#or makes it feel like juni has permission to cut loose for a bit

[impossible-rat-babies]

juniper stuff below the cut bc im vibing w them and gotta talk but clutter!

no thoughts head empty on their childhood all that much. always a sort of gangly, observes more than speaks sort of child. pinged as a child early in school developmental issues bc of their quiet tendencies/lack of making friends. but it was really just a lot of being very internalized and playing a lot on their lonesome as a child. praised for being a “independent” child who doesn’t take up that much room.

it irked em a bit since it’s like “no im not any of these things, i’m just quiet!” so they did get to be more talkative, but they were sarcastic and witty about most things. anyway they ended up picking up the sciences early on in middle school (10-12 yrs old) and took it and RAN with it. the sciences became Their Thing and they really, really thrived. also languages. juniper loved learning new languages, that was just icing on the cake. it was less oh this child has developmental issues like we thought and more oh this child needed a niche to thrive in and then they were good. 

didn’t account for absent parenting + a twelve year old having to learn how to cook their own healthy meals most of the week.

it was the sort of home where there were photographs around with smiling faces of the few vacations they managed to go on, knick knack fun things too. like a fridge with magnets on it of a few of the places their mother went too + a few very special ones from their father. but it often felt like that was a sort of substitution for the actual love and care they needed. like “maybe these photographs will be replacements for the hugs and affection one needs.” 

(juniper got some uhhhh touched starved stuff 2 work on)

but! they first came out to one of their science teachers like “hey i think im not a boy or a girl” and their teacher, better parenting figure, was like “shit you know that’s cool as fuck juni.” <-- probs what was actually said. also def the nickname juni came up after they changed their name

but! they get out of high school with the glowing recommendation that they seek higher education. so! they went off to uni and met bobby while they were there and it was definitely a lot of mistakes. a lot of mistakes in that relationship; a “that’s two years of my life im not getting back.”

it was like a promise that they kept on waiting to be fulfilled. they had these expectations of a relationship and oh bobby is so good for accepting who i am as a nb person who is a bit quiet and likes science and languages a bit too much. they definitely saw that bobby was using them a lot. like a lot. like blatantly copying off of their work, begging them to do it for them bc he knew juniper would do it for him.

they also fought. a lot. juniper had a lot of biting sarcasm and defensiveness/being stubborn as a mule, but bobby just wouldn’t stfu. it was just....incredibly unhealthy.

it all sort of came to a head when it was like 4am in the student study center and there’s a table of work all around them and they just start sobbing. big awful terrible sobs like this isn’t what i wanted at all. none of this is what i wanted out of uni or out of a relationship. they ended up packing up what little they had in their apartment and sort of vanishing off the face of the earth. didn’t tell bobby, didn’t tell any of their professors/uni, didn’t even tell their mother. they sort of just...left for a real long time.

they showed back up in wayhaven a few years later with bunches of tattoos/piercings and ended up at the PD bc they still wanted to solve problems/use their mind for something. they don’t talk much about being gone for so long, but they have a lot of pretty tattoos out of it. 

then the detective stuff happens and team bravo and it’s like oh boy this is TRIP and im confused/annoyed. the whole supernatural reveal was a lot of confusion and a bit of oh that’s the goings on of things. great. there was a lot of abject disappointment and resignation over their mother keeping it all a secret. like yup this checks out mom being absent and keeping secrets? didn’t see that coming from a mile away.

but they butt heads with adam a lot and they fall back into a lot of the comforting passive aggressive/sarcastic responses they got used to with bobby. but adam isn’t like bobby so it gets juniper absolutely nowhere and that’s just frustrating to the 9th degree. like “for fucks sake will you argue with me like a normal person im sick and tired of talking to a brick wall!”

the classic love to hate em to love em, really. doesn’t help as much bc juniper is like “i am looking. i am looking away.” aka two touched starved morons who won’t talk about their ~*feelings*~