pressure on his arm loosen a little. Not enough for him to slip away, but enough that it at least doesn’t hurt. “You… no. You couldn’t have.” Juno wishes he could turn around and see the play of indecision on the thief’s face that he can hear in his voice. “If you truly didn’t know, then that means you—”
“Solved them. I solved those cases and I didn’t even know it.” Juno isn’t one to give himself too many pats on the back for much of anything, but this is really doing something good for his ego. He won’t let the fact that it’ll probably get him killed overshadow it too much. “Fuck. ”
“Yes, that’s… my sentiments exactly.” Suddenly the presence behind him is gone, and Juno almost stumbles before catching himself on the railing he’s still locked to. The thief is in front of him again, far enough away that if Juno lunged he could maybe barely only graze the front of his shirt with his fingertips. He looks to be at as much of a loss as Juno feels, even with the knife still shining like a slash of moonlight in his hand.
“You really had no idea.” He’s looking at Juno in a new way now, his gaze intense in its scrutiny like Juno is a puzzle left unsolved. Another one-of-a-kind lock to be picked, hiding a secret a thief can uncover if he only takes the time.
“Nope. I mean, I had theories,” Juno admits. “Plenty of them. I just wrote the ones that were the most out-there because I figured they’d be the most fun to read. I mean, glass syringes ? Really? Who’d think that would actually work?”
And that’s how he knows it for sure: the nameless thief, the devastatingly handsome and dangerous man standing right there in front of him, is perhaps the most proficient criminal alive. He’d not only committed these crimes, he’d pulled them off in the most unusual, ingenious ways possible. The thought moves through Juno like a shot of outer rim whiskey, lighting him up from the inside in a way he knows can only lead to regret.
None of this should make the man even more alluring, especially not with that knife still in his perfectly manicured hand.
“I can think of at least two people,” the thief in question admits, and there it is again: that smile, spreading slowly over his lips and revealing just a hint of teeth. “This is not at all how I expected this evening to go, but I must admit this is infinitely better.”
“Better than slitting my throat and leaving me up here to bleed out?” Juno says it out loud mostly to remind himself of the situation. He can’t let himself get swept away in this again. The statement is met with a blank stare from the thief though.
“Slit your—oh Juno, did you really think I would kill you?” With a flick of his wrist the knife is gone. Like a magic trick, there and then not, probably just up his sleeve and ready to be summoned back at a moment’s notice.
“That was never my intention. You would have been much more useful to me alive as an informant had you been a part of some scheme to hunt me down. But given you’re not…” The thief takes a slow step toward him. Then another, and another until they’re almost as close as they’d been sharing their cigarette kiss. “You’re still much too fascinating to kill. I could never read another one of your books if you were dead, to start.” The man’s long fingers find his jaw, tipping his head up by his chin. “And I’m rather looking forward to seeing what you make of my future escapades.”
The situation has changed so much so quickly that Juno can only blame the way he leans minutely into that touch on emotional whiplash. Yes, that. It makes a lot more sense than him finding the idea of competence and danger and competently dangerous incredibly attractive.
“So you’re not mad that I spilled your secrets for everyone on Mars to read?”
“I was when I thought I was being spied on, or that anyone other than you was taking them seriously. But this… you unraveling some of the most intricate heists in modern history with so little to work off of, solving cases the galaxy’s best and brightest couldn’t...” This new smile is almost fond. “You’d have made a rather brilliant thief in another life.”
“Or a detective,” Juno is quick to point out, earning him a chuckle from the other man. Damn. The things he’d do to hear that again.
“Or that.”
“Speaking of law enforcement.” Juno hates to put a damper on the moment, but—well. He is still cuffed to a railing. “If you’re not going to kill me, what’s keeping me from calling the HCPD after this and telling them everything?”
That smile goes a bit wicked at the edges, reminding Juno just how dangerous the man in front of him really is. “Oh, you could do that. There’s nothing all stopping you, but… there is the small fact that I do know your real name, Juno Steel.”
Ah. Yep. There it is.
“It’s no secret that you have some very powerful enemies in the upper echelons of Hyperion City, and a fair number beyond it as well. If I were to let your name slip to the wrong people…”
“Yeah yeah, I get it. I stay mum and so do you.” Even if Juno doesn’t know how he felt about the idea of ratting out his criminal muse, he doesn’t like the idea of having the threat of losing his anonymity held over his head either. The thief must see it in his eyes, because he has the gall to look apologetic.
“Such is the nature of these arrangements. They aren’t tasteful, but they certainly are effective. But you must believe that my selling you out is the last thing I’d want.”
“Must I?” Juno lets some of his anger leach into his voice. Better that than sounding all breathless and tongue-tied. “Then what do you want out of this? Anything?”
The thief goes quiet as he considers that. When his eyes drop to Juno’s lips this time, there’s no cigarette there to excuse the shift in his attention.
“What do I want…” he muses to himself, his thumb smoothing over the stubble at Juno’s jaw. “I do think it will be enough for now to see what you do with your future stories. I did mean it when I said I’ve been a fan. I was even flattered when I realized you were using me as your inspiration.”
“So you just want me to keep writing?” It’s an absurd notion, but no less absurd than the way the thief is looking at him now, the banked heat in his gaze drawing Juno in despite himself. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” His eyes sparkle like the lights of Hyperion City itself as he shifts closer, his distinctive scent overtaking Juno once again. “While thinking of me, of course. I’ll be thinking of you while I plan my next heist, so it’s only fair.”
Only fair. Thinking of him. Right.
“I think I can manage that,” he says, all the righteous anger gone from him just like that.
That’s when the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the rickety stairs inside reaches them both, along with the distant sound of Mick shouting his name. Juno buddy, you didn’t pass out up there did ya?
Juno and the thief both glance at the door before looking back at each other, their combined gazes heavy with things left unsaid.
“I do believe that’s my cue to disappear,” says the thief, and Juno is surprised by his own reaction to the thought of him vanishing into the night: his free hand closes on the fabric of the man’s shirt, holding him there for just a few seconds longer.
“Hold on, I… your name. Am I just supposed to call you ‘The Nameless Thief’ forever?”
“Is that what you call me?” That clearly amuses him, but Juno can still see the way he goes tense at the topic. They’re so close he can practically feel it.
“Not like I have another option. Also not like I could tell anybody else the real thing without putting my own ass on the line.”
He’s not sure why it matters, and he knows it’s a pointless ask. A man like this whose anonymity protects him even more than Juno’s does, a man wanted across star systems, he’d never give up his name to a lady he just—
“That is true enough, I suppose.”
And just like that, the man is leaning in.
Just like that, his lips are brushing Juno’s on their way to his ear, where he whispers two words. Just two. A first and last name.
Then the door to the club crashes open and Juno is standing alone on the rooftop, head spinning and lips tingling with two unfinished cigarettes and a pair of handcuffs at his feet. Mick and Ben stumble out to join him, and Juno is distantly surprised to see the way Mick’s arm is thrown around Ben’s shoulders, along with the way Ben is leaning into Mick like a planet pulled into a sun’s orbit. He knows that smile on his brother’s face, just like he recognizes the way Mick glances sidelong at Ben.
The real damning detail though is the smudge of Ben's lipstick he can see on Mick's throat, in a spot that couldn't have been by accident.
He knew it. Sasha owes him fifty creds.
“Where’ve you been?” Ben asks him, but Juno barely hears the question as he turns around to look over the railing. Stories down on the street below, impossibly, he sees a flash of purple turn a corner before disappearing into the dark.
“Juno?”
He presses his fingers to his lips, remembering the brief feel of that kiss. The sound of that voice in his ear, gifting him something far too precious for him to have earned.
“Damn,” he whispers into the night.