Chapter Text
It's raining when he opens his eyes.
Perhaps all of our encounters are doomed to end with the rain, Peter muses, easing himself back down onto the bed. He's already done six laps around the hotel room hoping to find a sign, any sign that Juno might still be lingering about. So far he's only found his own clothes and shoes strewn about.
There's only so long he can pretend that Juno might've just stepped out for coffee or to make a call, and he's already hit that limit an hour ago. There's no use in prolonging the inevitable though, especially since check out is supposed to be at… in an hour. Hm.
It's a simple thing to cancel their tickets. That's what he tells himself, at least, as he sits there paralyzed for an eternity, his fingers cold and numb against the screen of his comms. He keeps his gaze on the screen instead of letting it wander down to his other hand in his lap, to the stub of a finger that prickles with needles, just letting the too-high saturation of the screen burn his retinas. He finally gets his thoughts into order and follows through, watching the little confirmation window pop open with a heavy weight on his chest.
The weight lifts briefly when he sets his location to a familiar moon, the gesture thoughtless and automatic as it has been so many times before. It's the thought of the heavy warmth of a pair of animals and a voice both fond and exasperated that gets the briefest ghost of a smile to his lips. It dies when he remembers that he intended to have Juno meet them as well—after all, is it not standard practice to introduce a partner (the word sends a frisson of delight through him and also a pang of disappointment although the latter is firmly squashed the moment it comes) to one's friends?
“A silly fantasy, really," he mutters to the empty room, tossing the comms back onto the bedspread.
Lili starts awake with Esteban meowing in her ear, his sleek mass of fur and metal pressed between her shoulder blades and face pressed right up to their cheek. For a long minute they lay there splayed out on their front, whole body feeling like one massive bruise—it's a good reminder of why people in their forties shouldn't be sleeping on an ornamental couch for extended periods of time—then the sound of a hoverbike revving pierces through the silence. Once the adrenaline rush that always follows Mochi's purring wears off, she gets to her feet and shuffles over to the screen to peer through it.
Mochi’s sitting on the floor, his massive fluffy head butted up in the arms of a dark figure and purring up a storm. They've got one hand on his back, gently petting back and forth and letting Mochi’s articulated tail wrap around their forearm, and the other carefully holding him away from their chest. Their long hair drips loose over their shoulders and face making a blurry mask of features, but Lili would know those silver streaks anywhere.
“Peter? What the hell are you doing here at…” Lili realizes that she has no idea what time it is right now, just that it's dark, and shakes her head, blinking hard to get the sleep out. “What are you doing here?"
Peter raises his head and smiles a familiar pale-lipped smirk, the usual red that colors his mouth nearly smudged off. He licks his lips and swallows before he speaks.
“Good evening, Dr. Swan,” He says, and Lili winces at the raw croak of his voice. “My… apologies for the intrusion, my intention was not to wake you."
Well.
Now, that's interesting. In all of their years of… friendship, Peter has never been sorry about breaking into their apartment. There are a myriad of words they could use to describe how it feels when he cracks their locks and messes with her sleep or her work or her closet—‘sorry’ is not one of them. Lili shuffles closer and sits on the floor, ducking her head low to get a proper look at his face. Tired orange-brown eyes, stamped grey underneath despite what must be at least a few layers of concealer, stare back at her with utter calm. Or it would've been calm had Lili not seen this exact mask over his face before.
Huh.
“It's… fine, don't worry about it,” Lili murmurs, distracted, as she narrows her gaze. "Are you—not that I mind, obviously, but… Petrushka, are you alright? You look like… well, you look like shit, if I'm being frank.”
Peter gasps and presses a palm against his chest. There is something white clamped around his ring finger, which is all Lili can make out in the gloom and her poor eyesight. “You wound me, darling, you truly do! But again, I must apologize for waking you, Liliana. I was hoping for you to be out but—” Tags jingle and then Esteban throws himself into Peter's lap to add his own sandblaster sound to the mix, his voice box going hog-wild. The sound Peter makes at the sudden weight bursts out of his mouth quite abruptly, just a little too low but very obviously pained, and Lili's proverbial hackles raise.
“Are you…” They take in the way he's curled around all of Esteban's forty-something pounds of metal and meat where normally he barely flinches, the tight twist of his mouth and the way his left hand immediately curls up to his chest, “You're hurt."
He looks up at them, clearly startled by her vehement declaration, and opens his mouth to—protest, perhaps? To soothe their sudden anger with empty platitudes? Lili doesn't know what, not that she really cares to be be placated right now. “Unless the next words out of your mouth are, Yes, Liliana, I am very much hurt, I will allow you to look at my injuries right away, I don't want a single word out of your mouth. Do you get what I'm saying?”
“I—"
“Do I make myself clear?" Lili takes care not to sound angry because the number one rule for dealing with patients is that no one likes someone angry and screaming at them when they're hurt, but it's still a very narrow, very familiar wire to balance on. “Just nod your head if you understand."
Peter rolls his eyes and gently lifts Esteban. Three things happen in rapid succession:
One, Mochi comes back sniffing and throws his weight right onto Peter's shoulder, almost bowling him over with the sheer force of the excitement that lights up his chest plate.
Second, Esteban squirms away from his hands with a petulant honk and trots away with delicate indignance.
Third, the color drains straight out of Peter's face and he curls into himself, hand pressed hard to his chest. This time, the sound he makes is loud and guttural.
“Okay, that's it, this is way too much." Lili stands up and scoops up Mochi to put him in their bedroom, Esteban following right on her heels, so that she doesn't have to divide her attention between Peter and them (and to change out of their smoke-scented blouse, and locate their glasses).
He's still folded nearly in half, forehead pressed to the tile and gloved hands tucked under his elbows, body shivering with each breath he takes in spite of how many layers of clothing he must be wearing. “Okay." She takes a deep breath and lets it out from her nose. “Can you walk, or should I help?"
Peter shakes his head and his whole body jerks before it stills, wracked with tremors.
“You don't need my help?"
Another shake.
“Okay, alright, you can walk on your own, that's great. Can you walk yourself into the kitchen? It's not super far, you've been there before." Lili stands up and waits for him to unfold himself and get to his feet before they turn towards the kitchen. They keep their arms tucked in and hands to themself as Peter all but collapses into a chair, shaking like a newborn foal but making a valiant attempt at maintaining his ruler-straight posture.
Once Lili's gotten her supplies out and latex gloves on (she has to double them to account for her new nails. Sometimes she really, really wishes she had the spine to stand up to her mother's needling demands), she turns around. “I need you to take those gloves off, first, and your shirt, too, because I get the uncanny feeling that you're hiding something underneath it,” Lili instructs, taking extreme care to not sound demanding lest Peter take that as a challenge. She'd rather not spend any more time than necessary coaxing him into letting her see whatever mess he's hiding underneath the dark fabric.
There's that familiar laugh behind them, and then the rustle of fabric. A few pained grunts follow along as well and Lili resists the learned urge to turn and help, opting to let Peter continue at his own pace. (Or at least that's what they tell themself.)
“...You can turn around now, Doctor." The dry croak of his voice physically hurts to hear and Lili turns with the intention of asking him if he wants some water or something… the words die in their throat. Peter sits with his hands gingerly splayed out onto the tabletop, a wry smile at his lips as he waits for her reaction. She immediately purses her lips and shakes her head slightly as she takes in the battered mess of his body—the deep black masses of bruising on his chest, the long purple strips wrapping around his neck, thumb-sized dark spots running down from either side of his jaw… God, even his hands are… a…
“Oh. Your… hands, they're…” She tries but the words won't come out, they just won't cooperate with her tongue and voice, and she settles for drawing a chair herself and delicately taking his left hand, tilting the splinted lump of his ring finger to check with her own two eyes. “Can I take these off?"
Peter goes to shrug and then stops, biting on his lip and clutching one hand around his shoulder. Shit. Lili doesn't ask any more questions and starts undoing the splint, slowly unraveling the gauze to brace herself for what she might find beneath. They peel back the patch of SkinTape to reveal the stub of his finger—halfway healed, red and raw along the stitches, but at least it's clean, they don't have to worry about that. Still, they keep one hand beneath his and use the other to rummage for antiseptic wipes, gently cleaning it. The wipe comes away clean, Peter mostly numb to the pain save for the occasional spasm his other fingers give.
That dealt with, they move onto the rest of his fingers… none of them seem to be as bad off as the severed one but several nails are missing and halfway to regrowth—clearly it's been some time since they've been gone. An attempt was made to buff and smooth them out into something resembling presentable—the faint chips of hot pink in the edges of them can attest to that—but his hand was either shaking like crazy or this is the byproduct of someone else’s unsteady hand. Lili makes a face at the rings still on—she suspects it's a little too fond beneath her exasperation, unfortunately—and very carefully slides them off to form a small pile at their elbow.
“...Well, I can't really do much for your hands, Peter," Lili says into the silence between them, poking at the gooey purple mass of his palms. “Most of it's just bad bruising… don't think you'll tell me how this happened, will you?”
Peter opens his mouth, even looks like he might answer them, then abruptly snaps his mouth shut and lowers his gaze to the press of their latex-covered fingers against his palm. All that comes out is a low chuckle a touch too genuine to be completely natural.
“Well, Mx. Swan," The smile at his lips is equal parts bitter and amused, "All I will say is that if you thought the researchers at your educational institution were dedicated, you should see how they make them at Olympus Mons. Absolute monsters, every single one of them.” His laughter is tinged with just a hint of something hysterical which Lili pretends to give no heed to but is instantly cataloging in their head, rolling her eyes and setting his hands back onto the tabletop.
"Ha fuckin’ ha, fine, keep your secrets," She grumbles, covering the raw bits of jellied flesh in numbing gel and loosely winding gauze around them, just so that the wounds can breathe. They can't help their nervous babbling as they get to their feet and step around the table to turn their attention to his chest—there’s just something so deeply discomforting about the intensity of Peter's wounds, of learning just how fragile a human body is even if the body in question does perform death-defying stunts and break into her apartment to pet her cats and eat every single bit of baked dessert he can possibly find.
“But seriously, who the hell did this to you? Was it one person? A bunch of people? I don't believe it for a second if you tell me that one person did all of this because I'd know for a fact that this is complete and utter bullshit, no way in hell one person could do any of this.”
Peter tolerates her babbling with surprising ease, pushing back his chair and spreading his knees a little so that they can stand between them and see the damage up close. “You’d be surprised what one genocidal xenoanthropologist can get up to when they set their mind, my dear—I certainly was.” He laughs, not his usual one but something booming and larger than life, and it fades out hollowly between them. Lili only hums along, her attention snatched by the sheer scale of his injuries. Every inch of skin, from his jaw down to his chest and even on his stomach, is just… bruises upon marks upon more bruising, even…
“Oh my…” Lili swallows and then shakes her head. “You, uh, weren't kidding about… angel, you, uh… is this genocidal xenoanthropologist, ah, still after you?” She doesn't even know where to start here—his throat? His chest? The shoulder he was clutching?... It's just so much.
Peter waves his hand airily at her question, smiling blithely as if the tightness around his eyes and the displeased twist of lips at the question belong to someone else.
“Oh no, no need to worry about that; I doubt Professor Miasma is going anywhere in the state she is. Detective St… I… we…” He falters, blinking rapidly and then turning his head just a little to avoid her eyes, clearing his throat. “At—ahem, at any rate, the xenoanthropologist has been dealt with, rest assured. No need to worry about trouble being invited to your doorstep.”
"Hrmpf, it better not." Lili takes a deep breath and then gently tucks her knuckles beneath his jaw to tilt it up so that they can look at the bruises and stripes there. “These are nasty, Petrushka,” They say softly, touching a bruise with the tip of her index finger. The skin here is uncomfortably warm, even through the latex, and Lili swallows her revulsion down to take a better look. "How did you even end up with these, huh? Did someone try to break your neck with their bare hands?”
Peter swallows beneath their fingers and licks his dry lips. “Those… these aren’t… these aren't relevant, alright? There's no need to pay any attention here.”
Lili snorts and tilts his head to the side to look at a mark just under his ear. “Like hell they're not. Seriously, what happened? You never let anything get to your neck.” She turns his head from side to side, pressing her gloved fingertips as briefly as she can to each bruise, studying them. They're about the size of a coin and a vivid red, like the suckers on a Kraken’s tentacle—Lili kind of wants to know what the hell this Professor Miasma was and what the hell did she do to him to make his throat look this way—and on closer inspection there's even a ring of toothmarks around one or two…
“You look like a Sentinel tried to take a bite out of your jugular.” Lili tells him, turning her attention to the greenish splatters looping unevenly around his jugular. “You might think I'm joking but I'm telling the truth. Are you a hundred percent sure that you didn't get bitten by one? It… looks…” A slow flicker of understanding begins to dawn. "Oh my god.”
The realization hits Lili like a pile of bricks: the way Peter's refusing to meet her eyes, the avoidance of her question, that little slip of the tongue on someone's name earlier… Lili tears her hands away and steps back like she's been burned, spluttering.
“You didn't tell me you—these are—you could've told me you hooked up with someone before you came here. Then I wouldn't be touching… these,” She grumbles, trying to cover up her embarrassment over pressing fingers all over where someone else's mouth has been. After a brief moment of muttering, “ew," to herself she shakes her hands out to clear her head and turns her attention lower down to his chest.
What Lili hadn't noticed before was the handful of blisters dappling his chest and shoulders, scattered amongst the bruises under the SkinTape. They're almost completely healed, ringed with dark pinpricks around their yellowed edges where they'd been drained before, and it's a simple enough task to go through the motions of cleaning them again. Mostly Lili thinks about the kind of hell Peter's been through to be covered in injuries like this, the pain he must've been enduring with a smile on his lips… if he would've ever let them know about his pain if he couldn't physically hide it.
Probably not, truth be told.
“There," Lili finally says, leaning back and patting his shoulder with the flat of their palm. They try for a smile and mostly succeed at it—would have if not for the blood and fluid on her gloves and the smell of antiseptic curling acrid in the air. “You can put your shirt back on now, I'm done."
She strips off the gloves and tucks one into the other to steady the sudden tremor in her hands, stands up with a sweeping gesture towards the bathroom. “I'm just… I'll go and get rid of these. I'll be back in a few." Peter gives no answer, still sitting with his head tipped back like he has since they put their fingers on the, ah, bruising on his neck, so they excuse themself.
The moment they close the door on him, they finally let the shuddering sob swallowed down come out, pressing their palm against their mouth so that no other noise can burst out without her consent. That was… Lili can barely fathom what she saw. She has a strong stomach—no one could accuse them of being a wuss—but some things are just too much even for the most seasoned of medical professionals.
(They're not even that, unfortunately, since they did a hard turn into the arts as soon as they escaped the hellhole called med school. Peter has yet to take heed to any of her vehement protests that, no, you asshole, I'm not a doctor, stop calling me—what, you think I'm being funny? You little—! but hope must prevail.)
Lili wants to let the angry tears that itch behind her eyelids out. They want to sit and take a few minutes, an hour, maybe a couple of lifetimes, to work through all the things they've been through, break them down into manageable bite-sized pieces and feed them out to their cats, but that just isn't possible with Peter forever watching her with those fathomless alley-cat eyes, with him in this unsettling state of being very much so absent despite being right there—get a fucking hold of yourself, Swan.
They spend a good few minutes sitting on the closed toilet lid, just processing. The dirty gloves hang forgotten in one hand as Lili closes their eyes and takes deep breaths, one after another until their heartbeat calms down. Once they're sure that they won't cry or start screaming, she throws the gloves away and splashes some water on her face before venturing back outside.
Peter's right there where they left him, but he's now slumped over the glass tabletop with his face in his elbows like a twenty-second century marionette with all of its glass-fibre nerves shredded apart. Ever so slightly his shoulders shudder as he breathes, twisting and seizing stiffly before relaxing. Lili takes a deep breath and takes their seat again, hands neatly folded in their lap, trying to be as quiet as humanly possible.
Lili's always been almost uncomfortably aware of the way that Peter prides himself on being the bastion of control in this tumultuous realm of crime he's been buried into six miles deep for decades, of the aura of confidence and self-assurance that he projects no matter the situation at hand. Right now, however—this evening? With all the bruises and pain she'd seen etched on his skin? That aura is gone and Lili genuinely can't tell it’ll come back (if it'll ever come back) which is something that they've never had to consider before. They can't quite find the right word to describe it—’unsettling’, perhaps? ‘Unthinkable’? (They'll keep work-shopping it.)
She takes a deep breath and lets it out slow and steady through her nose, steeling her nerves. Slowly, cautiously, as if trying to pet a skittish animal that may or may not snap bloody at their fingertips, they extend their hand and just barely sink their first knuckles into his hair. It's...
…Soft, actually, albeit a little greasy and tangled, and parts beneath their touch the same as anyone else's. Lili isn't sure what they expected but it wasn't for him to feel so… human, they guess. They exhale slowly as they run the tips of their nails through the dark waves, just barely enough to be felt but not to disturb. The regular metronome motion of her fingers is slow and soothing, almost, yet Peter apparently feels differently—his shoulders jerk up with a gasp and he tightens his arms around his head.
They keep stroking his hair when it's clear they aren't really hurting him, just taking care that the little 3D bears don't snag on any loose strands and humming something familiar they'd heard in a stream. It takes Lili a moment of that same breathless gasping to realize that something's amiss. They bend down to ask if he's hurting and if he has any medications he should be taking but the words die in their throat at the wet hitch of his breathing.
“Oh." Lili utters faintly. He's started crying.
That is… she looks around the kitchen to check if this is some dream or a belated hallucination caused by the Haze. Everything seems to be in order, which means… “Oh," They repeat, like a broken record. Something lurches in the very bottom of her stomach, nauseating like the moon’s shifted in its orbit and everything's on a tilt. This is… there are no words to describe what this exactly is.
There are two options in this scenario: one, she pulls her hand away and walks away from this, fills up the space between them with empty words and plays oblivious voyeur to this display, or—she stays. She stays and keeps stroking his hair and offers comfort where they've already opened their heart in a trillion other ways… or leave and pretend it isn't happening—she’s paralyzed, fingers still in his hair.
Liliana lays their head down on the table too, letting their fingers sink entirely into the wild mane that crowns his lowered head, and close their eyes.
“Hey, um… Nureyev?"
He hums to show that he's listening, head still tucked behind his arms. His breathing slows and calms—is it real, or just one of the many tricks he's honed?
Deep breath . Softly, she continues. "You know you can cry if you want to, right? That… I don't… I don't care if you cry. Hell, if you need to scream you can do that, we all have our days.”
He stiffens, his shoulders drawing up about his ears and head pulling away from their hand, and judging by his sharp inhale they may have misstepped. Still, they soldier on.
“Just let it out, angel, it's okay,” She continues her slow petting, drawing her fingertips as light as she can through his dense waves and half-crumpled curls. It comes instinctively where every other touch somehow was not. It feels oddly right, even. “We all have bad days, okay? Even if you think you're not allowed to have those, that you have to be perfect all the time and nothing less than that's going to fly—trust me, angel, no one—"
She falters when one hand unfolds from beneath his head and comes to hold her wrist, long fingers folding around her wrist. The grooves of his nails—two whole and painted a jarring neon pink, two missing and one never to come back—dig into the soft underside of their forearm and settle into decade-old grooves, this pressure softer and looser in case they might want to pull free.
“Please, doctor, I…" Peter’s voice cracks, "Please… Don't call me that, I beg of you. Just… Please.” For a moment they're frozen, that familiar fear crawling back up their throat on prickling spider legs, before they pull themself together and shake their head to get out of that weird momentary fugue.
“Okay, alright, I won't." Lili acquiesces. “But you believe me, right? You don't have to be perfect all the time, not if you don't want to be. There isn't a person in the world who needs that out of you, I promise. Just… I won't judge, okay? I can't guarantee anyone else won't but… I won't. Trust me.”
They continue along in that line, using their other hand instead to pet him like one of their cats and letting him cling to their wrist like a lifeline. By the time Peter finally raises his head, the lamplight above them has shifted from a soft lavender to merge indistinguishably into the white glow of artificial morning. His face is streaked with tears, pale cheeks red and splotchy and lip bitten bloody from holding in his sobs, nothing like the dangerously capable man Lili has always known… but does it really matter, what Lili used to know?
Peter clears his throat and unclenches his hand from Lili's arm, rubbing away the tears that cling sticky and stubborn to his skin and lashes. His splinted hand retreats under the table.
“...Thank you for that,” He says awkwardly, coughing a bit into his elbow to clear the thickness in his throat. “Again, I do apologize for the intrusion, dear heart, I truly did not come here to, to strong-arm you into helping me with any of my, er, injuries. I'll be out of your hair soon, I promise, as soon as… as soon as I can…” Lili narrows her eyes at him to show just exactly how she feels about that and he falters, “Unless you'd like me to leave immediately? I'm sure I can find… somewhere… no?”
They roll their eyes and lean forward to grab his jaw, tugging him a little closer over the table.
“If you think I'm letting you walk out of my apartment looking like you went twelve rounds with a professional boxer then you've got another thing coming, Petrushka." The rough prickle of stubble grates at their skin but she keeps her grip firm, holds his gaze to make sure he's paying close attention to every word that comes out of her mouth. “Stay here for a while. Let me at least keep an eye on you so that you don't collapse in the middle of a spaceport or something. You can take my bed, the couch, the floor, whatever, just… stay, okay? For as long as you want, I don't really mind either way. Do you get that?”
Peter's eyes flicker from the stern set of their brows to the moles that dot their waterline that he always defaults to when he's uncomfortable and the way she won't let him hide away from her worry, gnaws his lip bloody afresh between his teeth as he mulls over the offer—after an eternity (or is it just a minute?), he jerks his head in a shallow nod.
“I suppose a few hours wouldn't hurt," He murmurs, with all the reluctance of pulling teeth out of a snake. “After all, who am I to deny you the pleasure of my company after all this time apart?" There's that familiar edge of humor to his voice that was missing before and it soothes feathers that Lili wasn't even aware were ruffled, even if she rolls her eyes and lets go of him. He stays leaned forward for a moment longer than she does, eyes half-open and watching them before he sits back stiffly.
There are no more words between them as Lili settles Peter into her bed, piling blankets around him like it's the middle of the winter cycle. From the way his good hand (isn't that surreal to say, his good hand, to know that there is a distinction now between the two) clutches them tight even as he makes a quip about bundling up for the second big freeze, it's a good decision to make especially when it makes the shivers wracking his body slow down. A handful of antibiotics and painkillers later (all prescription, Doctor, no need to worry about making an addict out of me yet, he jokes hazily, blinking slowly up at them when they smoothed overgrown strands of hair back from his face) he's asleep, curled on his side like a pillbug with the cats sitting sentinel on either side of him.
Lili only lingers as long as it takes for Mochi to drape his shaggy body over Peter's hips and cuddle up to his belly. There's little that can move him once he's settled and she trusts that he'll keep Peter down in case he tries to climb out of bed, so she closes the door behind her (holding it politely open for Esteban to come with) and goes into the kitchen to clean up the mess they'd made on the table.
It's not enough of a distraction, unfortunately, and sleep grits under her eyelids but she can't sleep when Peter's in the state that he is. They slip their hand between the couch cushions and take out the pack that had slipped between them, wandering towards the balcony with Esteban trying to tangle between their ankles with that motorboat purr. The morning air prickles icily through the thin cotton of their tunic and Lili hunches her shoulders in to protect herself and the lighter's flame against the whistling wind.
Only once the cigarette is between her lips and that familiar gooey feeling starts melting through her bones again do they sigh heavily and click their fingers for Esteban to come take his spot on their lap. It's been a very, very long night, longer than any they've had in years, and even though morning light plunges the whole planet into a smoky haze it truly feels like those tears under the lamplight have yet to end.
“Sometimes, I really, really, hate my life," Lili tells Esteban, smoke unfurling from their lips.