#AND the final part to the hyperion city talks back au

[smidgen-of-hotboy]

@ananxiousgenz

[nureyevv]

I decided to go ahead and indulge in a Jupeter Coffee Shop AU

 Chapter One Preview:

“Mistah Steel,” said Rita, stripping off her apron, “you better not ‘forget’ about movie night again this week. I know you didn’t miss all my texts last Saturday. Duke Rose’s new video is comin’ out and I am not gonna be happy if I’ve gotta wait on ya.”

Juno barely suppressed a groan. The white light of the back room made it hard to ignore the look on her face. He wouldn’t be getting any sympathy.

 He couldn’t stand the shows Rita watched, but she was right. He couldn’t skip out on her two weeks in a row. Leaning against the sink piled with dishes, he nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there,” he droned, casting a glance towards the door leading to the cafe. It looked as if they were starting to hit a rush.

“You’d better!” she said, hand on her hip.

Juno rolled his eyes. “What I better do is get back on the floor. Jet probably needs support.”

Rita followed his gaze to the front room where a small line of people was forming, leaving Jet unable to step away to make orders. 

“Well what are ya standin’ around here for!” she exclaimed.

“We were having a conversation!”

“Oh, Mistah Steel, you really need to learn when babblin’ on is appropriate. Go on and help him out! I’m headin’ home anyways.”

Juno sputtered for a moment, trying to point out the irony that she was telling him to quit talking. When she didn’t seem to care, he gave up on arguing and decided to go save Jet from the small stack of orders piling up. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, Rita,” he said, before pushing through the door into the cafe.

The coffee shop where he and Rita worked, The Carte Blanche, was a small store, with a comfortable sitting area and a warm color palette. It was owned by a woman named Buddy Aurinko who only trusted her store to a select group of people. Juno had somehow found himself included in that group. Thankfully, their small staff was sufficient for running the place while still having enough customers to stay in business. 

Located just outside the city, Carte Blanche got most of its customers from those traveling through their little town on the way to their jobs in Hyperion. Aside from those rushes, orders were manageable throughout the rest of the day, usually consisting of a few regulars every now and then. 

It was Friday evening and, now that Rita was off, they were down to their closing crew. Tonight, it was Jet and himself, which meant it would be an efficient, but somewhat dull few hours. Jet was a great coworker and an overall decent guy, but he wasn’t much for small talk.

The towering man gave him a nod from the cash register as Juno slid into bar. A year on the job made Juno pretty well accustomed to working with an espresso machine. Even though he didn’t drink much other than black coffee, he was comfortable making just about whatever sugar filled drink showed up on a ticket. 

Juno didn’t waste any time. He immediately started steaming milk for his first drink and pulling espresso shots. Pumping a bit of syrup into the cup he left it on the bar and began prepping the next order.

He went on like that for a few minutes, not paying attention to much else as he worked. When he finally caught up with their minor rush he allowed himself to slow his pace. He reached for the final sticker and slapped it on the cup.

Coffee with cream. That was easy enough. 

After topping the steaming cup off with  a bit of milk and sliding a sleeve on to help with the heat, he moved to the call-out counter. 

“Perseus,” he announced to the room, “Medium coffee.”

“Ah, I believe that’s mine,” said a voice from his right. Seated at the counter with a silver laptop was a dark haired man in glasses. 

The man looked well groomed, although that wasn’t unusual. They had plenty of business people come through the store, but that was usually in the morning. Besides, the way he was set up didn’t make it seem like he was going anywhere soon. 

After getting a proper look at him, Juno realized he recognized the guy. 

He didn’t show up often enough to be considered a regular-- in fact he’d only been to the cafe a handful of times-- but what Juno lacked in customer service skills he made up for in memory. 

Remembering faces had been a key part of his old job. Now, it was just another odd habit he had yet to kick. Although, he would admit his taking notice of this man in particular may have been credited, in part, to his being generally attractive. 

But, of course, that wasn’t enough to keep Juno from opening his big mouth. 

Handing over the drink, he raised an eyebrow at the man. 

“Do you always choose weird aliases?” he wondered aloud. 

The other man-- apparently going by Perseus today-- nearly choked on hot coffee. 

[feargender]

what have i done with my heart on the floor

written for @jupeterweek day 3: AU

read here on ao3 

Peter hasn’t pulled off a job in months. He’s had multiple opportunities, of course, he’s heard tappings and gotten tips from contacts. But his heart just isn’t in it, he finds it exceedingly difficult to don the mask. His fingers slip on his lockpicks, grip clumsy in a way it hasn’t been in decades. 

He can’t help but blame himself for his misfortune. If he had just turned his back on Hyperion City, the entirety of Mars, like he had sworn to himself he would, this wouldn’t be happening. But Martian elections are always frightful things and he couldn’t help but feel… concern. Juno always manages to land himself directly in the middle of frightful situations and Peter knew that if he kept his ear to the ground long enough he’d hear the detective’s name. And he had. 

Following whatever it was that occurred in Old Town Hyperion following the landslide election, Mars was plastered on every news stream for a week. 

Peter remembers the sound his comms had made when he threw it against the wall of his hotel room. The screen cracked, but the report continued out of the tinny speakers. “This election week was not without its casualties, however,” the news reporter said. “Former Mayor Pilot Pereyra has been reported missing and presumed dead somewhere in the Martian desert, along with Private Detective Juno Steel, local investigator in Hyperion City.” The comms shattered easily under Peter’s sharp heel, but the words still rang in his ears. 

His stomach dropped straight into the floor, and kept plummeting. It’s been almost half a year, but he can still feel his heart ache with the pain of it. A keen sense of loss he hasn’t experienced in twenty years. He doesn’t remember it hurting this much, the hollowness inside. A genuine, physical pain he can’t break free from. His hands shake most of the time, these days, and his words escape him. He finds himself stumbling over the details of his aliases, even when alone, never mind what might happen if he was actually in the middle of a job and needed to remember the information. 

One does not have a lucrative career as a master thief without ferreting some savings away, however, so Peter is not rendered immediately destitute. However, the well is running a little dry, so when he is put into contact with a group of thieves looking to expand their number, he’s hardly going to say no. Especially not to Buddy Aurinko, living legend that she is. She seems to know that he hasn’t taken a job in quite some time, but isn’t bothered by it, if he can assume by her voice over the comms. But he assumes very little about her, so it’s hard to be sure. 

She made contact with one of his more broad aliases, Adrian King, more of a placeholder name than anything. He has to have something of a professional reputation, but cannot use his own name, so Adrian was born. He’s very similar to Peter in most aspects, mainly in that he doesn’t share much personal information, so it will be a simple enough guise. And, if Peter is being honest with himself, he could use the company. Perhaps in working with a group he’ll regain whatever it is he lost along with Juno. 

He comforts himself with this thought as he follows the broad back of Jet Sikuliaq across the bustling Venusian spaceport. This, in and of itself, is a bit disconcerting. He’s never met Sikuliaq directly, but when the RUBY7 went missing right out from under his own nose a few weeks after his and Juno’s… departure from one another, he had assumed it had been the original owner come to reclaim her. 

Jet is not a talkative man, which suits Peter just fine. The fifteen minute walk to the rather unassuming ship is silent, save for the moment that Jet pointed the ship out to Peter. The gate to the cargo bay is open, hanging open like the bottom jaw of a great yawning mouth, and Peter can see several figures standing around just within it. 

He slaps an easy smile on his face and affects casual posture, hauling his rolling luggage behind him. His eyes take in the distinctive red hair of Buddy Aurinko and a narrower, green haired woman standing next to her, like a shadow with teeth. The RUBY7 gleams a slightly sickly shade of lime in the harsh lights of the spaceport, but this is not what makes Peter stumble over his own feet. 

The lady leaning against the car is short, and stout. His hair is dark and in tightly coiled curls, a bit longer than Peter remembers. His face, too, has more scars, particularly around his right eye, which is made of glass. But his tan trench coat is the same, Peter is sure of it. He can see the tear in the left lapel that was there the last time he saw it. 

Juno’s mouth quirks into a slightly surprised smile. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asks, jokingly. But his eyebrows are pulled down worriedly, and Peter distantly knows that he must look like the universe’s biggest fool. In that moment, whatever disguise he had managed to cloak himself in slips away, leaving him utterly exposed, visible to the naked eye. 

“Juno,” he chokes out, mounting the ramp up to the ship and dropping his luggage, throwing his arms around Juno tightly enough that he almost topples them both over. But Juno catches them on the side of the car and then wraps his arms around Peter, who has his coat held fast in two tight fists. “I thought you were dead,” Peter hisses into the side of Juno’s head, face nestled against his temple. 

The part of Peter that is a thief more than he is even human knows that they’re being watched, but he doesn’t care. If he lets go of Juno now he might die, or worse, he’ll cry. The only thing keeping him grounded, and the tears from flowing, is the feel of Juno’s hands on his back, one of them shifting a little as if to comfort. 

Juno shifts his face so his mouth his hidden from view and says, “I’m fine, Nureyev.” At that, Peter pulls away far enough to look at him, really look at him. He looks healthier than Peter has ever seen him. The dark bags and deep lines under his eyes are absent, like he’s been resting, and the shoulders under Peter’s hands are stronger, a bit more packed with muscle. For once, he isn’t injured. No scrapes, no bloody bandages, no broken bones. 

Peter sniffs, trying to regain a bit of dignity. “So you are.” 

“I didn’t know you knew Adrian, Juno,” Buddy says, eyebrow arched. Peter feels hot embarrassment flood him, but she only looks curious, and a little sympathetic. 

Juno deflects that, saying only, “I didn’t know how to get in touch with him after Hyperion,” to explain away Peter’s reaction. Buddy’s mouth quirks, and Peter knows she noticed, but she only nods. 

“I take it you can handle the tour, then,” she says, already taking the hand of the green haired woman and walking away. Jet claps Peter on the shoulder hard enough that he nearly topples, and follows, leaving them alone in the cargo bay. After a moment, the great yawning door closes, the silence ringing. 

Peter is at a complete loss of words, simply staring at Juno, waiting for him to disappear. Juno takes Peter’s luggage in one hand, and Peter’s hand in the other, leading him out of the cargo bay. His skin is warm and calloused, and Peter revels in the contact. Juno begins talking, rambling about the ship as he leads them on a rather stunted tour before heading to Peter’s assigned room. “It’s small, but it locks. Rita can override the lock, obviously, but you know,” Juno stops in the doorway, shrugging. “Uh, you’ll have to get creative about storage.” 

Peter nods dumbly, following Juno inside, sitting on the bed when Juno indicates it to him. Juno sits beside him, the door hissing closed behind them. “I’m… I’m really sorry, Nureyev. I would have told you, if I could,” Juno finally whispers. Peter suspects this is an apology for more than one thing, but what happened between them is a conversation for later. 

“I saw on the news that you died,” Peter says hoarsely. 

“Yeah. A lot of stuff happened with Hyperion, more than anyone really knows. It was too much, I decided I needed to disappear. Before Mars killed me for real,” Juno says, shrugging again. 

“I missed you so much,” Peter says, and it feels ridiculous and childish to say aloud, but it’s the truest thing he can think of. Every day since he saw that news stream, he had missed Juno. As if the very universe was darker and more bleak without his presence somewhere within it. “It was horrible, I. It’s been horrible, Juno.” Now, it seems, Peter’s body has finally rebelled against him completely, the first hot tears leaking from his eyes. 

Juno reaches over and gathers Peter against him, holding onto him tightly. Peter mashes his face into the side of Juno’s neck. 

“I’m sorry,” Juno says again and again, until they lapse into silence. Then, once Peter looks up at him, bleary eyed and face wet with tears, he smiles. “You changed your cologne.” 

Peter gives a wet laugh. “And you kept this stupid coat,” he plucks at a loose thread in Juno’s sleeve. 

“It’s comfortable,” Juno protests. 

“It’s hideous,” Peter replies, voice rough. 

“I’m so sorry. For everything,” Juno says. 

Peter shakes his head, wiping his face before settling again into Juno’s side. “Can we not do that conversation now? I think I need some time.” 

“Of course, Nureyev. Whatever you need,” Juno agrees quickly. Peter kicks off his shoes, leaning more firmly into Juno until he shifts and they both lay back on the rather narrow bed, folded against each other.

Juno sheds his own shoes and goes to take off his coat, but Peter grips him tighter. Juno smirks. “I thought you said you didn’t like it.” 

“I said it’s hideous. There’s a difference,” Peter disagrees. 

Juno laughs softly. “I really missed you, too, you know,” he says quietly, leaning his cheek against the crown of Peter’s head. Peter sighs, scooting a bit closer, clinging in a way that will no doubt be slightly mortifying in hindsight, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t want to help it, even. He wants to hold Juno so tightly, until his poor heart has a chance to put itself back together again. Until the pervasive ache in his stomach eases. Once he has that, he’ll consider letting go. 

[oneunicornaway]

Hey how about a bartender au!! Peter is working at a bar for some reason and Juno is a frequent customer...

“Sir, I’m not sure…” tried Ernest Walter asa client asked for his fourth glass of rather expensive, rather inebriatingwhiskey.

“It’s fine.” Sighed the client. “Vicky willput it on my tab.”

That was a weak excuse at best, anoutrageous lie at worse, but Ernest Walter was a mousy, nervous kid, new to thebusiness, and as much as he didn’t want to get fired by his new boss, he wouldalso have been terrified of angering the man currently standing only a counteraway from him.

“Are you sure…”

“Listen kid,” the tone of the stranger wasbrusque, but Peter could tell he was trying to look as unthreatening aspossible. “I promise you, Vicky knows me. Hell, even if she didn’t,she’d sooner come after me than after one of her own, no matter how new or hownaive they may be. Now, if you really want to, you can call Todd on me as soonas you give me my drink, but please. Please. Please. Give me. Mydrink.”

“O… okay.”

Ernest fumbled with the glass bottleseventually managing to give the man his dose, maybe even a bit more than that.

What could Peter say? He’d always been asucker for a beautiful face.

“Thank you.” Said the client, in a gratefulbreath, before downing a good half of the drink.

Peter had to admit to being impressed. Hewas himself notably terrible at handling his liquor, but the man had justthrown back his three and a half whiskey with no problem, and while his movementshad gotten slower, he didn’t seem to be nearly as wasted as Peter would haveexcepted anyone to be.

He would, of course, have loved tointerrogate this stranger, who seemed to be so totally out of place in VallesVicky’s establishment looking more like a common thug - with rough edges and anose crooked in a way that suggested it had been broken repeatedly - than thepolished clients Ernest Walter saw during the day. His cover wouldn’t have feltthat way, however, not yet, and Peter couldn’t afford to blow this up for onepretty face.

He caught sight of Todd across the room,coming back from the main public entrance. Ernest sent him a panicked glance,pointing a significative stare towards his scruffy client.

“Juno.” Todd said as he reached the bar.“Why are you here?”

“Hey Todd.” Juno said, glancing at Peterfrom the corner of his eyes. “Finished my job for Vicky. Figured I could checkout the perks before she sends me back.”

Peter carefully stayed focused on his work.He really hadn’t pegged Juno for one of Vicky’s men. If he’d had to guess, he’dhave thought him to be some kind of down on his luck good-doer. A cop maybe.Rough but ultimately kind, which, admittedly, seemed to be a rarity in HyperionCity.

But it meant Peter could now justify gainingmore information on him. If Juno really was working with Vicky, then maybe, he’dbe useful to gather the information Peter needed.

“You should go see her now,Juno.”

“Yeah yeah, sure. I will. Just let mefinish my drink and…”

Todd placed a huge hand down on Juno’sshoulder. It seemed to Peter that he was gripping him a bit tighter than was strictlynecessary.

The lady, getting more and more mysteriousby the second, sighed at that.

“Fine. Going… going…”

He put a bill down on the counter even ashe was dragged away.

“Thanks for the drinks, kid.”

Juno, Peter learned during his research, full name Juno Steel, was a former cop whose carreer had ended messily in a mysterious affair involving mafias, corruption, and worst of all, politics. Considering his previous record, though, it was entirely obvious that his demise was the result of a cover up, effective enough to attract Peter’s attention without revealing him much.

It seemed he worked with Vicky as a private investigator of sort, finding dirt on unpaying clients and grabby assholes, gathering informations on ennemies, and solving the right crimes at the right times to delete Valles Vicky’s concurrence.

He was, in a word, as clean as he could get away with while working for Vicky, and Peter couldn’t help but wonder how he’d ended up helping an art smugler of all things. From what snippet of conversation he’d managed to hear here and there - bringing Vicky her wine at just the right time, loitering around her door when he wouldn’t be missed, listening in through the tiny recording device he’d placed in the ventilation system - she liked Juno at least as much as he annoyed her. She kept yelling at him and threatening him, but from what he’d been able to gather, he was also an invaluable asset to her, and she trusted him with most of her business.

Juno was also, it seemed, incredibly paranoiac.

“So, what did you tell Vicky?”

Ernest looked up fearfully at Juno. The skittish bartender was, for the most part, reassured about the client’s character after a few weeks of not getting attacked doing his job, but Juno still cut an impressive figure, and Ernest was nothing if not impressionable.

“W… what?”

“Drop it, kid. This doesn’t work on me anymore. You’re always there when I come talk to her, and you may not look like it, but you listen to… just about everything I say, don’t you?” He leaned in, causing Ernest to take a cautious step back. “So, what do you say? Is this her way of making sure I’m not going to, I don’t know, betray her?”

He snatched the glass Enerst still hadn’t given him, studying the bartender with eyes, percing enough that Peter felt as though maybe he would be able to find him under the layers he’d carefully applied to his self.

It sent a shiver down his spine, cold and burning.

“You’re not a PI… I know those… A spy, maybe? But, why would you work for Vicky then…”

He took a gulp of his drink, still looking at Enerst through the distorted glass. The fretful man finally gathered himself enough to respond to the - frankly quite ridiculous - accusations.

“Sir, I think maybe you’ve had too…”

“Unless you’re not.”

“I… What?… Sir?”

“Unless you’re not. Working for her, that is.”

Enerst Walter was not entirely dumb, but he wasn’t the smartest tool in the box, either.

“I… am? Sir. I’m a bartender, you might have noticed.”

Peter, however, was following the conversation with interest. Juno was getting awfully close to figuring him out, and that would be a problem.

“What’s your name?”

The question was abrupt enough that even Peter was surprised.

“Me? I mean… It’s really none of your… business…”

Juno looked at him, unnervingly still. Ernest wasn’t a very courageous man.

“Um… Ernest. Ernest Walter.”

“Ernest Walter.” Juno repeated. “Right. And how long have you been working for Vicky?”

“Sir, I really don’t…”

“Humor me.”

Ernest was getting angry. To be fair, Peter thought, at this point most people would have been. Someone insisting you weren’t yourself tended to have that effect on people - Peter would know. But he wasn’t quite angry enough yet to forget that Juno Steel could very well resort to a violence he wasn’t ready to match.

“Three months.” He said through his teeth. “Now, if you will excuse me…”

“Sure. Wouldn’t want to put a wrench in your plans.” Juno winked and it was so incredibly smug it almost looked familiar to Peter’s eyes.

Peter was seriously starting to consider calling this whole long con thing off.

“Sir.” Enerst had come a long way. He’d gone from scared to annoyed to long suffering. “Are you following me?”

“Hello, Ernest.” Juno was insufferably chipper, and Enerst wanted to kick him. “I just thought I’d go to my meeting with Vicky on foot. Lovely weather today.”

Enerst made a show of glancing at the threatening clouds overhead.

“And you just happenned to be passing by my building, I take it.”

He didn’t bother to make it a question.

“Oh, you know… small world and all that.”

Juno was terrible at fake chitchat. Externally Ernest was rolling his eyes at the man, while internally Peter had to refrain from laughing at Juno’s very poor technique. The man had been - quite subtly he had to admit - following him for the past two weeks, and although Vicky now trusted him, constantly having a shadow had been a major pain in the ass.

“And I’m sure Vicky will be happy to learn that you’re keeping in form for your actual job.” Ernest’s sarcasm had still a long way to go, but it was steadily improving.

“Vicky will be happy not to be stabbed in the back.”

“Vicky trusts me.”

Juno snorted at that.

“Don’t feel too special kid, Vicky trusts everyone working for her. Doesn’t mean she should.”

“I” Ernest was starting to get fed up with the pseudo PI, and Peter was regretting then more than ever to have made him as stuffy as he was “am not a child, and Vicky has every reason to trust me!”

Juno stopped, and looked him dead in the eye. Ernest took a careful step back, and even Peter felt himself. Juno seemed like a good enough person, but he still had something of a dangerous lady underneath it all. A controlled violence that neither Ernest nor Peter really knew how to thread with.

“Your name isn’t Ernest Walter and I will find what you want from Vicky if it kills me.”

And before Ernest had any time to respond - before Peter had any time to respond - he stormed off. In seconds, Ernest was left alone in an empty street.

“No need to be so dramatic about it.”

This job really wasn’t going to go well was it.

….

Link to the chapter 2 !

EDIT: Link to the chapter 3!OTHER EDIT! Link to 4th chapter (last chapter)

Alright this is the first part! I’ll put up the second part tonight or tomorrow and the rest (probably two other parts) within the week… this is posted with minimum correction bc apparently I can’t make drafts out of answers, so I’ll come back to it once everything is posted.

[thethespacecoyote]

“A Quiet Night on a Dark Country Road”

This kid looked different. Even with his body broken by grievous injuries, Jack could tell he was taller and longer-limbed than most omegas, and his clothes weren’t exactly the fancy couture worn by the high-class mates of Jack’s associates. Plain shirt and tie and pants, like he’d just been plucked by one of Hyperion’s own cubicle farms.

The blood looked black thanks to the night, looked like something was eating the omega alive. It covered his entire body, soaking into his clothes and matted into his hair. Jack could see every awful detail as he knelt by him, hand floating out to caress the sliver of air around his skull, suddenly too afraid to touch him.

What you’ve all been waiting for...finally the amnesia AU from months ago. This doesn’t encompass all my ideas for this story, so if you wanna see more, let me know.

Jack had sobered up over an hour ago, just as the party started winding down. Jack only bothered telling a handful of people goodbye, too tired to pretend to care about the rest of the nobodies gathered, most of who had spent half the night transparently trying to curry his favor. Now only thinking about how much he wanted to be in his own bed, he’d gotten into his car and flicked on his favorite, late-night radio station.

He sped out of the city, out of suburbia, the neon lights illuminating the world around him gradually fading and shrinking as he drove further into the countryside. Someday his commute felt like a bitch, and more than once he’d considered buying a penthouse in the city for the weekdays, but tonight, with nothing but the moon glowing on the road and grass and shifting trees around him he felt as peace even as he pushed eighty miles on the speedometer.

By the time he turned off of the highway and onto the road that’d lead him to his estate, he’d almost completely zoned out—to the point where he almost didn’t see the body laying prone in the middle of the asphalt.

Jack’s head rocked violently forward and back against the seat rest as he stomped on the breaks. His spine twinged, straps of the seatbelt biting so hard into his chest he’d probably have bruises their later. He swore, smacking his palms against the steering wheel as he caught his stunned breath, before straining in his seat and trying to get a good view of the road in front of him, but all he could make out was a hand laying limp and illuminated by his headlights, the rest now obscured by the hood of his car. His vision popped in lingering pain as he wrenched off the seatbelt and stalked out of his car on wobbly legs to get a proper look.

Above the scent of blood and gas he could eke out the barest scent of something soft and sweet, a scent recognizable by instinct. Jack’s nostrils flared as he sniffed.

Kid was an omega.

…Crap.

Jack had grown use to high-society omegas belonging to new-money families stuck in old-money values, who stayed mostly quiet apart unless spoken to, who dressed to impress but do little else otherwise. Beautiful but placid, decorations rather than people.

Jack’s instinct to bust open stuffy conventions always drove him to strike up conversations with these people, just to watch their alphas heads spin, but they almost never took the bait, leaving Jack more annoyed than anything. Gradually, he’d stopped bothering to try to talk to them.

But this kid looked different. Even with his body broken by grievous injuries, Jack could tell he was taller and longer-limbed than most omegas, and his clothes weren’t exactly the fancy couture worn by the high-class mates of Jack’s associates. Plain shirt and tie and pants, like he’d just been plucked by one of Hyperion’s own cubicle farms.

The blood looked black thanks to the night, looked like something was eating the omega alive. It covered his entire body, soaking into his clothes and matted into his hair. Jack could see every awful detail as he knelt by him, hand floating out to caress the sliver of air around his skull, suddenly too afraid to touch him.

The arm looked bad. The whole of the omega looked bad, but the arm had suffered the worst of whatever’d happened to him. Jack couldn’t  make out much aside from blood and bone, like someone had taken a hammer to the kid’s forearm and just kept whacking.

The mindless anger ignited by the first sight of the downed omega just kept building until Jack’s fingers trembled with rage and adrenaline. His alpha brain tore viciously between two base needs, for a moment leaving him paralyzed as he suddenly needed to track down whoever had done thing and rip their knot clean off their body. Thankfully, the weight of the injured omega in his arms helped to ground him, and after a few seconds of uselessly gnashing his teeth and indulging violent fantasies he worked his arms further beneath the injured man, gentling him against his chest in a protective hold.

The omega whimpered at the shift, his voice stretched and broken as his body. Jack stayed still, half cradling him in his arms as he let the omega rest his head against his shoulder.

“Shhh. Kitten. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” There was a patch of hair atop the omega’s head not crusted with blood and gravel. Jack pressed a careful kiss there, hoping it might help him relax as he murmured into his scalp.

“Don’t worry….gonna get you help.”

Calling an ambulance never crossed Jack’s mind. His estate lay far out in the countryside, surrounding on all ends by miles of grounds even he hadn’t fully explored. Barely anyone apart from himself and his staff drove these roads, and even the most experienced driver would probably get lost all the way out here. At the very least, it would take way too long for any emergency personnel to get here. Jack had an on-property doctor. It was just logical.

The less logical part of his brain was loathe to hand off this omega to anyone else, even if they were trying to to save his life.

Jack propped the omega against his chest as he eased the passenger’s side door open, before sliding him into the seat as carefully as he could muster. Things went smoothly, up until the point where he tried to pull the seatbelt across the omega’s chest. A pitiful whine suddenly choked out of the omega’s throat as he jerked forward and flecked Jack’s forearm with a mist of blood.

Jack gave up in strapping the seatbelt in lieu of racing to the driver’s seat and starting the car as fast as possible.

The choking fit stopped soon, thankfully—or not, as a sidelong glance to the omega told Jack he’d slipped into worse shape, listing against the car window. In the darkness, illuminated only by the dashboard lights, he couldn’t see if the omega was awake, and only when he dared to lift the hand off the wheel and stick it under his nose could he confirm the omega was still breathing. It brushed up against his finger, weak as the paw of a sick kitten.

Jack’s instincts pushed his foot even harder against the gas pedal.

Once his headlights illuminated the imposing gate of his estate’s front entrance, Jack barely managed to keep his fingers steady enough to punch the proper code into the keypad. When Wilhelm’s gruff voice answered over the loudspeaker he took only seconds to spit out “get Nina, emergency” before he floored it through the slowly opening gates and just barely avoiding scraping the paint off the sides of his car. His tires screeched when he finally came to a halt in front of his mansion, not bothering to pull into the garage as he jammed it into park and raced back around to the other side of the car.

The omega looked grey and felt clammy when Jack cradled him back in his arms, but he groaned at the change in position and fluttered his eyelids up at Jack. Blood smeared his lips from where he’d helplessly tried to wet them. His fingers twitched, curling into his own shirt.

The broad, dark-wood doors of Jack’s mansion banged open, the warm light from inside partially blocked by Wilhelm’s bulk.

“Boss? The hell’s going on?” His voice resounded, hoarse at the lateness of the hour but servile as he met Jack halfway, brows raised as he took in the critically injured omega cradled in the other man’s arms. A snarl rebuked Wilhelm’s attempt to take the omega from Jack, a grunt of understanding passing from between his lips as Jack rushed inside of the mansion with his guard trailing behind him.

“Is Nina awake?” Jack moved as quick as he could towards the east wing, trying to keep the omega in his arms as still as possible. Wilhelm pressed a finger to his earpiece and nodded.

“Said she’d meet us in her office.”

Jack nodded. Nina might not have the best bedside manner, and some of her home remedies occasionally edged into “utter horse-shit” territory, but she knew well enough when an emergency was an emergency and required her utmost attention and skill.

The door to the office opened up as soon as they got close, the heavy sounds of their footsteps alerting Nina to their presence. The medic still wore her slippers and her hair was down and slightly frizzy, with no time to tie them up in the usual buns. Her eyes widened as Jack bustled through, falling on the limp, bloodied man cradled in her boss’s arms.

“Is real emergency, then.” Nina stepped aside and gestured to the medical table in the center of the office. Jack clutched the omega closer to his chest as he walked over, for a moment unwilling to let him go.

What if Nina couldn’t save him? What if Jack had found him too late? Fear paralyzed him for a moment as he clung to that thin omega scent filtering through the heaviness of blood and dirt, and only a broad hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality.

“Boss,” Wilhelm whispered from above him, “set him down.”

Jack swallowed, the nod he gave tight.

“Okay.”

Somehow the omega looked even paler against the med table, skin washed out beneath the exam light. Those black splotches of blood he’d seen on the road now illuminated bright, wet red, the real extent of his injuries evident. Jack moved back, his legs feeling numb and dead, adrenaline draining out of him now that there was nothing left to do but wait and hope for the best.

After a cursory examination Nina ended up calling Gladstone, the surgical assistant similarly stumbling in with hair frazzled and eyes tired. Jack should’ve expected the omega wouldn’t be fixed up with a couple of band-aids, but the uncertainty of surgery had him bobbing his leg and grinding his teeth over where he sat, sandwiched between a wall and Wilhelm’s steady bulk.

“Is bleeding very badly,” Nina told him as she snapped on a fresh pair of gloves, “many broken bones. Will do our best.”

Her sparse words and lack of prognosis didn’t do much to quell his anxiety, leaving Jack hissing and shifting uncomfortably in his seat as they wheel the omega into the adjoining room, leaving him and Wilhelm in the silence interrupted by only the buzzing of the lights. After such a stressful hour, having nothing to do and no news to chew on left Jack with a crap-ton of riled energy with no proper outlet.

“Damn it…damn it…” He eventually hissed, the fingers on his folded arms tapping out an uneven beat. Wilhelm stayed quiet, until Jack started rocking his chair.

“Never thought I’d see you this concerned about an omega.”

Jack grunted, the front legs of his chair clacking back down against the ground. If Wilhelm was merely a hired hand, he might think that was out of line, but well. He and his guard went way back, back before Jack had even clawed into the position of Hyperion’s CEO.

“C’mon. I’m no softie, but even you would’ve stopped and helped if you found an omega smashed across the pavement.”

“Depends. Did I do it?” Wilhelm’s tone was so even and gruff Jack couldn’t even tell if he was joking.

“Ugh. Just. You know how it is.” Jack scuffed his shoe against the linoleum floor, frowning at the smear of blood his sole left behind. “Instincts take over. Seeing one of them all…like that. It just happened.”

“Mmm.” Wilhelm went more quiet after that, staying as a silent but still somewhat comforting presence as Jack waited for more news.

When Nina emerged from the surgery room, Jack prepared himself for the worst even as his stomach tied itself in knots. Thankfully, the news wasn’t as bad as he feared.

“Omega is resting for time being. Very sedated. But stable for now,” Nina dropped her gloves into the hazards box, before letting out a small yawn. “You wish to see him?”

Jack shot up so quickly he nearly lost his balance. He’d been pretty tired too, but now he was wide awake as he followed Nina into the post-op room.

God. The omega looked so much better, even with tubes and bandages covering his skin. At least Nina had washed the blood off and changed his clothes to a starchy blue hospital robe.

The heart monitor beeped, calm and thankfully steady. Jack pulled the chair up to the omega’s bedside and sat, watching his chest move up and down, breath funnel in and out of the cannula in his nose.

He still looked like crap. But at least he wasn’t actively dying anymore.

“Will need plenty of rest,” Nina spoke as she checked the omega’s IV, ensuring everything remained steady. “Don’t know when he will wake up. Hopefully not very long.”

“Sure. Thanks,” Jack mumbled back, distracted by the fact that the omega was—at least for now—all right. He heard Wilhelm mumble a small thanks to Nina before she ambled out, taking Gladstone with her.

“You know…you can go to bed, if you’d like,” Jack said to his guard after a long while spent watching the omega. “I’m…not gonna do much. If I need you I can just call you.”

“I understand.” The other chair in the room scraped up against the floor as Wilhelm took a seat besides his boss, looking sidelong at him as Jack kept staring at the prone omega.  

“This guy’s gonna owe you big time.”

Jack murmured in vague agreement. His eyelids felt heavy, body exhausted from the ordeal, but he didn’t want to sleep just yet, not when it didn’t yet feel real that the omega had lived. That the stench of blood and death had finally been scrubbed from his body, leaving that light, natural scent stronger than before, even under the layer of hospital linens and disinfectant.

Jack woke up the next morning with sunlight filtering through the blinds and his head resting on the edge of the hospital bed.

Memories of the night before came back slowly as he straightened himself up in his seat. He yawned and passed a hand over his mouth before the smells of omega cleared the sleepiness from his eyes. The first thing he saw was the heart monitor, still beeping steadily. A wave of relief passed over him as he swept his eyes over to the bed, where his heart suddenly leapt into his throat.

A pair of eyes—one blue, one brown—watched him from beneath a heavy swath of bandages.

Jack started, the scrape of his chair jarring Wilhelm awake next to him. The other alpha grunted in annoyance but Jack ignored him as he leaned towards the now awake omega, mouth opening and closing as he thought of what he should even say.

“You…you’re awake.” All right, so he was just gonna state the obvious? Way to go.

Jack watched the omega’s brows pinch together in confusion. Hi body tensed as if he wanted to move, but all he mustered was a little whine of pain that stabbed Jack in the chest.

“W…where am I…?” The omega groaned, his voice sounding like it’d been scraped across that pavement too. Jack hushed him, not wanting the kid to strain himself.

“Easy. Let’s just…uh…” Jack’s mind drew a blank, suddenly unsure of how to explain to someone that they’d been found bloodied and near death on a country road.

“You were….injured…I was the one who found you…what a nice guy, right?” Jack chuckles dryly. The omega frowned slightly, but not like he was angry, more like his brain had started to struggle with something.

“I…found me?”

“Yeah.” Jack’s hand slid onto the hospital bed, crinkling towards where the omega’s own lay before he stopped himself and glued it back to his thigh. “You were in pretty bad shape, pumpkin. No clue how you got that way.”

He didn’t want to push the omega since he’d just woke up, but if there was someone looking for him Jack should probably try to figure it out.

“You got a name? Or someone we can call for you, sugar?”

That struggling look on the omega’s face only grew worse at Jack’s words. He screwed up his expression and stuck his tongue out, but a sudden wince forced him to relax into flat bewilderment.

“I…” The omega looked up to Jack, those pretty eyes lost, searching the alpha for help. “I don’t remember.”

[ernmark]

Peter has amnesia AU

This is what we’ve been building to.

 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

When they return to Juno’s car, Peter heads for the driver’s side and Juno hands over his keys without an argument. He’s in no condition to drive, even on the vast, empty wasteland of the Martian desert. 

“It’s a bit late to go all the way back to Hyperion City tonight,” Peter says, breaking the silence. “Can I assume it’s safe to get a hotel in Olympus Mons?”

“It’s your dime,” Juno mutters. 

“Yes, ‘all expenses paid’. You made that quite clear in your invoice. A minimum of five stars, then?” 

Juno’s only response is a noncommittal grunt. 

Peter drives in silence, following first the distant glow of Olympus Mons, and then the directions of the car’s GPS to navigate the labyrinthine streets.

He keeps thinking about Juno’s original plan. Perhaps the detective would have fared better if he’d gone down there alone. Perhaps. But that isn’t how it plays out in Peter’s mind: all he can see is Juno, isolated and shaking, impossibly tiny underneath what must have been miles of sand and stone. He doesn’t know why he imagines Juno’s bionic eye malfunctioning-- it’s only one of the many things that could go wrong out there in the middle of nowhere-- but Peter can’t shake the image of blood running down the side of Juno’s face. 

“A room for the night,” Peter tells the receptionist who checks them in, laying down a stolen credit card, and he’s gratified when Juno doesn’t protest. 

“A king or two queens?” the receptionist asks, not looking at him as they type in his answers. 

“What do you think, Juno?” he asks, his suave self once again.  Juno blinks as if he’s been startled out of a dream, and so he repeats the question: “A king or two queens?”

He’s fairly certain he knows how Juno will reply-- two queens, of course, for the illusion of distance. But there’s nothing quite like human touch to sooth the nerves after a long day.

“Two rooms,” Juno says instead, quiet but resolute.

The receptionist glances at Peter. After all, it’s his false name on the card.

“Two rooms,” he confirms, and tries not to let the disappointment show on his face.

The room feels wrong. It’s too big, too empty, as cavernous as a tomb.

Which is absurd, of course-- he’s spent most of his life sleeping in hotel rooms just like this one. There’s no reason that he should feel uncomfortable now, and yet he does. 

Juno’s room is situated beside his, the two divided by a single door in the shared wall. Peter doesn’t need to try the knob to know that it’s locked from Juno’s side. It shouldn’t bother him as much as it does.

Juno isn’t the first person he’s lied to; his isn’t the first heart he’s broken. What does he care if Juno Steel spends the night alone after walking back into a nightmare? What’s it to him if he wakes up and the room next door is empty, so long as the samples they collected are still there? Why should he care?

There’s a crash from the other side of the door, and Peter starts upright. “Juno?” He flattens himself against the door. “Are you alright?” He grabs the knob-- just as he guessed, it’s locked tight.

“I’m fine.” The voice on the other side is slurred. “Just dropped my bag.” There’s a sound of glass clinking against the desk. A bottle?

“I take it you’ve found your way into the drink service.”

“Hey, the invoice said all expenses paid.” 

“That it did.” Peter sighs. “Perhaps I could join you. I could use a drink myself right now.” 

He’s close enough that he can hear a hand sliding down the other side of the door. The handle turns, just slightly, before it’s stopped by the lock.

“Don’t you have a fridge in your room?” Juno asks. 

“I could use the company.”

The doorknob shifts, just slightly. “Could you?”

“It’s been quite the day.” For both of them, though he suspects he can’t say that much.

Juno makes a small sound that he can’t quite decipher. “You didn’t have to come.” 

“And leave my curiosity unsatisfied? Besides, I could hardly let you go alone, could I?”

“Why not?” Juno mumbles, almost inaudible against the door. “I go back plenty of times. Just not when I’m awake.”

Peter frowns, but he keeps his voice light. “It seems a rather long distance for sleepwalking.” 

“It’s not so much sleep walking as it is nightmares.” 

This time it’s Peter’s hand that twists fruitlessly on the doorknob. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, who doesn’t wake up in a cold sweat every now and then, right?”

“Juno--” The words tumble out of his mouth before he can process them. “Are you sure you want to sleep alone tonight?” 

Juno’s reply is almost as reflexive: “No.”

Peter’s hand tightens on the doorknob again, silently willing it to unlock. “All you have to do is let me in.” 

Juno makes a small, anguished sound, like he’s in pain. Instantly Peter is twisting the doorknob with one hand and digging for his lock picks with the other. He needs to be in there. He needs--

“No.” Juno’s voice comes out a raw whisper, almost a sob. “Nureyev, don’t.”

“Let me help you,” Peter pleads. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“Are you sure you don’t remember me?” Juno laughs as though he’s going to cry. “Go to bed, Nureyev. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

The drive back to Hyperion City is a quiet one. Between Juno’s hangover and Peter’s exhaustion after a night of fitful rest, neither one feels particularly talkative. At some point Peter dozes, lulled to sleep by the monotony of red sand dunes, and he wakes with his glasses neatly folded in the cup holder beside him. 

He pretends not to notice the odd angle of the rear view mirror, or the glances that Juno steals when he thinks Peter can’t see. 

They arrive at the headquarters of Saffron Pharmaceuticals without incident and hand over the bags of samples to a lab tech. They’re back in the car and pulling out of the parking lot when Juno’s comms beeps.

“That was fast,” Peter says.  

“That’s not Saffron,” Juno mutters. His eyes are on the comms, and on the unlisted number glowing on the screen. He picks up and sets it against his ear, though Peter’s close enough to hear the voice on the other side-- a woman’s voice, sharp and urgent.

“Juno,” she says without preamble. “I know you’re the one behind this. I want you to call your secretary off.” 

“Sasha?” Juno asks, startled.

“Our systems are confidential. If you keep digging, there will be consequences.”

The call ends as abruptly as it began. 

Juno pulls the comms back from his ear and stares at it, his car idling at the edge of the parking lot.

Before Peter can ask what that even was, Juno makes another call. It picks up just as quickly.

“Boss?” His secretary’s voice comes in loud and clear on the other side.

“Rita, what the hell are you doing?”

“I ain’t goofin’ off, if that’s what you mean. I finished the stuff you had me look into, and it all got me thinkin’ about this one movie I saw, about these two super spies, and there was this big marathon of their movies going on, and--”

Juno cuts her off before she can continue. “What did you find?” 

“Well, the first couple were amazing, but then the sequels started to get a little--”

“Rita. The case.”

“That’s what I was tryin’ to tell you,” she says. “There was an itinerary for Duke and Dahlia Rose on that flight you showed me, but nobody ever claimed their tickets. So I did some digging for those names, and they don’t exist. The addresses all go to abandoned factories and empty warehouses, and the signatures on their paperwork belong to people who haven’t been doing those jobs in ages, so I thought: they must be spies. Which is why--”

“Did you find anything else on them?” Juno asks.

“A couple using that name checked into the Oasis Casino Resort out by Olympus Mons for a night a while back-- you know, the one where that jewel thief got caught? It was all over the news for a while-- and then a month later they checked into the Seventh Star Hotel down on Lovelace Street, but then they disappear.”

An uncomfortable chill crawls down Peter’s back. He recognizes the pattern of the aliases, if not the names themselves. 

“So I looked up the credit card they used to check into the Seventh Star, and that was used to check into the Queen of Sheba hotel across town, but it was for just one person with a different name. That same card bought another spaceship ticket a few days later, but when I checked the manifest, that ticket never got picked up, either.”

“Another no-show?” Juno asks, his voice dry.

“No-- and this is the part where it gets real exciting-- I looked up the flight manifest, and the whole thing was flagged by Dark Matters. There was a suspected terrorist supposed to be on that flight, only there was this great big sting operation, just like in the movies, and he got dragged away. It was all super top secret stuff, real exciting, which is what got me thinkin’ about--”

The rest is lost in a babble as Juno sets the comms down to pull the car over to the side of the road. It’s difficult for Peter to focus on what’s being said. There’s a roaring in his ears that drowns out everything else. 

His eyes are fixed on Juno’s knuckles, tight and bloodless around the steering wheel. Finally he picks up the comms again.

“Rita, I want you to try Dark Matters again. I want you to look for anything having to do with memory augmentation.”

“But boss, the commercial’s almost over, and--”

“Just do it.” 

Peter isn’t sure if the car’s hover motors are failing or if it’s just him. 

A moment later, Rita comes back on the line. “There’s an experimental procedure they’ve been workin’ on for the past six months or so. Looks like somebody broke into Dark Matters and impersonated one of their agents. Says here all the sensitive information he got access to was neutralized, and then they let him go to test if it was gonna be useful in the long term.”

Agent Glass.

That’s what Rita’s been calling him all this time.

Agent Glass.

He tries to speak, but nothing comes out. He clears his throat and tries again. “How does it work, exactly?”

Juno catches his eye. 

No, he says silently. You don’t want to know.

But Peter has to.

“Well, they make this incision in the back of the mouth-- you know, that part that freezes up if you eat ice cream too fast?-- and that’s how they get to the brain, and--”

Juno looks like he might be sick. 

Peter’s gone numb. The only thing he can feel is his tongue sliding across the roof of his mouth to the soft palate and the cut that’s already started to heal. 

Another voice interrupts Rita’s call.

“Juno, what did I just say?” The other woman. Sasha. “If your secretary keeps hacking our system, we’ll be forced to take action against her.”

“What kind of action are we talking, exactly?” Juno asks. “You planning on digging into her brain, too?”

“That’s exactly the kind of confidential information I’m talking about,” the woman snaps. “Dammit, Juno, I’m trying to protect you. I can’t keep doing that if you keep--”

Juno ends the call, plunging them both into silence.

“Well,” he says, his voice dry. “I guess that’s one mystery solved.”

[cianmars]

And AU Headcanons for Detective Red Snowing? PLEASSEEEEEEE

Ooooooooh yes! (literally who sees this please send me even more for this ship as I love them)

Often when they go out on dates everyone assumes they’re on a double date, they are always stressing that they’re all together.

Rogers is actually an amazing cook, a few times he’s cooked for his family if he got home before them, he claims he just follows recipes but he’s overjoyed that his spouses love it. 

They chose their wedding rings together and all have engagement rings from each other (David to Snow, Rogers to Ruby, Snow to Rogers, and Ruby to David). Some idiots  people try to make out that David likes Snow best and Rogers likes Ruby best etcetera, they have no insecurities about it at all, they know they love each other fully and completely. 

They try to go out on date nights at least once a month, but mostly they’re homebodies and have ‘dates’ at home when the kids are asleep.

They’re often caught in the kitchen dancing with each other along to the songs on the radio - they are amazing gestures of love and do them constantly (from flowers, mixtapes, chocolates, dancing, to big gestures like romantic nights away at hotels).

I accidentally started to do like five for each of them…. and for their kids (I have like a million more HC honestly)

Rogers:

They all met after Hook got back from Neverland where he had been for just over a century - having reached his lowest (giving Bae to Pan) he had tried to redeem himself when he met bandit Snow, faking Prince David, and unknowing werewolf Red. He tried to distance himself from everyone and do good deeds from afar so not to hurt anyone else but fate had a different idea and he bumped into them all the time, before long they all finally realised they were all in love and formed a poly Quad.

Under the curse (not done by Regina but by someone else) they were transported to Hyperion Heights which is right next to Storybrooke. Detective Roger’s first name is Kian, he often gets it shortened to either Kee (key) or Ian (mostly because everyone kept pronouncing it differently or asking him a million questions based off of it). Once the curse breaks he keeps that name instead of Killian’s, he finally forgive himself (after over a century of making up for his past deeds and continuing to do that since) and that he wasn’t the same man who had the name Killian Jones. He takes the last name of Charming but he often gets called just Rogers like he was under the curse. 

Because he took in Alice under the curse he’s the one who understands their now growing daughter the most, and her mental health issues, despite that he wished that it hadn’t taken him so long to do it, he also totally regrets not having bonded as much with Emma and tries to make up for it but it’s hard because his baby already has so many walls. 

He and David worked together as partner detectives under the curse, he  visited the diner owned by Ruby twice a week, and spoke to Mary Margaret who he saw in the bookstore every Tuesday and Thursday night at 8pm no matter what (they were subtle like that) (until Emma came to town and it all started to change and become uncursed. He had crushes on all of them but he assumed that he was just good friends with them or desperate for human connection. 

He still has phantom pains where his hand should be, under the curse he got his new hand attachment which works almost like real hand which he keeps when the curse breaks. He only uses his hook against villains.

Ruby:

Ruby is a very logical thinking and a natural mediator, she was both a knight and a diplomat in their kingdom (as well as having the official title of princess like her husbands has the title prince). She uses these skills during the curse at her diner which lies between Storybrooke and Hyperion Heights to both run the place and the financial side and to help people in the diner solving their problems. 

She would walk around with Alice on her back in werewolf form when she was a baby until the curse fell in the Enchanted forest and couldn’t sleep, she would often find runaway near her diner in the early hours when she was starting to open it, she always took her in and made sure she had enough to eat, she did the same when Emma suddenly started to hang around with Alice. She wanted to take them in but was told she wasn’t allowed to foster either of them because she was always at the diner (plus the curse was wanting to make her feel guilty). 

She is an amazing cook and baker, when the curse breaks their home smells like baking all the time. She shares cooking duties with her spouses as they often catch up on their days while cooking. She tries to teach her daughters how to bake, she encourages 

She is a really fast runner even in human form, she uses that to her advantage as both of her girls are such fast runners and they sometimes spook and run away when they’re scared.

Because of being a werewolf she runs hot and rarely ever gets ill, but when her spouses or children get ill she has about a million different home remedies to try and help them.

Snow:

She’s a teacher in a school in Storybrooke during the curse but she lives between the city and the town, close to Ruby’s diner, they’ve been friends for as long as they can remember (because of the curse). The diner is also how they all met during the curse. When the curse breaks she stays a teacher.

She always talked to Alice at the diner but had no idea she was homeless until Rogers took her in (Alice hadn’t wanted her to know), one day she brought her a backpack with some new clothes, hygiene stuff, snacks, and puzzles because she could tell Alice needed things like that. 

She spent hours in the bookstore, becoming friends with Belle as she did, she was constantly (unknowingly) recommending books to her spouses while they were cursed. When they buy a house after the curse breaks there are bookcases full of books all around the house. 

She’s rather type A, just like Kian, she’s hyper organised which comes in positive when they are going out somewhere. She’s also very competitive, particularly when it comes to board games (she sometimes lets Alice or Emma win). 

She became Emma’s teacher in Storybrooke when Emma joined, she made sure to give Emma all the extra help she needs, she bonded a lot with her and strongly supported David fostering Emma during the curse, but felt a little jealous that she didn’t. 

David:

He was partners with Rogers under the curse and had a crush on him during it but thought it was just because they work together in what can be a high pressure environment. He also had a crush on Ruby who he talked to and jokily flirted with at the diner at least once a day, and Snow who he met in the hospital. 

He was shot the week Emma came to town. In hospital he met Snow, Emma, and Alice. Snow was volunteering there and Alice was snooping around trying to figure out what was going on. Emma was part of Snow’s class volunteering and she started to talk to him. They see each other in the diner all of the time, when he realises that she ran away from her foster home and was living on the streets with Alice and a few others, he becomes an emergency foster career and fosters Emma (while Rogers takes in ‘Tilly’)

His apartment in the city is really modern and rather big (his cursed self was pretty well off (because he wasn’t the one who Zelena mainly cared about affecting) He felt bad when he realised even the things he took for granted Emma had never had. He was much happier when they bought a slightly more homely feeling house when the curse broke (plus it meant both he and Kian could try and convince their wives to get a dog - “One that isn’t Ruby” “You’re both in the doghouse”)

After Emma moves out of Snow’s class and into a new one they find that she isn’t being helped at all and is basically ignored, they have to choose between finding a school in the city which can help her better, or David homeschooling her, or a mixture of the two.

He’s pretty athletic and is an avid runner and can even beat Ruby, he competes every year in a few marathons and races, often for charity. He lets Emma and Alice ‘train’ with him, often before they have baths and go to bed… mostly to wear them out.

Alice:

Alice was conceived when Kian had a one night stand a little while before he got into a relationship with David, Snow, and Ruby (he slept around a bit in the hopes that he would stop feeling things for his true loves). The lady tracked him down a few weeks after Alice was born and said that she didn’t want Alice and she was now his problem to “deal with however he wants”, he was not about to abandon (or worse) his daughter. He fell in love at first sight, he prepared to leave because he assumed no one would want to raise someone else's baby, but his spouses would never do that. They also fell in love straight away, Alice knows her story, and that family isn't made of blood but of love. 

Alice was nearly 5 when the curse hit and had been very excited about her mommy going to have another baby, especially when she was told the secret (that it was going to be a girl). She actually helped choose Emma’s name, out of two options (with strong hinting from Snow that Emma would be an amazing name).In the Enchanted Forest she was taught chess by her papa. She started to play chess against him again when the curse started to break when Emma came to town 6 years later. She’s really good at it and it helps her to organise her thoughts and figure out the curse to go on to break it with Emma).She was meant to go through the wardrobe with pregnant Snow but the curse fell before her Hook could get her to the nursery.She told her parents that she was going to marry a girl when she was 4, she pointed out that she was right when she got her first girlfriend.

She had been living with a neglectful couple during the curse so she ran away when she was young, she’s good at living on the street and can parkour pretty well. Emma was in a similar situation and the two found themselves drawn to each other, when Emma ran away Alice looked after her, the two were constantly together. She became a informant for Detective Weaver, which is how she initially met Rogers. She was eventually looked after by Rogers. 

When the curse broke it was rather overwhelming to fully remember her pass as well as being aware of the six nearly seven years she missed out on having her family. She broke down yelling at all of them when she didn’t think Emma was around to hear. Zelena had only cast the curse as she saw how happy Snow was when she was pregnant with Emma , and wanted to be the ruler instead. So Alice shouted (out of being overwhelmed and a little jealous) that if Emma hadn't been thought of she would never had her family stolen from her. Emma heard and ran away, Alice was the one who found her and assured that she honestly didn’t mean it, no matter what she never shouted anything like that again.

When she was a teenager she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her parents help her a lot with managing it, but she’s still getting used to it. She’s starting to notice a difference between how she feels when she’s on her medicine and when she’s off of them.

Emma:

She came to the city when she was 6 when she was fostered by Blue and George, they were emotionally and physically abusive towards her from the first night she was there, so it took her a short time to run away from there and onto the street. She became best friends with Alice and August along with a couple of other street kids.

She has autism and ADHD. She autism was the reason the people who were months away from adopting her decide that they didn’t want her - her parents pointed out that that’s not her fault and that the other people were wrong to give her back because she’s autistic. Snow (or Mary Margaret) was the first teacher to really invest in her and actually help her. 

She’s worn a hearing aid in her left ear since she was 4 and was hit by a foster mother, the same thing happened when she was in Storybrooke, only by George this time, when people had started to realise that she wasn’t living there and had run away. Tilly holy Rogers and David and they arrested George and made sure that she got checked out at the hospital. 

She’s nicknamed Koala as she’s always attached to one of her parents, particularly David, she’s a complete daddy’s girl despite claiming that she’s independent. She’s always assured that it’s okay to be a little clingy, after all her sister was the same.

She carries around her important things in a backpack she's rarely seen without, her baby blanket, a teddy, sketchbooks, pencils, her kiddie tablet, etcetera. She also always has headphones with her which help when she overstimulates.Things have to be deemed very important to go in her backpack.

[black-wolf066]

Well, You Do Have My Chin

Update: OMG!!! MY TIRED 36 HOUR LACK OF SLEEP BRAIN ACCIDENTLY DELETED THE STORY I POSTED THIS MORNING!!! I meant to hit edit, and apparently I hit delete and when it gave me the prompt to hit yes or no, my tired brain that it said “would you like to edit: yes or no”.... so here goes round two... so sorry guys. I wanted to add that i have this on Fanfiction.net now too (under my account Wolf-shadow666) but I just curfunkled everything... ANYWAY underneath is pretty much the post that got deleted... thankfully i save everything on document...

First off, let me just say. I’M ALIVE!!! It is now 8am in the morning, I’ve been working on the better part of this little shit that wouldn’t leave me alone i mean piece since 9pm last night…. i have TO GO TO WORK IN AN HOUR!!! HELP ME!!!!! *flails all over the place* I swear i can adult right sometimes… just not today apparently…. keep this in mind as you’re reading cause even though I’ve proof read this thrice, I’m sure some (or many) things have escaped my brain’s notice.

anyway….

Here is the comment that inspired me to write this one-shot:

@timetravelingpotatoast said:

All I really want from this season is for Killian and Henry to become good friends and talk about Lucy’s “conspiracy” only for Killian to ask who she thinks he is. However, somewhere in the translation it’s lost that Killian is his step-dad, so Henry just says his dad, leading to a “well you do have my chin,” commentary from Killian.

When the curse breaks they just squint at each other for a really long time.

Now, for the sake of the prompt, this is gonna be very heavily AU from season 7. This is by no means a “fix-it fic” because I really am enjoying season 7; I’m only writing this because I really wanted to see something like this be a thing after reading the comment. I absolutely love father/son bonding fics between Killian and Henry and I need more of it in my life… (Seriously there aren’t enough Captain Cobra centered fics to satisfy my craving for it). And I know that I said “I wish I was creative enough to contribute to the fandom of Once Upon a Time”, but after posting my last little snippet; I figured “what the hell I’m gonna do it anyway” because that’s what fandom is (I still feel like I suck terribly but *shrug* if you’re having fun doing it than screw being good at it, right?). (((Also something that should have been maybe 2000 words or less, ended up running away from me toward 4000 (my brain projecting my need for more Captain Cobra moments I guess)… I realize a lot of it is probably considered filler and I could have done away with it, but I kinda wanted to build that relationship between cursed Killian and Henry much like the relationship between Snow White and Emma in season 1)))).

Anyway, here’s a bit of backstory that I came up with for the AU universe of this fic…. If you don’t care and simply just want to read the story, than you can simply scroll down to the Continue reading link:

So in this AU, I’ve pretty much figured that Rumple, Killian, Regina and Emma came to save the day for Henry (Henry may have asked for Killian, Regina and Emma, but the three probably went to Rumple for help or something and Belle urged him to go). I’m thinking the timeline in the realm Henry is in moves faster than the timeline that is Storybrooke, so Henry might be 25 and not 18, but to the rest of his family only 1 year has passed since Henry left in search of his own story((((wondering if this is actually canon considering how shocked they were at seeing him so grown and I don’t believe for a single second that it took Emma and Killian that long to have a baby)))). Emma wasn’t pregnant at the time but eventually as they all stay and help the resistance against Tremaine and Drizella (after finding a way to send word back home that everything and everyone is alright and that they’re staying to help… maybe Rumple being pushed by Belle to stay and help them too), she and Killian end up having twins, and barely a year later Henry has his own kid with Ella. When the curse comes and separates them all, the curse spans the whole state of Washington (Tremaine or Drizella wanting to separate as many of them as they could and not keep them all in the same place… especially the true love couples. But they didn’t bank on Lucy remembering or Rumple finding a loop hole so he didn’t get cursed along with everyone else), so HH is the main hive so to speak but the fairy-tale characters are scattered across other cities and towns. Emma is off in one city (maybe Walla Walla), their twin daughters are in a group home in another city, Henry lived somewhere in Olympia (which is close enough to Seattle and HH), Robin (because I need Regina to be happy damn it! And I figure maybe they found that his soul wasn’t destroyed but simply stuck in the crystal, even across all alternate versions of said crystal in any realm, so he ends up getting freed) is also scattered somewhere, and Rumple, Killian, Regina, Ella and Lucy remained in HH where Tremaine and/or Drizella could keep an eye on them and make their lives a living hell. When Lucy finds Henry, and Jacinda steals his car (much like in the show and what not), he decides to stay at a motel for a week, finding the place interesting (and spurring a bit of creativity that he hadn’t felt since his failed first book) and eventually that week turns into him finding an actual place to stay once he gets to know the people in the neighborhood (made hard by the outrageous prices being asked). When Detective Rogers hears about his search, he offers to turn his den/office into a spare room (the only reason Regina/Roni didn’t offer is because she lives in a small studio apartment above the bar with the only closed room being a bathroom)…. Eventually Rumple as Weaver manages to get everyone back into the neighborhood (((he was the one to give Lucy the book. He was the one to find and bring back the cursed versions of Robin—Kevin Adams, who is a struggling lawyer that ends up helping Jacinda, by Rumple/Weaver’s prompting, get custody of Lucy back—and Emma—Danielle “Dani” Stevens, who was a sketch artist for Walla Walla police department. He was also the one to find which group home the twins were staying in and try to adopt them, since he wasn’t sure how long it would take to break the curse, and he didn’t want them staying there… Rumple and Killian might be civil borderline grey area friends, but he likes the twins and it’ll get them back to their family that much quicker once the curse is broken if he does it like this…)))) and the curse gets broken the same as in season 1 with Henry and Lucy (cause I’m unoriginal and my brain can’t think of anything else right now) ((((That should be enough of a background right? I don’t know… I’m terrible at this… don’t question the plot holes too much okay? You might get sucked into its black hole…))))

(((I looked at apartment averages in Seattle as a guideline (got rid of link since it wasn’t working)… and even though almost 3000 is very high for a one-bedroom apartment that Henry was looking for; I figured that Tremaine and Drizella were trying to weed out the people in the neighborhood slowly so they could bulldoze and improve and bring forth a ‘richer’ environment and a “richer” culture of people to surround themselves with, therefore causing more suffering and separation for those cursed and gaining something else for themselves….))))

((also when it comes to ages, I’m probably way off from canon, but these are my head canon ages for them here so… Emma was 28 at the start of season 1; Killian was 29, Regina 32. Adding 9 years considering Henry left at 18 and only a year passed in Storybrooke whereas 7 years passed where Henry was, that would make them 37, 38, and 41. With another 11ish to 12ish years they are now 48, 49, and 52 with Henry being 37ish.

tagging @superchocovian since she kindly asked me to (hope you enjoy it!!!)

Anyway, without farther ado, i give you this Captain Cobra one-shot in all it’s (step)father/son bonding glory!

Well, You do have my chin

Word count: 4203

Rating: pg-13 for my potty mouth

The din of Roni’s bar was oddly relaxing to Henry as he searched on his laptop for available apartments to move into, but after another site herald the same results, he sighed, closed the screen, and dropped his head into the crook of his arm. Was it too much to ask for a place within his price range? Hell, he was sure he could find something cheaper in the heart of Seattle than he could here.

But no, he stubbornly wanted to stay in this part of the neighborhood. There was something about Hyperion Heights, something that spoke to him, and not just Lucy’s crazy theory that his book was real and they were all fairytale characters scattered across the state (never mind the even crazier theory that he was her father—there was no way he could ever forget meeting a beautiful girl like Jacinda or be stupid enough not to fight for more than a one night stand with said woman).

The scraping of a chair across from him brought Henry’s attention up to that of the arrival of Detective Logan Rogers. The cop’s eyebrow was raised at him in silent question and concern as he sat down and nabbed the untouched bear claw from his plate.

“Bad day?” he asked finally with a tilt of his head as Roni approached with his usual beer.

When Henry still didn’t move to answer, simply groaning and hiding his face back in the crook of his arm, Roni supplied. “He’s looking for places to stay… and failing by the looks of it.”

“The asking prices are outrageous! How do you guys survive here?” he griped into his arm.

Roni snorted and Henry peeked up at her with a perturbed eyebrow raised. “You’ve seen the state of the neighborhood and the state of my bar before I decided to fight back. Isn’t that answer enough for you?”

“What’s your budget?” Logan cut in with his query before Henry could snark back and start an argument with the ornery bartender.

“Well,” Henry’s eyes shifted to him just as the older man took a bite out of the pilfered pastry. “With Seattle, I kind of figured I’d be lucky to find something for twenty-two hundred, but there is no way I’m paying almost three thousand for a place that’s barely in the city’s limits.”

“Welcome to the land of Belfrey greed.” chimed Roni as she walked back to tend the bar and the new arrival of customers.

Henry scowled un-amusedly at her back as she went.

“I have space,”

Startled, Henry gazed, wide eyed, back at the Detective. “What?”

“Well, it’s not really a ‘room���, but the den can easily be turned into one.” Logan continued, his good hand going up to scratch nervously behind his ear.

“Wha—Why?” Tilting his head and narrowing his eyes, Henry pressed on. “I know the three of us are ‘kinda’ working together, but we barely know each other. Hell, for all you know I could be a serial killer.” at Logan’s snort and raised brow, Henry rolled his eyes and said defensively. “Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“I trust you.” Logan relented simply with a shrug of his shoulders. “Besides, I have a gun I’m not afraid to use, and you look to be out of options, mate.”

Still eyeing the older man with suspicion, not used to blatantly kind gestures from others, he asked. “Can I swing by to look at your place before I decide?”

“Of course.” taking a swig of his beer, Logan gestured with his head to the closed laptop. “Now, what was it you wanted to show me?”

(***)

Walking into the apartment after Logan, Henry took in the sparsely decorated living space with a familiar pang beating against his chest. It was neat and orderly, everything he considered the detective to be, even after a week of working covertly with him and Roni. But seeing it so bare, devoid of… well, devoid of life and personality; it all just resonated with him. There wasn’t even a single picture or photo on the walls or table tops (Henry knows there are photos of Logan out there. He’s seen the pictures Roni hangs proudly on the walls of her establishment, knows that the picture of Logan and Roni—two best friends, he’s come to learn, that grew up together in the neighborhood—has a special place right behind the bar where she works). There was nothing, other than the books neatly tucked into a shelf, to give Henry a glimpse into what made this man Logan Rogers.

Walking through the 900 square foot space, he knew it wasn’t just the home of a bachelor; it was the home of someone who was just as lost as Henry himself felt. A space made entirely out of necessity rather than be made to feel like an actual home. It reminded him of his years after the foster system, before he had met his late wife, where he had had nothing of that old life worth keeping. Anything he had gained afterwards had been destroyed by the fire that took his wife and daughter three years ago, and after that he had just never bothered to start over (it wouldn’t bring them back and honestly they were all Henry wanted, not materialistic things).

As Logan led him through the kitchen toward the open den, Henry wondered what kind of past the man must have had, wondered if he too was an orphan looking for a place to belong.

“Here it is.” Logan stated with a flourish of his hand and ultimately cutting Henry out of his thoughts.

His eyes roved over the small space, at the neat and tidy desk underneath the window and the wall lined with more bookshelves and books and a single three-drawer filing cabinet.

“Sorry, I know it’s not much… doesn’t even have a door.”

Henry’s eyes cut to the older man just as he saw his good hand go to scratch behind his ear (a nervous tick he’d come to realize early on in the week). “No, it’s perfect,” He reassured as he walked around the opened room; envisioning where his stuff would fit. “I don’t really need that much space anyway.” he moved back to the opened archway and gave the man a small smile. “And privacy can be fixed with a curtain,”

“Does that mean you accept my offer?”

“If you don’t mind me for a roommate, than yeah, I’ll take it.”

(***)

A little over one month since his move into the neighborhood, and not once did Henry regret his decision (well, maybe a little; after all, Victoria Belfrey and her daughter are a force to be reckoned with… and good god did those two give him a headache sometimes). He genuinely liked it here; he liked most of the quirky people and he could clearly see why the neighborhood was worth trying to save. He also found rooming with Logan to be better than he originally expected. Sure they had their moments (like the kitchen incident that nearly gave the detective an aneurysm, or how scarily grumpy Logan could get when he’s had a bad day at the station), but their camaraderie was easy going between them, and for once after three years, Henry felt like he had a true friend again.

It was because of this easy camaraderie that Henry and Logan, one Saturday morning, found themselves planning a Star Wars marathon and arguing over the order in which to watch it (“They’re my movies, Rogers!” “And it’s my TV, Mills.”).

Somehow Henry won the argument, which found Logan sitting on the couch with the large popcorn bowl settled on the middle cushion and a beer in his hand, while Henry squatted down in front of their combined movie collection to find the first disk.

As he skimmed the neatly ordered DVDs for the one he wanted, his finger froze on a particular title and could barely contain the Cheshire cat grin as he pulled it out and pivoted to face the detective.

“The Princess Bride: Special Edition.”

Logan scowled and pointed his finger at him as he defended. “Shove off, mate, it’s a good book and a good movie; leave it alone.”

The grin on Henry’s face turned impish as he pivoted back and added as he went, “As you wish.”

The couch pillow thrown at his back did nothing to curb his mirth.

(***)

It was almost three months after his move to Hyperion Heights, that Henry managed to work the nerve enough (more like getting the quadrant that was Roni, Logan, Sabine and Lucy to shut up, and to stop hounding him to try and move on and be happy) to ask Jacinda on a date.

Glancing at himself in the hallway mirror, and trying to ignore the grinning idiot leaning against the wall a few paces behind him; he felt the bubbling of nerves roiling in his stomach as he finally turned to face his roommate.

“You’ll be fine,” Logan soothed with the utmost confidence. “You didn’t have any problems when you were flirting with her, one date isn’t going to kill you, mate. Just be yourself.”

“Yeah, be myself.” Henry snorted and rubbed his sweating palms against his jean clad thighs. “Cause any girl would swoon at a failed writer, a widowed husband, and a nerd for all things 80’s, Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Tolkien related.”

“Henry,” Logan stepped forward than, placing his hand and prosthetic firmly on his shoulders as he earnestly stated. “You’ve told Jacinda all of this already and yet she still accepted to go to this concert with you. So cut yourself a little slack, give her a little more credit than that, and go out tonight and have fun.”

(***)

It was almost six months after his move, and during one of their covert meet ups at the bar, when Henry felt a little friendly revenge against Roni and Logan was in order (because dear god, if they didn’t stop and take their own damn advice, he was going to go crazy… or take Roni’s bat and beat himself or them with it… really, he wasn’t picky).

It hadn’t been long after his and Jacinda’s first—or even their second— date that Jacinda decided enough was enough and it was time to try and win custody of her daughter back from her step mother. Detective Weaver had recommended a Lawyer from Spokane, and ever since Kevin Adams stepped foot into Roni’s bar, the two had done nothing but snark at each other.

Within the same month, a missing person’s case had popped up that apparently Weaver thought required the work of a sketch artist from Walla Walla… or so Logan kept griping to him to no freaking end. Honestly, Henry thought Danielle (or Dani as she asked to be called) a rather nice woman, maybe a little too bubbly and Chatty Cathy at times, but if Logan was to be believed than she was the worst woman he had ever had the displeasure to work with.

Yeah… right…

Denial, she is a river, and both of them are currently drowning at the bottom of it.

“So,” He began innocently around a mouthful of pizza. “When are you both going to stop pussy-footing around and ask Dani and Kevin out?”

The soda Logan was drinking and the pizza Roni was currently chewing, both ended up spat out on the table and floor, and the word vomit that followed as they tried to deny it had Henry rolling his eyes so hard he was surprised that they didn’t just roll right out of his head.

“Uh-huh,” putting his slice back down on his plate, he folded his arms across his chest and stared them both down, feeling for all the world like the no nonsense father he should have been to the daughter that would have been thirteen now. “Guys, I’m not stupid… and the last I checked my vision was perfect, so not blind either.” He cut them off before they could rush to deny it any farther. “If I have to sit here and watch you two continue with this charade a moment longer, I will either be checking myself in somewhere or Detective Weaver will have not one but three missing person’s cases to contend with.”

They didn’t try to feed him any more bullshit after that, which he was grateful for, because seriously there was only so much a person can take.

And if he caught his roommate dressed (rather nicely) in a blue button up shirt, black iron pressed slacks, and trying to rush past him and out the door before Henry could say a word with a bouquet of pink and yellow roses in hand.

Well… he could only thank whatever deity listening for small miracles.

(***)

It’s at elven months since his move, that Henry felt for all the world a content man. Jacinda had won her battle against her step-mother, and Lucy had become a constant presence in the apartment, especially since he had offered to watch her after school while Jacinda worked. He loved Lucy and her precocious nature, found her imagination beyond incredible for an elven year old and even began to look forward to hearing her crazy theories about them being cursed.

Sometimes they would be alone, with him helping her with her homework and other times Logan would be there, smiling and humoring her and her theories like they all had agreed to do.

It was during one of these nights, after Jacinda and Lucy had eaten dinner with them and left, that Logan’s curiosity had gotten the better of him. They were in the kitchen, Henry washing the dishes while his roommate dried them, that Logan broke the comfortable silence.

“Who does she think I am?”

“Huh?” Henry glanced over with a brow raised.

“Lucy,” he elaborated. “With her theories, who does she think I am? She never tells me when I ask.”

Henry snorted out a chuckle as he handed over the plate and proceeded washing the next one while answering. “Captain Hook.”

“You’re kidding.” The dry look Henry gave him caused him to roll his eyes. “It’s the hand isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Henry shrugged. “Or it could be the fact that she thinks you’re my dad.”

“What?” Logan froze mid swipe with the towel and Henry could practically feel the man’s eyes burning his profile.

“Yeah, crazy, I know.”

“Mate, if she is to be believed and you are my son; I would have had you when I was 11…”

They both chuckled at that.

“Again, crazy, I know.”

They went back to the comfortable silence as they worked, but the occasional contemplative side eye he would catch Logan giving him in his peripheral as they cleaned up the rest of the kitchen, eventually had Henry turning to stare blatantly at the man’s profile with an eyebrow raised in question.

“Do I have barbeque sauce on my face or something?”

Startled, Logan shifted his attention away from the stove top he was wiping down, and met his eyes with that contemplative expression still in place.

“No, you’re fine.” He distractedly answered.

“Than what’s on your mind? And don’t tell me nothing; you’ve been staring at me off and on for the past five minutes?”

“I was just thinking.”

The other brow rose to meet its twin as he deadpanned. “Clearly,”

Logan rolled his eyes and elaborated. “I was thinking about what you said, about who Lucy thinks I am.”

“Logan, none of that is real.”

“No, I know that… but—now that it’s been said, I can’t help but see it. Hell, Henry you can’t tell me that you can’t see it, not even a little bit.”

Henry tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at him; his eyebrows practically at his hairline now.

“We do look a little alike, mate; long lost cousins or brothers or something. I mean you do kinda have my chin, our noses are almost similar and the brow structure too…” he trailed off.

With a snort, Henry joked. “You’ve been hanging out with Dani too much, you’re even starting to sound like a sketch artist.”

“Shut up,”

He dodged and caught the wet rag thrown at him, before tossing it back; both chuckling at the ridiculousness of it all as they finished up and moved to the couch to see what was on TV.

Expect, as the days and weeks progressed (and Weaver shockingly adopted two pre-teen girls from Aberdeen that looked eerily like Dani and Logan), Henry found that he couldn’t stop thinking about it too (no matter how hard he tried to shake the insane notion from his head each and every time it sprung back into the forefront of his thoughts).

He’d often catch himself staring at Logan when the older man was distracted and—illogically enough as it was—could practically see what the other man was talking about.

It was crazy.

It wasn’t conceivable.

But damn it all if Logan wasn’t right.

They did share the same freaking chin, and though his nose was a bit larger than Logan’s, it was the same freaking shape.

Maybe he needed to check himself in somewhere after all…

(***)

Sixteen months after moving to Hyperion Heights, the curse was broken.

It had been an emotionally exhausting week beforehand, with Lucy suddenly falling into a coma that the doctors couldn’t medically explain. Jacinda had rightfully been beside herself with worry, and all Henry could feel was the crushing feeling of losing another loved one… another child. It had been the very reason why he didn’t like opening up, didn’t like taking these leaps of faith when it came to his heart and feelings. Yet he had stupidly allowed himself to get close to all these people, and stupidly thought he could have a second chance at a family, but those dreams had gone up in flames the first time and now plummeted back down from the stars a second time with the flat lining of the heart monitor as Jacinda brokenly wailed her heartache.

He didn’t feel the hand of his roommate trying to console him as he numbly watched Jacinda break down in the waiting room they had been forcibly moved too when the doctors came swarming into the room. Didn’t hear the words being spoken as Jacinda fought and then bonelessly collapsed in Sabine and Roni’s arms; her wails gut wrenching and shredding his already scarred heart to pieces. The flood of his emotions and his own tears didn’t come until after the doctor told them that their precious, precocious little Lucy was truly and utterly gone, that the defibrillator failed to restart her heart.  

It was Logan who caught him when his legs refused to hold his weight any longer, when the world suddenly came crushing down around him and nothing felt right anymore. And it was Logan who helped him into the chair; the warm presence of his roommates hand at the back of his neck guiding his head to lean on his broad shoulder. And he took the comfort and sobbed for all he was worth. Sobbed for the loss of the wife and daughter he had had to bare losing and moving on from all on his own, sobbed for Jacinda and how much she didn’t deserve to know the gut wrenching pain that losing a child brought, sobbed for Lucy who had been robbed of her own dreams, who had been robbed the chance to live and grow.

His heart hurt as he followed Jacinda into the room to say goodbye, the tears blurring his vision at seeing the white sheet lying over Lucy’s little body; so final in its position that it made him want to collapse all over again. But he couldn’t, he had to be strong for Jacinda as he was the one to hold her upright as they moved toward the bed.

Her sobs as she pulled back the sheet to view her daughters pale face tore at him even more, her words a broken, jumbled mess as she climbed onto the bed and wept onto her daughters unmoving chest.

Running on autopilot, Henry’s feet moved of their own accord; one hand going to Jacinda’s shaking back and the other to card the bangs off of Lucy’s forehead.

“I’m sorry Lucy, I’m so, so sorry.” He whispered as he leaned down and pressed his lips to her crown.

The whoosh of wind startled him and before he could right himself to wonder where it came from, the overwhelming flood of memories came next; slamming everything back into place and causing the air to deflate right out of his lungs. The watery, startled gasp from Ella (his wife, his true love) told him she remembered too, but it was the choked rush of life from his daughter, his daughter (his beautiful and very much alive little girl, his other true love), that was bloody music to his ears and heart.

“Papa? Mama?” she wheezed out as her eyes foggily and confusedly took them and her surroundings in.

“Baby!”

Everything was alright.

Everything in the world was right again.

(***)

The moment Lucy was cleared to leave; the overdue reunion of their family came afterwards. The battle was far from over; not with Tremaine and Drizella currently in hiding and no one knowing where they had run off too, but they were together again, and at the moment that was enough for them all as they celebrated at the bar that had been his adoptive mother’s home for the last eighteen months.

Henry had his wife and daughter back, his half-sisters, both his mothers, both his step-fathers and his grandfather. To say he was over the moon would have been an understatement as the din of fairytale characters and his family filled the industrial styled establishment.

It was all so overwhelming still that he had to take a seat at one of the tables; simply content to watch as he sipped at his beer. Killian soon joined him with his own glass, rum he was sure now that the man remembered who he was, and the thought of step-fathers in general had his mind venturing to their conversation once again.

It must have been on Killian’s mind as well because before either knew what they were truly doing, they were starting at one another, eyes narrowed and the rim of their drinks to their lips as they tried to see what apparently their cursed selves had been able to see.

“Man, I hope this is the last curse we ever have to face. I’ve lost count at how many cursed memories we’ve had forced into our heads at this point.” Emma groaned, yet her arrival didn’t completely break their staring contest as she dropped into the chair next to Killian; her eyes not yet looking at either of them but at her daughters who were laughing along with Lucy near the corner of the bar. She blindly but efficiently snatched her husband’s glass out of his hand and downed the last shot of the dark amber that was left as she continued. “Seriously though, can you imagine the identity crisis we’ll have in our old age if we get Alzheimer’s?” Finally glancing over at them, and realizing she had neither her son nor her husband’s attention, she raised an eyebrow and asked with trepidation. “What’s up with you two? Is everything alright?”

“Yeah love,” Killian briefly met Emma’s eyes, before he was squinting back at Henry as he continued. “Apparently while cursed, and thanks to our lovely granddaughter, the two of us got it into our heads that we were blood related; something about seeing similarities in our features and what have you.”

Blinking once than twice, Emma’s eyes bounced from one to the other, before she was tilting her head and squinting at them as well. Satisfied with what she saw, she nodded to herself, shrugged, and stated. “I can see it, especially when you wear your hair like this and stop shaving.” She grinned and chuckled and leaned forward to ruffle her son’s gel slicked hair, which Henry swatted away with a scowl as he tried to fix it back into place.

However her statement only proceeded to have them squint even harder at each other, and Emma could do nothing more than laugh at her first two goofy true loves.

As the celebrations began to die down and people started heading home, Henry and Killian simply shrugged and let it go as they hugged each other goodbye for the night (each having every intention of spending this night with their loved ones).

“Well,” Killian began softly. “Blood related or not, you’re still my son Henry; always have been, my boy.”

The smile that stretched Henry’s face, nearly threatened to split his skin from ear to ear as he replied just as softly but no less sincerely. “Thanks, dad.”

And if they hugged each other just a little tighter and their eyes shone just a little brighter with emotion, no one that witnessed the moment commented on it.

[justanoutline]

future looks good (jupeter fic)

summary: after The Final Resting Day, Nureyev keeps waking up alone. So does a certain detective. (Groundhog day! AU)

Peter wakes up. He can do it quickly again. Which is good. He’s losing any softness, and it’s that softness that kills people like him. It’s better this way. One breathe he’s asleep, and then next he’s awake with his lady’s name on his breath. Well. Maybe not his. He looks out the massive windows. Hyperion city looks as beautiful as it did when he first saw it, but, colder than he used to think. He’s alone. Again.

He woke up for the first time three days ago. It was three long days ago, where he doesn’t leave the room for more than a few minutes, with a camera set to alert him if anyone comes by. Sure, call him paranoid. But he doesn’t want to miss it if, well he doesn’t think Juno is coming back. It’s been three days.

Well, he thinks it’s been three days. Except, he keeps waking up to the exact same day. He can’t leave today. It just happens over and over again. He can’t wake up any earlier to stop Juno. The light comes in the same way. The television plays the same shows, the radio the same sounds. The odd thumping comes from upstairs. His comms say the same date. He’s just stuck.

Here are three things he knows:

He has a full 25 hours, before he falls asleep and wakes back up in this bed, in this stupidly nice penthouse (He wonders if the showy hotel scared Juno off). 25 hours means he cannot get off Mars (Juno, also, probably will not leave Mars). Juno Steel is not coming back for him. He is a master thief, and he is trapped, and it is his own fucking fault. He fell in love and gave up his name and he’s paying for it. He doesn’t regret it. He almost hates that fact. But all he can think of is Juno, and how he looked in the moonlight and frankly, he was willing to stay on Mars for this disaster of a man.

So on the fourth day, he wakes up, writes a very short apology, and walks off the balcony.

He doesn’t hit the ground. (Well, he doesn’t think he hits the ground.) He wakes back up in bed, the cold bed, alone, to the same skyline. He’s one part relieved and three parts ready to go scream at someone.

He gets dressed. Nothing flashy. Dark pants and light purple button up. A nice jacket, because Mars is a frozen red rock. It’s got pockets Juno has almost definitely rooted through, and the thought doesn’t make him feel any better. On a whim, he throws on a few necklaces that layer nicely. He catches his reflection and feels subdued. But also protected.

He takes a deep breath. This sucks. This sucks but it can only get better.

He feels better (but he avoids his reflection just in case.)

He makes it to Juno’s office. Rita sits on a chair with her feet kicked up on the desk. An old earth telenovela is playing. Rita is enchanted. (It makes him feel better, to know that she’s still Rita. Maybe there is still room for him and Juno.)

“Agent Glass!” exclaims Rita when she catches sight of him.

“Good morning, Rita,” he says, in a more polite version of Rex Glass’s approach.

“Oooh,” she says, “You’re looking for the boss!” She gives him a look and then a wink and then, for good measure, a nudge. He loves Rita. But he’s starting to get a headache. It’s some combination of the shades of pink and the decibel she feels appropriate.

“Why yes,” he says. “I am looking for Detective Steel.” He takes in the darkness beyond Rita’s little haven, and figures this isn’t where he is hiding.

She gives him yet another look. “You don’t need to be so formal Agent Glass, you can call him Juno.” Her glasses have little rhinestones on them. That’s what’s giving him the headache, the concentrated little bright lights.

“Juno, then,” he says, as lightly as he can. “Do you know where he is?”

“Oh, boss came in about twenty minutes ago. But he just some old files and went home,” says Rita. Then she lowers her voice. “He didn’t look so good Agent Glass.”

“That’s what worries me,” he says. Then the commercials end, she turns to the tv, which means the shiny rhinestones are no longer causing him pain. So he takes his leave. Looks like he’s going to have to make a house call.

He goes to Juno’s crap apartment. He has an excellent memory, and barely focuses more than he has to. He doesn’t mind. He tries to plan what he wants to say. He has no idea.

Instead, he knocks on the door, Juno, who might actually be more alcohol than water, answers. He says, “Nureyev, what the shit?” then he hits the ground, hard.

And he wakes up. Alone. And tries again.

Juno, even more drunk, answers, “Seriously, you too?”

“Yes, Juno,” he says. It sounds endearing, even though is angry. Super angry.

“Shit,” says Juno. “Well, you know what they say, booze heals all hurts.

“Time,” he corrects. “It’s time that heals.”

Juno looks him up and down, “We’ve got plenty of that too.”

(They drink. They drink for hours. They lay half on top of each other. He feels sick, and then he feels better, and then he feels sick again. They aren’t talking, but he can feel Juno breathing under his leg??? And even that’s better. So he keeps drinking. They drink until Juno is crying and Nureyev throws up and Juno holds back his hair and kisses his forehead and then, it goes dark, and Nureyev wakes back up, alone, in the hotel room.)

On the seventh day, Juno meets him at the office. Rita coos. They’re both sober. Peter is never drinking again. Ever. Peter asks, “why did you leave this morning?”

Juno says, “Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer. This isn’t a game.”

And that, that actually hurts. He knows Juno. He knows Juno has issues, and he knows how his moody detective gets when things are mean (cruel, bad, soul-crushing) in his head. He’s forgiven Juno every morning he wakes up alone. He just wants to stop it from happening again. (Not just in the context of not being able to move past today.)

But this is not a game. It’s never been a game. He loves, even if they aren’t good at it.

So he lets Juno walk away.

And he wakes up alone again.

Two full weeks, Juno walks into him, they stop, and Peter asks, “Why did you leave this morning?”

Two full weeks, Juno says something snappy, but not cutting. It’s not a game. Or at least, Juno isn’t trying to make it one. He says “It’s not your fault.” Like that’s somehow supposed to make him feel better.

Then he looks down and walks away. And Peter lets him. He doesn’t make a scene, he just waits until he’s sure that Juno is gone before he starts moving. He waits until he can no longer tell himself that any movement could be Juno coming back. He both loathes and loves his ability to compartmentalize. Sometimes it takes hours before the tears start falling.

On the fifteenth day of asking. Juno changes the script. Which is Peter’s fault, in a roundabout way. He’s waiting on the street, waiting for Juno to come. Juno is late. It’s a full hour and a half later than they usually do this. Peter no longer knows all the people who walk by. It’s new, and that in itself is unsettling. He will wait until the clock resets, if he has to, for Juno. But instead, he hears a commotion in a back alley. So he goes to investigate. It can’t hurt.

There’s a young person with a blaster. They have it pointed at another young person, who is shaking in fear. They mugger calmly explains how the other person is going to turn over all their possessions, slowly . And that’s when Peter sees Juno standing on the other side of alley. And the young mugger also sees Juno.

“You!” shouts the mugger, in a deep voice. “What do you think you’re doing!?”

“Nothing,” says, Juno calmly, “Just a lady out on a stroll.”

“Prove it,” says the youth, closing the gap.

Juno, Juno then punches the mugger. The mugger takes a shot. The second youth runs by Peter without a second thought. And, the moment that gets trapped in Peter’s mind is the one where Juno goes down.

The mugger gets a knife to the femoral artery. Peter’s pretty sure he’ll have it back when he wakes up tomorrow. (It’s not like it’s a favourite knife, so he won’t mind.)

“Juno, you idiot!” he yells as he kneels next to his love. The streets are filthy and he doesn’t care, not with the way Juno is crumpled on them.

His pretty lady turns his head, and smiles. There’s blood in his mouth. God, he has to keep Juno from looking down. “Good to see you, Peter.”

“Juno,” he begs, though he doesn’t know what for. “Don’t be like that.”

“Nureyev, then,” he says. “Ask your question.”

“Are you serious?” Peter responds. “This is how you want to go out?”

“Don’t ask it then,” says Juno. “But, I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”

“I’m used to that, love,” says Peter. It’s so much later then they are normally out, and they sky has taken on a pink colour that he knows Juno loves. But Juno isn’t looking at the sky.

And Juno smiles up at him, and says, “We can talk about it tomorrow, I’m not done with you yet,” and then he dies in Peter’s arms. Peter can feel his heart stop, his last breathe release. He can feel his tears well up, but they don’t even get a chance to fall before he can feel his own eyes closing.

Peter wakes up, alone. Again. He can feel something painful inside of him. It’s not unlike a broken rib. And he just cries. It’s like all his tears built up, and now he can’t seem to get rid of them fast enough. But then he remembers that he’s awake. He’s awake and alive, and it’s still the same day. He gets dressed. He runs to Juno’s apartment.

Juno opens the door before he can knock. He starts talking before Peter can ask.

“I love you. It makes us both fools. But I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“For fucks sake Juno, I don’t either,” he says, before he really registers the words. Then, before he realizes what he’s saying, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?”

“I refuse to deal with my depression?” says Juno, almost like it’s a question, but looking down. “And it tried to ruin my life?”

“Well, it’s certainly good to hear you say it.”

“I know it doesn’t fix anything. I’m not stupid,” continues Juno, after a deep breath. “And, neither are you. I trust you, which is new.” He looks up to make eye contact. “But I like it. I’m not going to always get it right. But I’m going to try.”

“Juno, I, I don’t know what to say,” he says. Juno smiles, that beautiful smile, and lifts himself on his toes and kisses Peter.

“That works,” says Peter, when they come up for air. When he looks in Juno’s eyes, it’s like falling in love all over again. So they’ll make it work.

The next morning, Peter wakes up without any clothes on, a petulant detective imitating a octopus, in a crap apartment. He wakes up home.

“I love you,” he says, to the sleeping figure. He debates trying to see if Juno has any food around, if he would be impressed by crepes, and a thousand other little details. Juno, in response, latches on tighter.

“Alright,” he says, to his love, already excited by the chance to wake up together. He likes the look of tomorrow.

[ernmark]

Oh man, that Peter has amnesia au is killing me slowly in the best way. Any chance we could get more?

I take it you guys enjoyed that one, then?

Part 1 | Part 2 

Peter stares at the door long after it slams in his face, clutching the envelope like a lifeline.

This shouldn’t bother him. It might be slightly embarrassing, perhaps, but it shouldn’t bother him. It shouldn’t matter.

His chest shouldn’t splinter when he hears a broken sob through the thin walls. 

It’s jut a con, after all, if one that went sour a little too quickly. He got what he needed, and now he can move on. He doesn’t need to linger on Mars for long– a few quick heists, and then he can be on his way. The faster he gets to work the faster he can leave.

No matter how often he tells himself that, he can’t seem to make himself listen, even when he leaves the apartment building behind him.

Instead he wanders aimlessly through the streets of Hyperion City, lost in thoughts that keep drifting back to Juno Steel. It was wrong what he did to the lady, of course, but when has that ever stopped him before? When has he ever spared a second thought for such trite niceties? Why should Juno Steel be any different from anyone who’s come before?

Hours pass in contemplation, until he’s thoroughly walked off the breakfast Juno made him (did he already suspect, when he put that meal together? Or did he prepare a breakfast with the hope of sharing more in the near future? Peter isn’t sure which is worse). His stomach is starting to growl, and so he follows his feet down an out-of-the-way avenue. He doesn’t even know why he’s going there– this is a warehouse district, not any place that might serve food. And yet there it is, nestled between a truck rental and a storage facility: a Brahmese cafe. 

It’s an odd stroke of luck– perhaps he smelled it without noticing?– even moreso when he finds that they actually make quite excellent plumb rolls. It’s always a chore to find a place that can make them properly. 

It’s the taste of home that does it. He put Brahma behind him, and he can do the same for Juno Steel. And so, emboldened, he takes out the envelope and finally takes a look.

And then stops chewing.

That can’t be right. Because the date Juno wrote down is next week. Peter would assume that they’re merely coming up on the anniversary of the event, if Juno hadn’t included the year. This year.

Is this part of Juno’s fixation? Is he really so deranged that he got the year wrong? Though he isn’t– no matter how much Peter wants to believe that Juno’s some kind of stalker, he knows beter. Could it be some kind of code, then? A reference to something else? A warning? 

Peter glances at the calendar on his comms to see if it corresponds with something– but the year is off on his comms, too. 

He rises from his chair and grabs a neighborhood newspaper from the front of the store. It’s there, too: the wrong year. Perhaps Mars is off– some kind of overzealous tribute to Old American Daylight Savings Time? 

Or perhaps it’s more simple than that: he’s wrong. 

Yes. That must be it. He must just have the year wrong. Maybe he’s been travelling so long that his internal calendar is off. Yes. It’s just the travel getting to him. He’s probably been writing down the wrong date for ages. He does a quick internet search for his last heist, just to recalibrate his expectations– but it’s oddly difficult to find. He has to do some digging before he finds the headlines, buried under far too much old news. It was an excellent heist– it should have made headlines. It should have shocked the archeological community for weeks, at least. 

And then he finds the headlines, like a fossil under too much sand: ancient history.

The year on the article is precisely the year he thought it was: last year. It’s a year old. But that can’t be right. He pulled that heist days ago. 

But a second news feed corroborates the story, and then a third, and a fourth. And then, as all news streams will, they tire of the story and move on to something more interesting. And while that happened, he was counting his money from a newly-fenced golden record on his way to Mars. The journey should have taken a little more than twenty-six hours, perhaps another one or two if he accounted for security and delays.

Somewhere in the course of that flight, he lost a year.

Peter checks the date on his comms again, almost compulsively. It’s irrational, he knows– the only time he’s losing is the handful of hours he spends asleep, though the dreams are fitful and they don’t do anything to calm his fraying nerves. 

He’s searched for every database, every system, every social media stream, and all of them come up empty. Of course, if he was easy to find he would be long dead by now. And yet there has to be some trace, somewhere. But there’s nothing. No matter how he looks or where he turns, there’s nothing. He might as well not have existed at all, and that frightens him in an entirely new way.

Frantic and thorough, he checks every lead, cross-references every alias, until he’s exhausted every option.

All but one.

And so he pockets his comms and takes a deep breath, and he opens the door of the Juno Steel Detective Agency.

The secretary greets him with a throaty giggle. “Hello again, Agent Glaaaaaaass.”

He doesn’t recognize the name, and so he has no persona to attach it to, but he makes do with what he can. She is charmed, and so he is charming. 

He sweeps into a bow to hide his glance at her name plate. “My dear Rita, we meet again.”

It’s the right tactic, judging by the way she giggles. “Are ya here to see the boss?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Is he available?”

“He says he ain’t, but you go ahead. He could use a good case to cheer him up.” 

Peter raises his eyebrows into a caricature of concern. “Is he alright?”

“Sometimes he just gets like this,” she says. “But it’s been pretty bad lately. I think maybe somethin’ happened, but don’t try and ask about it. That just makes him mad.” 

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” 

She taps something into her keyboard and the door slides open to reveal a glowering Juno Steel. To be perfectly honest, Peter’s surprised to find the detective at his desk. Given how things ended last time they met, he half expected Juno to try climbing out of his window to avoid this conversation.

But Juno is past trying to run. His bionic eye flashes dangerously. “I told you to get the fuck away from me.”

Peter steps closer, and the door slides shut behind him. “Juno, I know you’re upset–”

“This conversation is over. You have ten seconds to turn around and walk back out that door, or I’m throwing you out the window.”

“Juno–”

“Five seconds.”

This isn’t working. So Peter tries something different. “Four years ago, I stole the collected notebooks of Jasmina Seth Hill from a museum on Perseii Four. The curator of the exhibit was Ruslan Clemens Lawerenz, and their assistant was Eiríkr Barker, who was smuggling weapons to the resistance. On the night I went to steal the notebooks, the head of security was Éimhín Lefèvre, and the other members of her shift were Fionnghuala Kozlowski, Bearach Langdon, Den Phoebe Vigo, and Antonina Chaves, and every sixteen minutes they went on their rounds in two pairs while one remained at the security terminal. The passcodes I used to get in were, in order, Alkatraz, 4869974351, and password1234. The floor plan–”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Juno demands– and probably for the best, because all of that was a mouthful. 

“If I’d forgotten the slightest detail, my life would have been over,” Peter says firmly. “My life and my livelihood depend on my memory.” 

“And you were so busy keeping track of the important stuff to bother remembering me.” He’s already reaching for the panel at the door, and a chill goes down Peter’s spine. For an irrational moment, he’s certain that if Juno shuts that door between them, he’ll never see the detective again.

“You’re not all I forgot, Juno,” he blurts out. “I’m missing time.”

“Try putting down the bottle. That’s what they tell me.” 

Juno isn’t even looking at him anymore, and it sends a flare of desperation through his blood. “Dammit, Juno, something happened to me, and you’re my only hope of finding out what it was. I need your help.”

For half an instant, that seems to get through to him– but only for that half an instant. Just as quickly, Juno’s resolve hardens. “Not my problem.” 

“I’ll pay you.” 

Juno’s eyes narrow. “I don’t want your money.” 

Of course not, not when Juno can afford a bionic eye. But Peter is desperate. If Juno walks away from him now, he might never get another chance to find out what happened. So he tries again: “It’ll make us even.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Juno says. The sudden stiffness in his spine says otherwise.

“For whatever it is you did to me. That thing you’ve been blaming yourself for all this time. Do this for me, and we’re even.”

It’s a gamble, and Peter knows it. The muscles tighten in Juno’s arms; his hands ball into fists. Push too hard, and Peter will be walking out of here with a concussion. “You said you forgave me for that.”

“But that isn’t enough for you, is it?” Peter presses. “Not when I don’t remember what I forgave you for.”

“Because you were just telling me what I wanted to hear.”

“You’ve already made your apologies, Juno. Perhaps this will give you closure.”

Juno grunts. “Who needs closure when you have scotch?” He pauses, waiting for a reply. 

Peter isn’t sure exactly what he’s expecting-- a laugh at his sad little joke? Further protests? Begging? A desperate confession of love that they both know is a lie? 

Peter stands his ground, utterly silent, as the seconds tick away between them. Whatever it is Juno’s after, he can’t give it to him. 

Finally Juno sighs. “Goddammit. Fine.” He reaches into his desk, and for a moment, Peter expects to see him pull out a bottle. Instead it’s a notebook and a pen. “Sit down, Nureyev. I’m taking your case.”

[ernmark]

I just re-read the Juno-was-briefly-still-a-cop au, and was wondering if we could get another chapter. Maybe him figuring out what the egg is? Or Peter's perspective on the time they've spent together? Or whatever you feel like, honestly. I just love that au a lot.

So this is actually an old ask that was re-asked recently, but the reminder got my brain working and I’m finally able to fill it.

 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

I used to think of myself as a gentleman thief; now I’m starting to doubt I’m either.

A gentleman would walk Juno to the terminal, leave him with a fond farewell and something to remember me by. A thief would have the sense of self-preservation to get on that spaceship with him. 

Instead, I leave Juno on the steps of the spaceport and drive away without a second glance. I can’t look back. I don’t dare. If I do, my resolve will break and I’ll sweep Juno off his feet and into the stars.

The need to turn back leaves an ache in my chest. I want to do it. I could do it. It would be so very easy.

All it means is leaving Miasma to take the Egg of Purus for herself. I’ve met the woman; I’ve seen how she interacts with the world around her. With a weapon like that in her hands, all of Mars is at risk– perhaps all of the Solar system. If I leave now, I leave millions upon millions of lives in her hands.

I wouldn’t be affected, of course. I would get Juno and myself far out of harm’s way. He would have no way of knowing that I had prior knowledge of the tragedy, and even if he found out, he would tell me that there’s nothing I could have done.

Not because it’s true, of course, but because I can tell any story to paint myself in the best light. 

But I’ll know.

And so I stay. I can’t be certain if I’ll succeed, but I have to try. I don’t think I can live with myself if I don’t try.

It’s going to be difficult– it would be so much easier if I had a partner, but I had no allies on Mars except for Juno, and I won’t put him in this kind of danger. Better for him to be safe and happy somewhere far away from here. If I survive this, then I’ll find him again. I can take him on a whirlwind tour of the festivals of Orcinus, and we can be the saviors or the scourges of the Tau Ceti system, depending on how we feel. We can do all the things we planned. And if I don’t…

If I don’t, then I’ll know I made the right decision to leave him behind.

I drive through the martian desert until I hear a signal from the metal detector strapped to the outside of my car. 

It’s a fairly long drive from Hyperion City to the Oasis Casino, at least by local standards, and most of it is through empty wasteland. When the metal detector strapped to my car goes off, I know there’s not much chance of it being anything but the track of the Utgard Express. A bit of digging at the source of the signal proves me right, and I bury a remote signal disruptor along the track. With the push of a button, I can bring the whole thing to a halt, if only for a few seconds. It’s not long enough for me to board the train, especially if it’s somewhere on the other side of the planet at the time, and it certainly won’t go unnoticed, but it might give me the chance to get off.

Boarding the train remains a puzzle; fortunately, I know a man who’s solved it.

Brock Engstrom may be a second-rate pickpocket, but he’s been in this game too long to write anything down, especially not something as valuable as the way onto the Utgard Express. 

I would know; I’ve already searched his suite.

“How do I get onto the Utgard Express?”

“What is your name?”

“Pass.”

I’m desperate enough to consider less wholesome methods of getting my information out of him, but that won’t be worth much; if he lies, there’ll be no way for me to know until it’s too late, and I won’t have a chance to question him a second time. 

“What is your name?”

“How do I get onto the Utgard Express?”

“Pass.”

My best bet is to win the information from him in a game of skill. Not the card game, of course– with the way he’s cheating, I don’t stand a chance at another winning hand for the rest of the evening– but by catching him in a lie and forcing his hand that way. But even if I’m not playing to win, it takes all my faculties just to keep up with the game; every time my eyes rise from the cards, Engstrom speeds the pace. Whatever he’s doing is lost on me.

“How do I get onto the Utgard Express?”

“What is your name?”

“Pass.”

I’m going to lose.

If I explain my situation, he’ll flee Mars without giving me the information I need. If I threaten him, his bodyguard will kill me. If I drug him, she’ll kill me. If I go after her first– well, that’s another game entirely, and not one I’m any more equipped to win.

“What is your name?” 

“How do I get onto the Utgard Express?”

“Pass.”

His thin lips peeled back from his teeth, almost skull-like. “That’s enough, Rose. I was under the impression that you had either the courage to play or the decency to admit your cowardice. I was wrong on both counts.”

I know without seeing it that my smile is unconvincing. “Come now. Don’t tell me you’ve given up that easily.”

“I’m only giving up on this colossal waste of time,” he growls. “I will give you one final chance, Rose. One last hand. After that, I’m afraid I have other obligations to which I must attend.”

Behind him, the door opens, revealing a nervous bellhop with a keycard. The bodyguard looks up, but Engstrom’s eyes are on me.

“How do I get onto the Utgard Express?” I ask.

His counter carries all the weight of a guillotine. “What is your name?” 

There’s nothing for it. I take a breath. 

“There you are, Rose!” My thoughts derail as Juno Steel strides into the room with all the swagger of a dirty cop about to make a clean getaway. “I hope you’ve been keeping this old asshole entertained.”

Across the table, Engstrom rises from his chair. “Who is this buffoon and how did he get in here? Valencia–”

“Whoops, almost forgot to introduce myself.” Juno flashes a grin. “Detective Juno Steel. I’m with the Hyperion City Police.” 

Engstrom’s eyes harden. “You think you can just march in here like you own the place? You termites may have the run of that lousy hellhole, but we’re in the Oasis. You have no jurisdiction here.”

“Jurisdiction?” Juno snorts. “What, do you think I’m here to arrest you or something? No, I’m here to make you an offer.” He flashes a deadly smile. “Mayor Pereyra sends their regards.” 

The ire drains from Engstrom’s face. “Pereyra? What do they have to do with this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask. I don’t know exactly what Juno’s doing, but he’s given me enough openings to back him up. “They’re the reason we’re here.”

“March twenty-ninth, was it… eight years ago?” Juno grabs a chair and flips it around, throwing his arms over the back. “That awkward little hit-and-run, do you remember it? Left four people hospitalized. Could’ve gotten you in some real trouble, especially with the kind of stuff they found in your trunk. It was awfully generous of the mayor to make all that go away. They did you a real favor. And now they’ve sent us to collect.”

“You can’t be serious,” Engstrom sputters, rising from his chair. “That was settled years ago–”

Juno answers in something just short of a singsong. “That’s not how Pereyra tells it.” With an easygoing shrug, he pulls out his comms. “But hey, if you’re not interested, I’m sure they’ll understand.” He taps in a few numbers into the keypad, then pauses thoughtfully. “By the way, about that parking ticket last June…” 

I have no idea what that means, but I recognize a threat when I hear one. I also recognize that Juno is unfairly attractive when he’s in the midst of a con. 

Engstrom’s hands are wrapped around the edges of the table, so tight his knuckles are white. He looks a few misplaced words away from flipping it over on us, cards and all. “What… the hell… does Pilot want?” 

Juno signals me with a flick of his eyes, and I answer for him. “Isn’t it obvious?They want to make a withdrawal from the Utgard Express. We need your information to make that happen.”

“If that pastel-wearing politician thinks I’m going to give up the score of a lifetime–”

“Give it up?” I titter, as if the notion is hilarious. There’s only so far we can push Engstrom before he decides he would rather die with the secret. “We aren’t here to take the score from you, Engstrom. We’re here to invite you to join us. The mayor has their eye on a very particular prize; the rest is yours for the taking.” 

My mind is awhirl as I guide Juno back to my hotel room, but I push the warring emotions under the surface. Even when we’re in the relative safety of the room, I hold on to that calm facade. 

“I won’t pretend I’m not surprised,” I say, hanging up the suit jacket of my latest disguise. “I thought you would be halfway out of system by now.”

Juno’s confident swagger falls away, leaving behind a surly glare. “I changed my mind.”

“If you were going to miss me so much, you should have said something.” 

“You mean like you should have said something about your score?” The accusation in his tone stings, but I flash a weak smile.  

“I did, as a matter of fact.” 

It’s a shadow of our early time together, when he was all crossed arms and hunched shoulders and I spent half my time trying to defuse his suspicion.

What happened to the rest of it? The comfortable chatter over research, the closeness of a shared bed? Or did I leave that behind when I left him at the spaceport?

It’s a scene I don’t have the energy to play. The card game was exhausting in its own right, but I haven’t slept since I last saw Juno, and I’ve spent most of that time contemplating my own mortality. 

“You were talking about the Egg of Purus like it was goddamn Faberge. You never mentioned it was a bomb. Jesus, it wiped out an entire goddamn species. Do you have any idea what could happen if the wrong person got their hands on that thing?”

His fury scrapes over my raw nerves. “Do you think I don’t know that?” I hiss. “My employer is deranged, Juno. I can’t let her get her hands on this.”

“Then why the hell are you trying to steal it? It’s in the galaxy’s most secure vault. Why not just leave it there and walk away?”

“Because you don’t know her like I do. She’ll stop at nothing until she gets what she wants. If I don’t steal it for her, it’s only a matter of time before she finds someone else. The only way to keep it out of her hands is to find it first and destroy it.”

“And you couldn’t just tell me that?” Juno demands. “Dammit, I could have helped you. We could have worked on something together, instead of– what even was that back there? Was letting him cream you part of your big strategy?”

“No. It wasn’t.” I don’t need any more reminders of my failures. I don’t need any more reminders of how much I need him. “I appreciate your help, Juno, but you should get back to the spaceport. I can handle myself from here.”

“Engstrom is going to expect me to come with you on that train.”

“He knows we’re working together. I’m sure he won’t find it suspicious.”

“And if he brings that lady with the cigarette, then they’ll have you outnumbered. If you think for a second that they’re going to just let you walk away with the Egg–”

“I can handle it.” My voice is strained. What I can’t handle is any more of this conversation.

He takes a step toward me. “You probably can, but you’re not going to. I’m part of this. I want to see it through.”

He’s too close. Too close to the job, too close to Miasma. Standing here in this hotel room, inches away, he’s too close to me. 

If he doesn’t get out now, I might never let him go. 

“You don’t understand what you’re getting into.” It’s such a feeble resistance. “You don’t know this woman like I do. She’s dangerous. She’ll kill you if she gets half the chance.”

“All the more reason for me to stick around.”

“Juno, please, just go.” I’m begging now, and I don’t even have the energy to care. “I promised I would get you off Mars safely, and–”

“No,” Juno says. “You promised you would take me with you. And I’m going to hold you to it.”

[ernmark]

That newest soulmate au with the body-swapping is magnificent. I'm super curious how they would both react once they finally met, and if it would be at the same time as Murderous Mask, or if Peter would give in and look for Juno sooner.

So apparently that fic struck a chord.

In case the previous installment didn’t convey the message, this is not a super happy story. Unhealthy coping mechanisms and unhealthy relationships ahoy.

The previous chapter is here.

Juno steps out of the car, and his gaze sweeps the crowd. Hyperion City is the largest colony on Mars, after all; there’s always a crowd, and there’s always something to catch his eyes. Maybe he looks at the gathered people for too long, though. When he glances back, Sam is watching him with a familiar expression.

It’s not a happy look.

“So,” he says, shutting the car door with a bit too much force. “See anyone interesting?”

“A purse snatcher and a little old lady who’s talking to a streetlight,” Juno says without missing a beat. He’s learned the hard way that hesitating makes him look like he’s hiding something. Then Sam will want to know what he’s not saying, and being entirely blunt will just make him look like even more of a liar, and it’ll turn into another fight, and Juno will spend the rest of the night either feeling like shit or trying to fix it, and he really does not have the energy for this.

Okay, sure, so giving his soulmate his contact information was a shitty move. Telling Sam what he’d done was supposed to make it right, so it wouldn’t be some big secret between them. Instead it’s ruined everything.

No, he tells himself. Not everything. This is all going to blow over eventually– he just needs to give Sam some time. He’s only even acting like this because he’s nervous. Pre-wedding jitters. Everyone gets them, right?

After all, that’s what made Juno write that note. It doesn’t mean anything.

Nope. Nothing at all.

Peter looks at his watch. Four more hours before the guards change. Three and a half before he can safely arrive at the museum without attracting attention.

He doodles absently, trying to fill the time, but the minutes stretch and slow like he’s too close to a black hole. One by one he fills the sheets of the complimentary notepad, and one by one he rips them off and crumples them in his pockets, until there’s just one left.

He looks at the blank page for far too long. This hotel isn’t part of the same chain as that other one, but it seems they get their gift items from the same company. The dimensions of the notepad are the precisely the same, as is the color of the paper, the shine of the ink. The logos aren’t even all that different.

If he squints, he could picture a series of words here, written in a messy hand. A message that begins with Juno Steel and ends with Hyperion City, Mars.

It’s still tucked into his old passport, along with a comms number and an email address.

His fingers hover over the hidden seam in his coat.

Perhaps composing a letter could fill another hour or two.

Instead he grabs the last blank sheet off the pad of paper and crumples it into a ball.

This case is driving him insane– no matter how hard he beats his head against it, his only breakthrough is the nagging feeling that he’s missing something obvious, and he would catch it if he was just a little smarter, a little faster, or hell, if he slept a little better.

But he’s barely sleeping at all. Most mornings he wakes up on the couch with a back that feels like it’s trying to crawl out of his body; on the few nights he actually sleeps in bed, the silence on the other side is so stony that he can’t do anything but lie awake and think about trying to reach over and fix this.

He’s not sure which one is worse.

He just has to hold on a little longer, he tells himself. Just until the wedding, and then everything’s gonna go back to normal.

Peter’s had too many drinks. He knows it.

But he has to get chummy with Abisai Villa, and the best way to do that is to get drunk together. And it’s working– of course it’s working– but now Peter’s laughing too loud, smiling too wide, and sharing too much about things that are far too personal.

“So then it happens, right?” he slurs. “It’s my twenty-first. I wake up, and there I am in his body, right? Only then I look over, and there’s another man!”

“No!” Villa gasps. If nothing else, xe’s a good audience.

“And more than that– there’s a ring on his finger! My– my fuckin’ soulmate–” He’s going to be sick. “He went and got engaged!”

“The bastard!”

“I know!” The room is spinning, but at least Villa looks like xe’s ready to die for Peter. “And y’know the worst part?”

“It gets worse?”

“It does! I wake up the next day, right? Back here, ready to put this– this whole mess– behind me. And he leaves me his fuckin’ number.” The wail of protest from Villa is too satisfying for Peter’s own good. “What am I supposed to do? Call him up and– and ruin his life? ‘Hi, gorgeous, how about you drop everything and come travel the galaxy with a complete stranger?’ I can’t do that to him.”

“Would you, though?” It’s amazing how somebody that drunk can have such a knowing look on xir face. “If he left you his number, it’s for a reason.”

“Sure. He made a mistake.”

“Then one call can’t hurt.” Villa leans closer. “Do you still have the number?”

Even drunk, Peter can recite it perfectly. He’s looked at it too many times to purge it from his memory.

“Try it. Give him a call.”

Drunk on too many cocktails and Villa’s prodding, he pulls out his comms and enters the numbers, one by one.

Juno Steel, that beautiful bastard. He’ll give him a piece of his mind. He’ll tell him– he’ll tell him–

His finger hovers over the last digit. He’s pretty sure he isn’t actually sober, but the rush of adrenaline coursing through his system definitely feels like it.

Villa stares at him, all excited anticipation. One more digit and he’ll hear Juno Steel’s voice.

“What are you waiting for?” Villa asks.

“I–” Peter’s hands shake. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

He rushes into the alley to throw up; Villa follows behind him– but not so close that xe sees Peter delete the number off his comms.

“I’m with you, aren’t I?” Juno’s almost shouting. “I’m marrying you.”

“Yeah,” Sam snarls. “Because this other guy hasn’t turned up yet.”

“Even if he did, I’d still choose you. We’ve been together for years. Whatever this is, it can’t compete with that.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Sam’s hand closes into a fist– and then uncurls. “You know what? No. I’m done competing.”

And before Juno can say thank you and can we just move on, then?, Sam rips the floor out from under him.

“The wedding is off.”

“What? No. What are you talking about?” Juno scrambles. This can’t be happening. It can’t be happening.

“Why should I go through with it? So I can spend the rest of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop? Or so I can get all cozy with you and then have some– some actor or whatever sweep in and break up everything?”

Juno grabs Sam’s hand. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“You called them here.” 

“It was a mistake, okay? Just a mistake. I swear, that’s all it was. I would never– please, Sam, don’t do this. Sam, I’m begging you–” There are tears in his eyes. “Don’t do this, Sam. I love you.”

But Sam doesn’t look angry anymore. He just looks tired. “I should have done it a long time ago. It’ll be better this way.”

Peter never does throw away that passport.

Juno never does throw away the wedding gown.

He keeps telling himself he will, any day now.

He spends a lot of time trying to bust himself out of his slump– tries visiting bars and strip clubs and the shadiest parts of town to pick fights with strangers.

It almost helps.

There’s a jewel that Peter’s had his eyes on for years now. It’s pure coincidence that it’s going to be on Mars in the coming weeks. In Hyperion City, specifically.

He touches the secret pocket that hides his passport, and he doesn’t feel it pull at his fingers like a neutron star. Enough time has passed. He’s sure of it.

He can go to Mars without the fear of not coming back.

When he arrives, he makes no attempt to seek out his soulmate– there’s no point of that anymore. Instead he does what all thieves do, and he collects information. Part of that involves following the head of security to her favorite bar.

But all his plans fall out of his head when he steps through the doors. There–slumped over the bar, his eyes downcast, his fingers tracing circles around the rim of his glass– is Juno Steel.

[ernmark]

Jupeter Soulmate AU where on the younger's 21 birthday (It's canonically Peter!! :D) Soulmates wake up in the other's body for 24 hours.

This one’s especially fun (for me, anyway) because that happens to be right in that spot on the timeline where everything in Juno’s life goes splat.

For more than a year, Peter’s life is constant tension. He plans his heists carefully, always making sure that his plans can be delayed by as much as a week if necessary, and he makes sure that they’re always finished by nightfall. He learns to write in code, so that his plans won’t be read and ruined by prying eyes, and he always hides them before he falls asleep, just in case.

He doesn’t know if he’s going to be the elder partner or the younger one, and he has no way of knowing for sure. He has no idea when his birthday is, or even how old he is, exactly. And that means that any day could be the day.

By twenty-three, Juno has given up on the idea of having a soulmate. Not everyone gets them, after all, and if he doesn’t, well, that’s fine by him. He’s finally got his life in order: he’s been assigned head detective on a case, he’s made a downpayment on a car, he’s engaged to a great guy. Things are going great.

No point in ruining that over some mystic romance mumbo jumbo. Juno Steel is a self-made dame. Like hell is he gonna roll over for something as stupid as destiny. Where he is is just fine, thanks. Just fine.

When Peter opens his eyes to unfamiliar aches and an unfamiliar ceiling, the first thing he feels is panic. This is a strange place, a strange room, and he’s lying next to a man he definitely did not fall asleep with.

Then realization: his soulmate. His twenty-first birthday. It’s finally happened.

Then relief. All that tension, all that anxiety, is finally over with. He just needs to make it through the next twenty-four hours, and then he can put this mess behind him.

He slips out of bed without making a sound, narrowly escaping the hand of the sleeping man who reaches out for him.

There’s a ring on that man’s finger. Another, matching ring is on Peter’s left hand.

They’re engaged.

Well. That’s… 

Peter doesn’t have a word for it, even in his own head.

A relief? A disappointment?

It shouldn’t matter to him. A man in his profession can’t afford any permanent ties, and there are few more permanent than a soulmate. Best to ignore the pang in his chest and put that nonsense behind him once and for all.

When Juno wakes up, it’s in a luxury hotel and wrapped in silk sheets, and he’s alone.

He lets out a long breath. What do you know? It actually happened.

Guess he has a soulmate after all. Not that it matters– he’s in a good relationship right now. Probably the best he’s ever going to have. He’s not going to ruin it on a gamble.

But he looks around, just in case. After all, even his fiancee can’t blame him for being curious.

The room is spacious and bright, with huge windows that take up most of one wall and mirrors that take up the opposite one, and light bounces wildly from one to the other. With all those reflective surfaces, it’s impossible not to catch sight of himself, and for a moment it takes his breath away. The person looking back at him is tall and lean and so beautiful it makes Juno’s knees go weak.

Instinctively he reaches out to touch the man in the mirror, but only ends up marveling at his own slender, delicate hands.

He’s not sure how long he stays there, just staring.

It takes a bit of trial and error for Peter to find the clothes in the closet that fit him, but he slips out without waking the other man.

He pointedly avoids looking at the mirror when he visits the bathroom, but as soon as he gets into the apartment’s main room, there’s no avoiding it. The walls are covered in framed pictures. Of their most frequent subjects, one is obviously the man Peter woke up with. The other has the same dark skin that he sees out of the corner of his eye every time he moves his hands.

He lets curiosity drive him forward. His soulmate is almost never alone– he’s always surrounded by other people, often his partner, others likely his coworkers and friends. It’s hardly the kind of life he’d want to leave behind to go running across the galaxy with a stranger.

One of the only pictures that features his soulmate alone is a posed photo, taken while he’s in uniform. The badge on his chest reads Hyperion City Police Department.

A police officer and a master thief. Fate has a cruel sense of humor.

There are no passports, no ID cards, not even a receipt in the pockets of his coat (though he finds almost everything else he could possibly imagine)– nothing at all with his soulmate’s name.

The bathroom counter is scattered with high-end makeup; the closet is filled with an assortment of outfits that share no common thread beyond the fact that they’re dripping with style.

Maybe he’s an actor, but Juno doesn’t remember ever having seen him on the streams. He’s not sure he could forget a face like that.

Peter slips outside and lets his feet carry him away, only paying vague attention to where he’s going and where he’s been. He’ll need to get back eventually– but if he doesn’t, he’s sure that his soulmate can figure it out once they change back.

The apartment is full of memories that don’t belong to him, and full of a life that he’ll never be a part of.

He wants to get as far away from it as possible before he feels the urge to look again.

Juno finds a pen and complimentary pad of paper on the bedside table.

He’s just enough of a poet to hate everything he writes, and so he spends hours bent over the paper, composing elaborate letters and then tearing them to shreds and flushing them down the toilet.

By the last page, he finally settles on something simple: his name and contact information, written as clearly as he can with these unfamiliar hands.

It’s a mistake. He knows it when he looks at the paper, just like he knows that it’s perfect.

When Peter wakes up the next morning, there’s a note on his bedside: the name that he’s spent the last twenty-four hours trying desperately not to learn.

He should destroy it before he gives in to temptation.

Instead he rips it off its pad, folds it carefully, and tucks it between the pages of his Brahmese passport– the one he hasn’t used since he was sixteen.

It’s just one more memory that he should put behind him.

Juno files his unexpected absence and tries not to think too hard about what he’s done.

His soulmate is out there, and he has Juno’s number, and it’s just a matter of time before he calls. Or visits. Or…

Or.

He twists the engagement ring on his finger.

He just wants to talk. Just wants to meet that beautiful stranger in person, just once.

Just once.

Just once. Just to chat.

He opens the closet door and pulls out the crimson wedding gown, and stares at it until he can believe his own lie.