Work Text:
Juno was never going to be able to go back to the Utsukushi Fuyu resort on Neptune. Which was a shame because he had left most of his clothing and, more importantly, his favourite jacket in their room.
This was to be expected however, when one fled in the middle of the night in nothing but pyjamas and a hotel robe because their partner couldn’t resist trying his hand breaking into the most secure banking compound on Neptune, conveniently located just north of the resort.
He really should have known better than to take Nureyev at his word when he suggested a relaxing vacation for the two of them at one of Neptune’s famous winter resorts. Never mind that as well as being famous for their year-round luxury winter-wonderland experiences, Neptune’s inhospitable climate also made it the ideal location for some of the Galaxies most secure self-sustaining banking compounds.
Never. Again.
They had ended up ‘liberating’ one of the VIP transport cars and absconding into the blowing snow that made up almost %100 of Neptune’s climate.
It had taken almost 8 hours to navigate through the snow to the nearest shuttle port and almost 2 more hours for Nureyev to finally get his hands on clothing that would fit Juno enough for them to pass inconspicuously through the terminal and into the fastest shuttle back to Mars.
The loss of the clothing had been unfortunate and irritating but relatively easy to fix. The loss of his favourite jacket however was something that Juno made a point to hold over Nureyev’s head for at least two weeks before he came home to find a handsome leather coat draped across one of his kitchen chairs.
It was much nicer than the one that had been left behind in their hastily abandoned room, so Juno reluctantly considered the apology accepted and the coat became a daily wardrobe staple.
The one significant difference between the old coat and the new one?
Pockets.
So many damn pockets.
While many of the pockets, both concealed and unconcealed, were empty and waiting for Juno to ferret things away in them, a disturbing variety of objects had been pre-packed into hidden folds and tucks and pockets of the coat by Nureyev.
Juno had found tissues, loose sweets, a sappy note or two and a military grade laser cutter over the first few weeks of wear. But so many items remained hidden away that Juno was still often surprised by what he pulled out When he went searching for something as simple as his Keys.
Or his wallet
5:
It had only been a week since his new coat had shown up in Juno’s apartment. Conveniently, this coincided with Nureyev’s departure to Titan to fence his loot from his impromptu Neptune heist.
So far Juno had pulled a handful of Cerenese sweets from a hidden fold adjacent to the inside breast pocket; small and colourful and flavoured like fruits Juno had never heard of. He had also found several handkerchiefs tucked in a slit along one sleeve (which he had promptly put back) and a drawing of a large rabbit holding a laser blaster in a pocket INSIDE of his left hand pocket.
Where the hell did Nureyev find these coats? They seemed to reject all sensible concepts of physics.
But anyway, It wasn’t like anything Juno had found been been dangerous.
Yet
This particular morning found Juno attempting to balance a sandwich between his shoulder and chin while juggling two cups of coffee in one hand and trying to pull out his wallet with the other.
Trying to ignore the grumbling of both the cashier and the customers behind him Juno rummaged blindly in his pocket and yanked out his wallet slamming it on the counter before catching a tipping cup.
The stunned silence caught his attention fairly quickly however, and after shifting the sandwich to a large rear pocket and securing the cups into a holder from the counter Juno turned back to the cashier. He was pale as paper and had his hands up and palms forward by his head, his eyes wide and panicked.
Juno twisted to look behind himself and saw that the customers behind him had either disappeared or fallen to the floor face down.
“Please don’t hurt us! The money is in the register! You can have it, you can have whatever you want just don’t shoot!”
“What!?” Juno twisted back to face the counter and finally noticed that the item he had slammed down in his hurry hadn’t been his wallet at all. Hand sized and square-ish it was easy to see how he may have been confused just groping around, but looking at it there was no mistaking the black and blue colouring or the large TRITON embossed along one side. A Tritonian suppressor. Developed for military crowd control, the device froze the blood of everyone not touching it or another suppressor within a 5 metre perimeter. How the hell had this got into his pocket?!
“Oh no, no no no I’m not robbing you I swear. This is just… something for a case! Yeah, just a bit of evidence for a case I’m working on.”
He snatched the device and stuffed it deep back into the pocket it had come from. Feeling his wallet against his fingers, he pulled it out and shoved the money owed plus an obscene tip at the confused cashier before grabbing his tray.
"Pleasedon'tbanmeIloveyoursandwiches”
He dashed to his car and sped off.
It wasn’t until he was safely back in his office and examining the pocket that he found the hidden inner section tucked behind the lining. Because he was paranoid and not stupid, he replaced the suppressor, but not before moving his wallet to another pocket.
4.
He really hadn’t wanted to come back to the Kanagawa compound for any reason, but there was a better than good chance that Cecil knew something that may just allow his client to keep both her hands and her baby, so here he was.
The issue came when he was passing through the secondary lobby just before Cecil’s office and studio, a loud alarm blaring as he strode across to the security desk. The two guards at the desk stepped out and gestured for him to stop, they had serious military grade pistols at their hips. Juno stopped.
“Sir, our sensors have detected the presence of metal on your person. I’m going to have to ask you to approach the desk and remove all metal objects before we can allow you through”
Juno grit his teeth but pulled his pistol from the holster on his hip and, because he really needed this information, yanked the suppressor from it’s hidden pocket and placed both on the desk along with his keys and some pocket change. The guards visibly tensed at the sight of the suppressor but said nothing. One of them stepped behind the desk and pressed a button, the alarm sounded again.
“Sir please remove ALL metal objects and place them on the desk”
Juno tossed up his hands. “All my metal objects ARE on the damn desk! I don’t have anything else!”
The guard typed something and pressed the button again.
The alarm went off
They both looked at him with frustratingly bland expressions
“I’m sorry Detective Steel, but we cannot allow you access at this time.”
Juno could have just taken off his coat, he was sure Nureyev must have hidden stuff in there that he hadn’t found yet, but the guards were getting too suspicious. He grabbed his belongings and stuffed them back in his coat before storming out of the building.
He did get the information eventually, and his client ended up keeping both hands and her baby, but not before he spent an entire rainy evening in the dumpsters outside the Kanagawa complex looking for a single vital piece of evidence.
Needless to say, Juno was not impressed with Nureyev when he called him the next evening.
“What the hell did you hide in this coat?”
“And hello to you too Juno darling, I’m fine thank you for asking, how are you?”
“What. Did. You. Hide. In. This. Coat?”
“This and that, just a few useful items. Why?”
“Well I found the suppressor in my pocket at a coffee shop and they thought I was robbing them, or how about because I spent 8 hours dumpster diving because I couldn’t get past the metal detectors at the Kanagawa complex!”
“Ah. I’m sorry my dear, it appears I have to go.”
“Don’t you hang up on me!”
“These guards are smarter than they appear it seems, must fly my darling see you soon!”
The line went dead.
Juno growled and tossed himself into his bed. He put a pillow on his face and screamed.
3.
Nothing happened for a couple weeks after that and Juno was almost convinced he had found everything dangerous Nureyev had stashed away after finding the third laser cutter tucked in the coats hem when he was trying to remove a stubborn stain.
He was very very wrong.
The stakeout was better than most in that at least there was a decent noodle place across the street from his targets office. All he had to do was wait until the guy left for the day and follow him back to wherever his newest mistress was living. Take a few pictures, get some video and report back to the fuming husband. He might even finish up in time to watch some streams before bed.
He reached up to scratch at his neck, the cafe was hot and they didn’t have any sort of air conditioning. He had sweat running liberally down the back of his neck and he moved to roll the collar down.
Then he heard the ‘click’ and the hiss before intense heat seared a line across his neck.
He yelped and stripped his coat off double speed, holding a hand over his neck he watched as a tiny pen-torch rolled out of the burned hole in the collar. Tiny blue flame wavering cheerfully. He reached down and turned it off before grabbing his coat and marching to the washroom, willfully ignoring the stares of the other customers.
The nape of his neck was burned, but not too badly. The material of the coat had obviously saved him from a hospital visit. He would have to deal with it better when he got home, but for the moment he moistened a handkerchief in cold water and pressed it to the burn.
By the time he got back to his table, the cheating husbands car was gone from in front of his office.
Juno cursed.
Defeated, he paid for his meal and drove back to his apartment.
As he spread burn salve on his neck he imagined strangling a certain errant thief.
2.
The underwear was less of an inconvenience and more a matter of extreme embarrassment.
He had made an effort with his clothes for this particular client meeting. An electronics genius who ran several companies from his headquarters in Olympus Mons and needed Juno’s help in locating a pair of errant employees with sticky fingers. Even Rita had made an extra effort, sporting her good red dress and freshly curled hair.
The meeting itself was uncommonly courteous and the retainer both generous and lacking in any suspicious strings.
As Juno rose from the unfairly comfortable conference chair to shake his employers’ hand he heard Rita snort out a startled laugh.
He stepped forward and turned to see a colourful slip of silk on the floor beside his seat.
Rita had her notebook over her mouth and her shoulders were shaking.
Stomach sinking Juno reached down and grabbed a pair of blue silk underwear with small tuxedo’d foxes on them.
He could feel the heat of his blush all the way down his chest, especially when their client started to chuckle.
“Laundry day Detective?” He prodded cheerily.
Juno stuffed the underwear into his back pocket and mumbled incoherently before grabbing Rita’s wrist and towing her cackling butt out of the office.
That night’s phone call was especially heated.
“Underwear? Really?!”
“Oh you found them then? Yes well they always say you should carry a spare pair in case you get hit by a car. In your case that’s more relevant than most”
“They fell out of my pocket in front of a client goddammit!”
“Alas and I thought I saw the only person who got to see your underwear these days!”
“It is not funny!”
“It is a little”
“Rrah! I don’t know why I put up with you Nureyev”
“Love does make fools of us all darling, now I’ve got to fly, they really don’t make rappelling wires like they used to. Tata!”
Juno didn’t even bother screaming into a pillow, he just flopped down breathed heavily for a minute.
He kept the underwear of course. But he did make sure it was much better hidden in future.
1.
The last time was at the Kanagawa complex again. He had been summarily summoned by Min for a 'favour’ of the non-negotiable variety. Escorted by a cadre of Kanagawa security workers they were once again stopped when an alarm went off in the lobby before Min’s office.
Again the officers stopped him and gestured to the front desk
“Sir, our sensors have detected the presence of potential weapons on your person. I’m going to have to ask you to approach the desk and remove all metal objects before we can allow you through”
Again, Juno removed all the metal he could find, but again the alarm continued to sound.
Unlike last time however, him leaving was not an option.
The guards started to go through his coat, rifling through its’ many pockets.
Three pairs of handcuffs, two more pairs of underwear, a laser cutter and an inexplicable slinky later it was decided that Juno should simply take off his coat. Which he did. Reluctantly.
However some over-paranoid sonovvabitch then decided that since Juno had so much hidden in just his coat that he should probably just strip all of his clothing off before meeting Min 'just to be safe’.
Highly conscious of the live streaming cameras dotted around the room, Juno tried to strip as quickly as possible before grabbing the robe held out to him.
Thankfully, after the meeting was done he was allowed to redress in the washroom. It was by no means unmonitored but at least there weren’t as many cameras.
His phone started ringing as soon as he was back in his car.
It was Mick.
“Hey Juno! Saw you on the streams just now. Taking up a new career in stripping you didn’t tell me about man?”
Juno wanted to reach through the phone and smack him. Instead he rested his head on the wheel and groaned faintly
“Shut up Mick. What the hell are you doing watching the streams at 10:30am anyway? I thought you had a job?”
Mick blew a raspberry into the speaker and started in on a rant about fascist employers and innocent mistakes involving hedgehogs and lube.
Juno half listened all the way back to the office.
He doesn’t call Nureyev that night. He figures he’s probably seen today’s events along with half of the galaxy
+ 1.
There is a little girl.
She doesn’t look anything like Annie and she’s about two years older than her, but she’s crying. She’s scared and she’s hurt and the men who took her left her stuffed in an ancient freezer for the better part of the week Juno has been looking for her. His heart hurts at those tears and that familiar dark place inside him twinges like when he thinks on what he did to poor Annie.
He tries to get her to be quiet, they just need to be able to get past the last set of guards and they will be at Juno’s car. But she’s overwrought and can’t catch her breath. The two goons turn and raise their weapons, there’s no time for them to run.
Juno curls the little girl under his body and tries to make them as small a target as possible as the shooting starts. He can feel the impact of the shots and grits his teeth against the pain, feels the wet slide of blood down his legs. When the shots finally stop he lies still, feeling the blood pooling on the ground and the little girls panicked breaths.
He holds her tighter and tries to make them look as dead as possible. His back is in agony, he’s not sure how much damage was done but he knows he’s lucky none of the shots hit his head.
The guards must have been hired for their muscles more than their brains because they don’t come over and put a bullet in their skulls just in case. Instead they walk back into the building, no doubt to inform their employers of what they did.
Once the door is shut Juno counts to ten and levers himself off the shivering child. His legs still work, so miracle of miracles it looks like his spine is pretty much okay. He stands shakily and is reaching down to pull the kid up so they can get to the car when he realizes there isn’t near enough blood to account of the amount of shots that hit him.
He reevaluated his injuries. They hurt, oh god they hurt so much, but he couldn’t feel the tell-tale trickle of blood anywhere but where the shots had grazed his legs. There was a crash from inside the building, he didn’t have the luxury of time to think about what happened.
He pulled the child up and they ran for his car.
After the reunion tears and the hugging (the little girl clinging fiercely to the neck of the sister who had hired him) and picking up the rest of his fee, Juno made it home.
Shrugging off his coat he saw the dozen or so shot burns in the fabric and felt the deep corresponding bruises throbbing in his back.
The damn thing had saved his life today.
He made a note to try and clean the marks off in the morning.
For the time being he drapes it over a chair and heads to bed.
Nureyev is already there, fast asleep and snoring. He looks tired, and there is a bruise blooming on his cheek, but he’s still the best thing Juno has ever seen.
Juno pulls off his clothes and gets into bed, curling around the thief he whispers: “I figured out why you gave me that coat you know. Thank you. For loving me and protecting me even when you’re not here”
As he drifted off he felt the bed shift slightly and a cool hand curl around his waist
“Always my love”