—MENTAL LINK.

[iuno]

DESPAIR you can't save everything	STUBBORN i just have to think it's all for something
BITTER no one has ever been happy forever	GUILT but all of this was my fault!

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[iuno]

[ the interruption startles Juno, static-shock jolts him out of his dark brooding, and he flinches away from it with a sharp spike of shame. it's an automatic reaction, not even thinking in the moment about who the hell is yelling at him and why they care — he's come out of that mess with a guilty conscience, and a part of him was just waiting for the backlash. so it doesn't matter what the source of it is, he'll take it.

indignantly: ] ( Nothing! ) [ since he's still, emotionally speaking, bleeding all over the place like someone knifed him and left him in an alley, he realises almost immediately that this isn't going to convince anyone. instead, he tries a much more compelling explanation: ] ( I was— We were just— )

[ he's off-balance from Nureyev, hasn't managed to shake his keening distress and it makes it too easy to get flustered. he needs to pull himself together. what does Bakugo care about their personal drama, anyway? he got a decent read on that kid and he's really obviously not the type to get involved in someone else's problems — unless they affect him, Juno realises. oh god, he's Nureyev's Brood. this timebomb is one of Nureyev's, that's a disaster, that's stupid and. and it's unfair. in the wake of that fumbling conversation with Nureyev, with all the awful bruising heartache on Juno's chest right now, that just seems... unfair. the one connection Juno actually wants, and it's so much easier for someone else.

he grits his teeth; digs his heels into anger, irritation, rejection. he's got plenty of practice with pretending not to be injured, it might as well come in handy here. ]

( The grown-ups were talking. Alright? And I didn't ask for a goddamn audience. )

[incinerates]

Too bad. You got one. Deal with it.

[ It's easy to call Black out on the pretty things he says. It's easier to cover his own heartache, to push aside the gut-wrenching sickness that creeps up on him when two people so obviously in Need of one another bleed against each other and he's caught in their undertow. Swallowing blood-emotions like he's drowning in them, until he remembers how to fight back against it. With fire, burning away at whatever's leeched off Black and carried Juno with it, crisping at the edges of their shallow connection methodically. ( Let him GO. ) ]

Why'd you do that to each other?

[ This, though. THIS, he clutches at. A child's hand curved around a favorite toy, fingers worrying at the cape until a brief loss of control burns it to cinders. Annihilates half of the plastic-cast body of his hero and idol, and he feels like this. Why, Juno? He doesn't understand you, doesn't understand a single thing about you. Doesn't know why he doesn't just let you go the fuck away, to lick your stupid self-inflicted wounds. ( He blames Black, though. It's the easiest solution - blame Black, who feels so much for Juno. It's his fault, the stupid fuck. ) ]

[iuno]

[ maybe what keeps him from just shoving at Bakugo as hard as he can is the feeling that hums along the mental link, this fervent attempt to understand, to make sense of something that hurts, something he doesn't want. it's not any desire to intrude or make things better. Juno gets it. he didn't want to drag anyone into his bullshit, so it must suck for the kid to be trying to sort through something Juno himself can't untangle. ]

( It's complicated, and also: none of your business. )

[ despite that, he's clearly not done; there's the impression of someone drumming their fingers on a hard surface, weighing their words because they can't keep their mouth shut. getting caught up in Nureyev's orbit just made things worse, and his head is such a mess right now that he'd talk to anyone just to get it out. ]

( We— ) [ false start. he casts it aside and tries again, deciding fuck it, deciding that if Nureyev won't admit what the root of their problems is, then someone else might as well know. that it might even help Bakugo to just ignore their little knot of hurt and heartache next time it comes around, which it will. he knows it will. ]

( Look, I screwed up. I did something terrible, because. ) [ there's a pause like a hitch of breath, and then that black feeling of self-loathing surges up in him, a vague sense of the same bitter glass-edged laughter from when Bakugo first met him. an awful mix of amusement and anger, bitter and dark and poisonous. too much there to get through the distance they're trying to maintain from each other, something too vast for their thin connection, but it's embedded deep in Juno. some enormous, festering wound of a thought. ] ( Because why wouldn't I? I always do. )

[ it's not that he doesn't want to fix it. the fact that he hurt Nureyev is plainly something he agonises over, but to him, it can't be fixed. he knows how this works. he's afraid of how it always ends. and so it seems like some line he can't convince himself to cross, like a wolf that paces its cage even when the door is wide open because it's so much harder to leave. ]

( And he knows that, I don't know why he won't just admit it. So if you want an answer, go ask Hadrian. )

[incinerates]

[ He wishes Juno would. Shove at him, give him an excuse, let him cut loose and really lay into something. This knife edge he's walked is a barely-contained secret, bleeding out of his pores as he jockeys the nests elbows and hisses and snaps at olive branches and kind words. ( He shoved that girl on the beach; that murderous girl, who sounded no older than him. The one who thought heroes were killers, and they aren't they aren't they aren't -- ) Part of him wants to hurt Juno, and that part figures it'd be in retaliation. Juno earned it, Juno started it, Juno's the one who's begging for it --

And that's what keeps him at bay.

That faint, barely-there sense that Juno's just waiting for the hit. Denying him that is a lot sweeter, then. ]

Don't you dare look down on me like that.

[ The words are a whipcrack, lightning in the sky. ( "None of your business", you made it his business. ) Don't you DARE dismiss him, he'll come back a thousand times harder if you do.

Even now, it's spurring him forward. Harder and faster, the words tumbling from him -- his mind to Juno's, even as his mind fractures and schisms and handles a conversation with Hadrian Black at the same time. It's a little too much, in one go, for such a new hosts. One who hates that he can juggle two conversations at the same time, one that hates how he reaches out mind-to-mind because it's the easiest way for him to hear the answers he's given and to miss none of the nuances. He doesn't miss that inky, sticky-thick pain that Juno bleeds. It feels like that fucking villain, the one that ate him up and tried to crawl inside of him to wear him, like some puppet. Juno feels like a puppet, being worn by something darker and sadder. ( Why's he like this? Why's he have to be like this? What does Black see in him? Why does he CARE so much? ) ]

Ha, [ the laugh is small, mean, bordering the edge of something he's tucked away deep, ] You're both useless, it's a wonder you made it here at all.

[ ( Rooms away, he stands over Hadrian Black; ready for a fight. ) Here, he braces his toes up against Juno Steel and snaps his teeth at him. Jockeys and jostles his mind, gets in his face. ]

What makes you so sure that he knows? I'm talking to him now, and he seems more like some high-class moron you're giving too much credit to.