#it's a solid cat-and-mouse dynamic your honor he wants to be caught So Bad but he's not Allowed To Want That

[waters-and-the-wilde]

tell you what tho if there's one thing about this episode that nails it for me, it's exactly that sense of having someone's number. there's the way that juno used that phrase himself obv, but like The Thing Is that Juno's been able to see right through him from literally day one. both that he wasn't who he said he was but also that there was enough of something real to get hung up on and haunted by the thought of him for all that time after. and how the most frustrating part of Train From Nowhere is that so much of the real Peter Nureyev is so close to the surface, practically begging Juno to See Him again, and Juno's too wrapped up in his own insecurities and unwillingness to look.

heeheehoohoo and now the turns have tabled and it's like. oh he's trying to do the stone cold haughty thing that lasted all of twenty-four goddamn hours in Man In Glass and now this is after they've had a whole year together. like ofcourse he's physically incapable of saying those words without idk blacking the fuck out or something (which. I am EATING that WiTH mY MOUTh HE CAN'T GIVE UP HOPE. THE THING THAT TIES HIM DOWN IS ALSO GONNA BE HIS SAVING GRACE) and that whole scene makes it clear that it obviously doesn't matter what other move he tries to pull because Juno's come far enough in his own right to have conviction in that knowledge. disappearing again is pretty much all he's got.

#yes yes Asking For Help is a move but it's like telling the other Aurinkos his name. it's Not Available To Him in his present state #it's a solid cat-and-mouse dynamic your honor he wants to be caught So Bad but he's not Allowed To Want That #anyway i've got a line in one of my wips that's like #'oh juno you're such an abysmal liar it's enchanting' #'oh yeah well you're so used to getting one over on people that you fold like a paper spaceship the moment somebody calls your bluff!' #so having that play out was honestly its own kind of Tasty #the penumbra podcast #peter nureyev #juno steel #tpp spoilers