( -- closed ) you used to dream about fires.

[sospita]

Who: Juno Steel ( sospita) & OTHERS.
Where: VARIOUS.
When: This is a July catch-all. Shove a header in here if you want a wildcard.
What: There's a lot happening, okay!?
Warnings: N/A. Will update.

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[sospita]

[ the last and most vivid thing he recalls is nureyev - bathed in red, hands dark and wet with the blood of the man who molded him, becoming a vengeful myth to be passed along through history. he remembers him - small, thin, aflame with something that couldn't be put out by hardship or time or the constant, unrelenting struggle within. he remembers the burst of something hot inside of him - inside his heart - knowing that nureyev was good for his word.

provided that word was given to him.

nureyev has a hand on him, and juno is painfully, abruptly aware of it. the sharpness of his fingers, the nervous warmth of his palm. how badly he wanted to step forward, into those arms and touch his hands to nureyev's face. silly, silly things. he steps back, instead, arm drifting from nureyev's grip slowly, hand seizing at his wrist at the last moment. one point of contact, to steady him. he goes for the abandoned alcohol on the couch, just within his reach, and tips a shot down his throat with ease, before he sets it down again. discards it, and breathes out in a shaky huff. ]

You might come to regret that.

[ a tight, bitter statement.

finally, he touches his fingers to nureyev's forehead. slides them to his temple, fits his palm along the side of his face. it feels nice, and it's nothing like the bloom of tension that creases his eyebrows and swells ( like something alive; growing, twitching up against the back of his eye ). juno remembers how to do this, after all. it's been hammered into him, routine and banal now; miasma had seen to that training montage, after all. at first: the static, the humming blank of the in-between and the search. he pushes, further, until his mind connects to nureyev's and he's lost to it. there's no way of knowing what happens to his physical body, besides the bleeding and the aching when he comes back.

he's there, then. in the middle of a fight. thrashing, whip-like tentacles and the burst of laserlight out of the corner of his eye. the flash of a knife. panic, desperation; he turns and behind him, he can see the Egg reaching the breaking point. it's horrific, this knowledge that they're here at this point, struggling to stop a vast, shapeless creature bathed in fury and ichor. he sees - nureyev. peter. he sees himself - and reaches up to his own face, touching the space below his eye. the eye that he can't see in his own face, there's just - so much blood.

( and he knows, in this desperate moment, as he and nureyev retreat - what he'd do, what he will do. it doesn't take a genius to recognize a lose-lose scenario. and that's him, after all. who knows his mind better than himself? )

it feels like hours, living this vision, this memory.

when the door shuts, he's at peter's side, and everything is so - vivid.

yeah.

definitely going to live to regret that. ]

-- we're not, [ he comes back, and brings his hands to his face. there's the blood he recognizes, and the throbbing that courses through his head and throat. ] We're not aligned.

[thieving]

[ time stretches.

it stretches and works itself thin and peter stands as still as stone, juno's fingers against his temples, eyes closed. he tries to quiet his mind, just as juno had told him to before, but it's more difficult this time. when he manages it, he's left standing there, half-swaying in the middle of the living room that isn't theirs, clutching onto juno's arms like a lifeline, like it's the only thing he has left, and in a way, it is. and he hates it. and he loves it. he loves everything about it, fingers wrapped around his forearm, the way his knees lock and how he can almost half-feel it, the slow-motion descent of something happening.

peter tries not to think, he tries not to relive it.

he doesn't know what juno saw down in the cell. he doesn't know what juno is seeing now, but maybe it's that singular moment, maybe it's miasma, and the fear worms its way deep into the pit of his stomach as he remembers her, throttling him like an animal, spilling out along his hand at the edge of his knife, the sight of juno disappearing behind the door--his voice--his--

quiet.

he trusts that perhaps he see what he needs to see, finds what must be found to put it all right, here and now. peter has never whispered the truth so vehemently in his life, meant it so damnably much. by the time juno comes out of it, he can feel his palms, damp on his skin, easy to pull away from, and when juno pulls his hands away, peter opens his eyes, sees the slowly-oozing trail of blood marking a path down, down, treacherously downwards towards the open collar of his shirt.

oh.

peter fumbles (peter seldom, if never fumbles), but reaches into another pocket, as if searching for something. reaches into yet another. nothing. it comes to rolling down a sleeve and stepping forward, no hesitation, no beat left between them. ] Here, [ he says it softly as he pulls the material over his thumb and brushes the blood away with a light touch. he sweeps it back, some catching and staining his knuckle, the rest smeared up and caught by his shirt. ]

Aligned how... exactly? Or rather, misaligned. We arrived together-- [ he lets his thumb press to the space just beneath his eye softly, smoothing over where blood used to be. he tilts his head slowly, examining his expression.

it dawns on him very quietly, the way something creeps up behind you, slides arms around you, slits your throat and leaves faster than you can fathom it.

somehow. the timing of it all. it's off. ]

Together but not quite... together.