Chapter Text
On Wednesday, Jupiter returns to Earth - to Chicago.
It’s déjà vu, coming back to Uncle Vassily’s house with an Aegis cruiser cloaked at the end of the block. Last time she walked down this street, the damage to the roof was obvious, a massive hole blown through by an antigravity beam from one of Balem’s ships. Then, Jupiter didn’t even bother changing back into her old Earth clothes before she and the crew stormed through the front door.
This time, the roof looks just fine.
Little grey men, swarming all over the city, seeking out alien intrusions to cover up. They found her house. It occurs to Jupiter that those little grey men work for her now. Or do they belong to her? Are they slaves or employees? Do they have a union to negotiate decent employment conditions?
A few days ago when she woke up at the top of the Willis Tower and realized her pointy-eared abductor had changed her clothes while she was unconscious, she’d told him, “I can’t think about that right now.” Yeah … those little grey men she may or may not employ, swarming all over her planet, repairing alien damage and wiping peoples’ memories – she can’t think about them right now. Later, but not quite yet.
Jupiter asks Captain Tsing for the simplest clothes she has onboard, which turn out to be a crewel-worked black tank-top and pants that vaguely resemble jeans. Caine shadows her all the way down the street, only stopping when she waves him back, a few doors from home.
Inside the house, everything is almost normal. The couch is a foot to the left, the mismatched dining chairs each in the wrong spot at the table, but no one else seems to notice. They’re all too busy staring at each other in bafflement, everyone wondering why the others aren’t at work at noon on a weekday.
“Jupiter!” her mother exclaims when she walks in the door, “where have you been?”
Jupiter doesn’t have an answer. She should have come up with a strategy for this inevitable moment, but she was so desperate to hug her mother again (her conscious mother, not the mother who was knocked out on a gurney in a spaceship), she came barreling home as soon as they told her it was safe.
Jupiter’s mouth moves silently, and then tears well in her eyes and spill over her cheeks and she’s sobbing. Crying about the fact that she can’t tell her family the truth, crying about the sheer lunacy of her life during the last few days, crying about the cuts and bruises she can’t feel anymore because the med-tech healed them with RegeneX before she could object. She cries because this entire insane experience has turned her brittle, like glass, and if she gets bumped one more time, she might shatter.
“My Jupiter, come here!” Aleksa cries along with her, folding her into an embrace, and they sit together on the couch until all the tears are gone.
In retrospect, Jupiter realizes that moment was probably what prompted her family to buy the telescope.
~~~~~
On Wednesday night, when she’s washing dishes after supper, Jupiter catches sight of Caine lurking outside the kitchen window, to the side of the house. She dries her hands and calls out to no one in particular that she’s taking out the trash.
The minute she steps out the back door, hair in a sloppy ponytail and plastic bag in hand, Caine grins.
It’s like someone put a brand to her breastbone, the way heat suffuses through her chest.
“Is everything … good?” he asks, glancing at the house behind her. “Is it like you wanted it to be, coming home?”
She absently swings the half-empty trash bag, trying to figure out how to articulate her feelings. He plucks it from her and deposits it into the can, gentle and domestic as can be.
“It’s normal. Normal is good. I need normal right now.” Only after she finishes saying them does she realize how he might take her words. She can’t read his expression, he’s just staring at her with those big eyes and his mouth in a noncommittal flat line. She flaps her hands helplessly. “I mean – I’m so, so happy about the new, not-normal parts of my life, too. I’m just glad things aren’t exploding at the moment, y’know?”
His expression doesn’t change. “I’ve some things to take care of off-world,” he says. “It’ll just be a few days. Captain Tsing filed your Legion guard assignment sheave with the Commonwealth Ministry, like you asked. She’s gotten permission to stay on Earth for a while, until the assignment comes through.”
Until I come back, he doesn’t say.
He’s studying her face like it’s covered in foreign writing. God, she just wants him to smile again. “Is that … is that all right, your majesty?”
“You don’t have to ask my permission leave Earth, Caine,” she replies, shoving her hands in the back pocket of her jeans, elbows akimbo. She sucks cool night air deep into her lungs, trying to stifle that fire in her chest. “You’ve got your pardon, you’re back in the Skyjackers, I’m not your CO. I’m grateful to have Captain Tsing here, that’s fine.”
“Jupiter.” The word is soft, hardly a breath. He breaks eye contact, staring at the ground. “I won’t be gone long. Even with the pardon, it’ll take a while for the Legion and the Skyjacker division to get my paperwork sorted out. I won’t have an assignment for at least a few weeks.”
“Good.” It comes out so fast, that word. It finally earns her another grin.
Jupiter thinks she has it figured out: the Aegis are space-cops, the Legion are space-army, and the Skyjackers are like SEAL Team Six. What are the odds the Commonwealth would put a valuable asset like Caine on assignment to babysit a newly-minted royal recurrence?
Zero to none, she figures.
She wouldn’t ask Caine not to join the Skyjackers again. He’s wanted it since they met – it’s why they met. She can’t ask him to stay here on this little backwater planet with her. She can’t ask him to walk with her through the labyrinthine process of figuring out whether or not she wants to step into Seraphi Abrasax’s world. This is her journey, not his. He has his own plans, his own path. He’s earned the right to walk it, just like she has.
Before that train of thought goes any further, Caine moves around the trash can, coming to stand so close she can bask in the heat radiating off him. When she’d embraced Stinger on the Aegis cruiser, he’d felt cooler than a normal human, and a small part in the back of her brain wonders if it has to do with what sort of creatures go into the splice – mammals being warmer, insects cooler, would a snake-splice be completely cold-blooded? What’s a healthy dog’s average body temperature?
Jupiter’s concentration is a mess, her thoughts leaping from one bit of nonsense to another. Post-traumatic stress, maybe. The close proximity of her large, impressive wolf-man, definitely.
Caine doesn’t reach out for her, she’s the one who closes the distance, rocking up onto her toes to press her mouth to his. This is only the second time – she’d been in shock after he saved her from the wreck of Balem's harvesting facility on Jupiter, he’d held her until she stopped shaking and stayed with her while the med-techs mind-wiped her family and deposited them back home. There hadn’t been time for kissing, and definitely not time for talking about anything important between them, not then.
He folds her into his arms before she can pull her hands out of her own pockets, and her mouth opens as she reaches for the back of his head, pulling him down further. A small noise comes from his throat and his lips open, too, tongue warm and eager against hers. In spite of the wild butterflies in her stomach, the kiss is slow and easy. It’s amazing, so different than the frantic kiss she stole last time. She licks his sharp teeth and he shudders, leaning deeper in, so she’s practically bent backward. Her hips arch, seeking friction, and he makes that noise again.
A burst of shouting, in Russian, erupts from inside the house. There’s a very distinct “Juuuupiterrrrrr!” and a crashing noise.
Caine’s entire body tenses and he pulls up and away, staring at the nearby window like he expects a dozen of those dinosaur-dragon things to come stomping out.
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay.” Jupiter caresses the back of his neck, trying to soothe him. The bumps of his brand slide beneath the pads of her fingers, and she feels a little lightheaded. She knows what that brand says, what it means, even if he doesn’t seem to. He doesn’t even notice her touch, his attention riveted to their surroundings, searching for danger. She sighs. “It’s my night to do dishes, I should go back inside before they think I’ve run off again.”
Caine finally glances at her, his palms flexing against her spine. Part of her wants him to ask her to come back to the ship with him, maybe even to go on whatever off-world errand he needs to run. She'd say no -- she can't leave her family again so soon -- but she wants him to ask anyway.
He doesn't.
Hand coming around to his face, she strokes her thumb along the line of his jaw. “Fine, if you’re going, then at least promise you’ll bring me a pair of gravity boots when you come back. I want to learn to fly.”
His smile is like a burst of sunshine, his attention fully riveted to her again. She likes the weight of it, how all-consuming that focus is. “You do?”
“You never know, someday I might need to catch you when you’re falling, for a change. I like to be prepared.”
The laugh is hardly audible, it’s so low and deep in his chest. “I promise, your majesty.” He leans down again and she closes her eyes, lips parted, but he only deposits a soft kiss on her cheek before he pads silently into the night.