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“How long does it take?” Ransom’s voice is so quiet that Buddy’s barely certain the words passed his lips at all. He’s still dressed to the nines, but his knife-sharp winged eyeliner and glimmering jewelry seem to dull in the low light of the lounge. His knees are pulled up to his chest and his arms wrap around them, tapping a rhythm she half-recognizes but can’t place. It takes her a moment to realize why it’s so strange- she’s no longer sharing a room with Peter Ransom. Whoever the man curled up on the couch beside her is, he’s a stranger.
Buddy wants very much to get to know him.
“How long does what take, darling?”
“The fear of losing them again. How long does it take for that to go away?” Pete’s voice shakes- and Buddy’s decided she’ll call him Pete for the time being, because something in the way it lands on his shoulders and matches to his long nose feels right - and he looks over at her again. His shoulders are hunched in that frightened-animal sort of way, hackles raised to defend against the fact that he’s just admitted something about himself.
Buddy sighs, putting down her comms. “Honestly, Pete? When you figure it out, tell me.”
The thief’s shoulders slump and he lets out a defeated laugh. “I don’t know that I ever will. You place too much faith in me, Captain.”
“I assume this has something to do with the mission?” The job on Yu Huang was supposed to be simple- Juno would pose as Andrasta Yang, an aspiring entrepreneur flashing some fancy schematics Rita whipped up, hook one of the billionaire investors milling around at the Annual Jupiter Robotics Conference, and then collect the creds they needed to refuel the Carte Blanche and skip town. Ransom was supposed to follow from behind in case Juno was in danger or needed to use a computer, but the second Juno had disappeared into Philip Renee’s hotel room, Ransom had run after him and knocked on the door. A few minutes of chaos later, Renee was out cold and Juno and Ransom were booking it back to the Carte Blanche with the money and an alarming amount of law enforcement on their tail. She’d chewed them out over it, of course, but that had been two days ago. The only connection she can make between that event and this one now is the way Peter talks- a faraway look in his eye and an edge of fear in his voice he thinks he’s hiding well.
Pete sucks in a breath through his teeth and looks like he wants to disappear. “In a sense, yes,” he bites out. “I… I have apologized many times over, Captain, but I will do so again-”
“Please don’t, darling,” Buddy cuts in, reaching out a hand to hover over his shoulder. After a moment of consideration, he nods, and she scoots closer. Pete runs cold, apparently- his skin is like ice under the thin blouse he’s wearing, and he trembles slightly. Buddy is struck with the sudden maternal instinct to wrap him up in a blanket and feed him a bowl of warm soup. “I’ve heard it enough times already.”
Pete chuckles, more a strong exhale than anything else. “I suppose you have. Apo- I’ll refrain from doing so, then.” He takes a deep breath. One hand comes up to fidget with a necklace, winding and unwinding the delicate chain in flashing threads of gold. When he speaks again, it sounds like every word is an effort- like he’s dug a knife into the tiniest crevice in one of his many shields and is cracking it apart to let a few precious phrases slip through. “I, ah… Juno and I have a complicated relationship with locked doors.”
Buddy bites back an “I noticed,” waiting patiently for whatever else this stranger wants to share. It takes a moment, but with a shuddering breath, he continues.
“The first time we… knew each other, we ended up on opposite sides of a locked door. Juno was…” He cuts off, leaning into her touch for a moment as he gathers his words. “I was so, so sure I was going to lose him then. And when I’d only just gotten him back, it was- it hurt more than I could have ever imagined. I was so relieved that I didn’t lose him that day, that I… that I lost him again that night.” A tear rolls down his face, catching the refraction of a star outside within it. Buddy looks away, focuses her eye on her hand- something about this feels all too private, and when Peter Ransom comes back, she doubts he would want her to have seen this.
“Pete-”
“I pounded on that door so hard my hands started bleeding,” he interrupts. The words come out faster now, like a dam somewhere has broken. “There was a window in it with this metal rim around the edge. I was so full of adrenaline at the time that I didn’t notice that edge had stamped itself into my fist.” He curls his right hand into a ball, traces a curved line along the pinky side of his palm with a slim finger. The skin there is smooth- too smooth, the kind of completely creaseless sheen you get with hurried laser surgery. It’s almost like he senses her observation- he sighs and puts his hand back in his lap. “It scarred- barely visible, really. It was so faint you wouldn’t even know it was there unless you looked for it.” His breath hitches. “I looked for it every damned day until I got it lasered off. Some back-alley clinic on Iapetus. The second he wrapped a bandage around my hand, I missed it.”
Buddy’s heart pangs in sympathy. The way Pete is talking, quiet and plaintive, echoes a little too closely to the years of late nights she spent with Jet in the Lighthouse- “I miss her”s whispered over comfort food and scratched countertops. At least she had the scars from their time together, the whispered rumors that darted through the Cerberus Province of Vespa and Buddy, Buddy and Vespa . Whoever the man before her is, he had to leave that behind- or chose to, and regretted it.
“When I watched that door close behind him, when I saw the lock flash, I… I forgot myself for a moment. My brain told me that door and this one made the same sound, but honestly, I have no idea if they truly did. It just felt… fitting that they would.” Peter’s voice is so soft that he might not even realize his mouth is still moving. “All I knew was that I could not lose him again.”
Buddy stays quiet when his forced, even breaths turn into sobs. She lets him lean into her and runs one hand across the top of his head as he cries. He’s almost silent- this, like everything else about the man under the mask, is something he has learned to hide.
She feels it immediately when Ransom shutters back down over Pete’s bare face- his sobs taper off abruptly, his shoulders push downwards, and he stiffens under her touch. He sits up so fast it startles her, practically falling off the couch in his path to escape. “Ah- I’m dreadfully sorry, Captain, I have no clue what came over me. I should really be getting out of your hair-”
“Bridges,” Buddy blurts out, because Ransom is halfway across the room already somehow and she- what? What is she telling him this for?
He seems to wonder the same thing, stopping in his tracks and slowly turning. The ramrod-straight posture of Ransom is still there, but something in the way his brows knit feels more genuine. “Captain?”
“Bridges. You have doors, I have bridges.” Buddy exhales. A word comes to her- reciprocity. Pete trusted her enough to bare a side of his soul nobody else has ever gotten to see, and it only seems fair to offer a piece of herself up in return. “I’m sure you already know how Vespa and I got separated, and I don’t like going over it. But ever since we reunited…” Ransom moves a little closer and sits down again. He’s still wound tight, like the smallest twitch could send him running, but it’s a step in the right direction. “The date night Vespa and I went on when we docked at Io, a few months ago. There was a bridge leading from the restaurant she chose to the park we planned to go to afterwards. I stepped on first and looked back at her, and… for a moment, I was certain she wouldn’t be there. That she’d fallen again, leaving me with a flash of panic in my chest and mere memories of the woman I loved.” She still remembers how she’d frozen, the way Vespa had looked at her in the dim light, the feeling of Vespa’s hand around hers for the rest of the evening. A gentle, calloused grip, every point of contact telling her I’m not letting go this time. “I know how it feels. The fear that… no matter how hard you try to keep them safe, you’ll wake up alone.”
Ransom stiffens. His eyes flick away from hers and back again, and it feels like she’s wandered somewhere off-limits. Silence stretches between them. She has nothing left to say, and Ransom doesn’t seem like he wants to reply but still, eventually, he nods. The voice that comes out isn’t quite Pete again, but it’s closer than she’s ever heard elsewhere. “Thank you, Captain. Goodnight.”
Then he’s gone, leaving the lounge as quiet and dark as if he had never come.