{{You'd better have a bloody good idea of what you're doing, mate.}}
Angelo rolled his head to look at Jono, the cheap upholstery of the sofa scraping the back of his neck. "I think I do," he said. "And even if I don't — I'm fucking Emma Frost, man. Would you pass up on that?"
Jono stared back, eyes flat in the flicker of the television. {{No,}} he admitted. {{But then, I'm a fucking twat myself.}}
Nodding, Angelo took another drag on his cigarette and closed his eyes to feel it scratch, dry and clinging, all the way down.
. .. ... .. . Jubilee corners him first, and frankly, Angelo's not very surprised. For all her bubblegum and sparkles, she has a sharp edge to her, some place where she's been snapped once and never quite fixed again.
She gets him in the kitchen, while it's their turn to clean up after dinner. The others have all tumbled off, to their rooms or the common room or outside, and Angelo's standing at the sink loosely bumping one hip against the counter while he scrapes bits of moussaka off the plates, and Jubilee suddenly hisses, "I'm onto you, you prick."
Pausing, Angelo stares at her for a long time before carefully setting the plate down in the sink. He can feel her practically vibrating next to him, her dark hair electric with anger, her candy-pink mouth swelled into a disapproving pursed circle. For a brief sizzling moment, Angelo imagines what it would be like to have that mouth press against the palm of his hand — but it's gone before it can become something more, and he's glad for that. "You don't wanna talk about this," he warns her, gently, because he loves her for being the one to yell at him, but he doesn't want to have to explain. "Don't get all up in my shit, mijita."
For a moment, he thinks Jubilee might back off. But then she leans forward, poking one strong finger into his collarbone and twisting it, right on the bone where it hurts like hell. "You can't even begin to know what you're getting into," she whispers, loud and harsh. "I've seen this kind of shit before — yeah, I have, Espinosa, so don't give me the fucking eye-rolling — and it always ends like hell and screws everybody else up too."
Angelo reaches up, grabbing hold of her hand even though he doesn't pull it away. "I can handle it," he tells her. Jubilee goes entirely still, staring intently at him, then grins.
"Whatever," she says, turning back to the counter. "Just don't take the rest of us down with you."
Slowly, Angelo reaches for the plate in the sink, but she's already picked it up.
. .. ... .. . {{I think Paige might be starting to twig,}} Jono murmured, head bent over his guitar as he twisted knobs and plucked feverishly at the strings. Angelo sat up straighter on the sofa, eyes narrowing.
"What?" he demanded. "What, say that again — what?"
{{Paige. She's starting to wonder about you and....}} Jono trailed off, shaking his head. {{Asking questions, like. Being suspicious.}}
Angelo leaned back, still watching Jono as his fingers whitened and reddened, moving all over the guitar to press here and pull there. He opened his mouth and lazily let a cloud of smoke trail out, breathing in deeply and letting it sting the insides of his nose as he asked, "So...you tell her anything?"
Jono finally looked up, one eyebrow peaked. {{Are you mad?}} he inquired dryly. {{If she does figure it out, I won't be the luckless fucker confirming it for her.}}
"Mmmmmm." Angelo licked his lips, and wondered which side Jono would take, if it came down to that.
. .. ... .. . Everett eyes him mournfully in class, like he's just found out that Angelo's secret hobby is lighting kittens on fire or stealing from churches. He doesn't say anything — Ev's respect for personal space is too ingrained for that — but Angelo feels the sorrow and reproach just the same. It makes him restless and irritable, and he's rude and snappish and can't even bring himself to feel badly about it.
Monet knows too, he's sure of it. She hasn't mentioned it, of course. If anything, she's even more frigidly polite than ever, and Angelo sits deliberately behind her and stares at the long fall of her dark, dark hair. He spreads his fingers across his desk, gripping the edges until there are painful ridges in his flesh, and imagines what it would feel like if she tipped her head back and that cold fragrant hair spilled over his forearms. He imagines it harder every time until his head is practically reeling from it, and Monet crosses and re-crosses her legs.
The morning she comes to class with her hair tightly clipped into a doyenne twist, Angelo laughs, so harshly that Cassidy sends him off for some cough syrup. He doesn't need it, of course, but he pours himself a bitter green capful and swallows it anyway.
. .. ... .. . And Emma is cold everywhere but inside, and they don't even really do it all that often but the times that they do he's shivering and shuddering and burning up, it's like when you have a fever but you're freezing, and Emma is filthy wanton and icy at the same time, and it drives him wild.
What the fuck are we doing? he asks her once, gasping it against the damp orchid-perfumed tendrils of hair that cling to the skin just behind and under her ear. I must be fucking loco.
Emma twists her hips against him, and it's not like it used to be with Torres, who was curvy but hard, bony; Emma is cream and perfection, her body is soft in secret places and every angle is smoothed over, and Angelo can taste the heavy thick milkiness of her whenever he breathes.
You're intelligent, Espinosa, she murmurs, her voice still remarkably even but crumbly, around the edges. Figure it out.
He can't, though, no matter how much he presses against her, and he knows she keeps her eyes open while they do it, her eyelashes making tiny deliberate flutters against his forehead.
. .. ... .. . "It's like I'm fucking obsessed with sex, all of a sudden," he said sourly, digging his heels against the arm of the sofa. Jono, ranging restlessly around picking things up and dropping them again, made that peculiar sound that Angelo had come to know as a psionic version of a derisive snort.
{{And that's a new development for you, then?}}
"Heh." Angelo grinned, scrunching himself further down on the sofa until the back of his neck was snapping and sparking with pain. "You know what I mean, ese."
{{Ange.}}
The tone made Angelo close his eyes for a second before opening them and neutrally responding, "Yeah?"
Jono had stopped moving, was standing still, halfway across the room, light slipping here and there from between the bandages on his torso and face. Not for the first time, Angelo couldn't help but think how strangely beautiful it was, beautiful the way lightening storms were, beautiful the way horrible things could be.
{{You know,}} Jono said, face angled and wolfen in the shadows, {{you know this can't possibly fucking end well.}}
If Angelo were a more dramatic person, if he'd seen enough movies or read enough books to know a good soundbite, he would've said something like that's what I'm counting on or so I'll do this until the end, then. But he wasn't, and he hadn't, so instead he arched up from the sofa until his neck cracked and his back ached, and was insistently silent until Jono didn't say anything either.
. .. ... .. . Two to go, he thinks every time he looks at Paige or Cassidy. The only two on campus who don't know what's going on, who don't know why Angelo slumps sullenly in his chair in Frost's classes and why Emma is more rigidly normal than ever. He almost wishes they would find out, because the waiting is making him jumpy. He nearly tells Paige on three separate occasions, stopping himself each time only because he wants her to find out on her own.
And then one night at dinner, he realizes that Sean and Emma don't say a word to each other through the entire meal, and that Sean's hands shook a little while he was saying grace.
He can't even finish dinner that night, and leaves the table early.
. .. ... .. . And then, two weeks later, Angelo goes down into the basement and finds Jono standing at the foot of the stairs, the side of his face pressed against the wall and making rabbit candle shadows across Jono's black clothes, and Angelo knows what's happened.
He's not ready for it, but that doesn't make it go away. It never has.