Chapter Text
It falls from her lips like it shouldn’t be a secret, or something to be ashamed of. “I guess I have a crush,” she giggles, pressing her gloved hand against her face. It looks warm, flushed in a way that pales the makeup coded into her face.
It’s sort of always amazed Jax how expressive their fake faces can be.
He’s not yet processed exactly what Pomni has said. “A what?” It comes out breathless, and it makes him wince. Don’t act like you care, he chastises himself. What a dumbass.
“Like, I dunno,” she continues, playing with her fingers. “A crush? Or something. I’m not really sure. It’s hard to tell anything here. But—yeah, I think I have a crush.”
“Oh,” Jax feels his own face reset. Growing numb, maybe, even if anything he felt there was a phantom sensation. They’ve navigated towards one of the less frequented rooms, a personal favorite of Jax, that looks like it’s meant to be a forest. A real forest, not like the fantasy crap Caine likes to mess with for their adventures. There were trails that led nowhere, and a climate that went through circles, though Jax could never tell if that was really the way seasons worked.
He didn’t know what drew him to it, but once he found it, he’d taken a mental note of where the door was placed and his feet would take him there when everything about the others became too much. The first few times, he ran, still holding onto that disgusting hope that he could find an exit if he tried hard enough to find it. He remembers because it had been so early on that he could perfectly replicate the feeling of his lungs burning, despite the fact that his toy legs were much different to whatever he’d used to have in the past.
There was no use to recall any of it other than to distract himself from Pomni’s words. But it’s of no use, because under all those thoughts there’s an earthquake inside of him, a messy crack between the tectonic plates of his heart.
But he can’t escape his answer for too long; her tacky red and blue colors contrast perfectly against the computer generated classic green of the grass, rendered to mock Jax’s memory, and forcing him to see her. Her big eyes stare up at him in expectant silence, and there’s only so far a memory lane can take him before he’s forced to tune back in.
His tongue feels funny. “That’s… kind of stupid, Poms, not gonna lie.”
Her smile widens, like that was exactly what she expected. He’d learnt a while ago it was no use to try and trick her when she read him, though, so he lets the uncomfortable feelings of being seen go through him.
“It can’t be that bad,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“You’re nuts,” he insists, trusting himself to speak up the longer he steadies himself. He’s been getting really good at balancing care, knowing where to keep Pomni at bay and where he can look inside. While her words break something inside of him, he’s content not to let it lash out. Just yet. “Are you sure this isn’t a case of being stuck with only so many people?”
“At first I thought it may be,” she confesses, pursing her lips. She’s so smart, of course she thought of it. “But… honestly, the way they act, all the things they do, I think I’ve always found those things attractive. I think they’re really special despite, well, everything.”
Jax's first thought is, holy shit is it Zooble. I’m going to kill myself if Zooble stole Pomni from under my fucking nose. It is only after a brief moment of panic that he realizes that she’s being vague on purpose, rather than mentioning the only person that uses those pronouns out of all of them. Then, he breathes in, and asks. “Who is it, then?”
Pomni’s face gets funny at that. “What do you care?” She asks, and it isn’t mean in the slightless. It’s how they treat each other, with barbed jabs and mocking expressions because they both love the slight thrill of it. This is why she’s his favorite, because she’s not afraid of her own fangs.
He grins wider at it, keeping his act clean. “Can you blame a guy for being curious?” He asks, spreading his arms like he’s on a show. He doesn’t often feel like he’s performing with Pomni, but there’s always things to be kept under wraps.
“Yeah, for being nosy,” Pomni huffs, biting her lip.
How can she look at him like this, and like another person in the circus, his heart wonders. And, he thinks a little bitterly, how long will I have until he’s not the only one that can admire how she looks under the soft shade of this fake forest? Because surely if Pomni has managed to grab Jax’s minuscule, pathetic heart, whoever she’s actually interested in will have no trouble falling in love with her.
Not that Jax is in love. Jax doesn’t do love. He can barely do friendship, and it has only been possible by Pomni’s fierce determination. But he feels as though his world ends when he realizes his time with her attention solely focused on him is coming to an end. Not only that, she’s actively looking away, and it’ll only be a matter of time before he can no longer dwindle her away from the others with the promise of something cool to show.
“Okay, I get the idea,” he’s quick to say. “But just remember that all these cool rooms are for us, ‘kay? No showing them to anyone else, even if you’ve got a crush on them.”
She smiles like he’s told her a joke. “I mean it!” He holds his hands behind his head, closing his eyes. The picture of a guy that is not bothered. “I don’t want—none of them are intruding on my peace!”
“It’s a promise,” she agrees. “These are just for us, after all.”
One of his eyes opens. “That’s more like it.”
At least he'll keep that.
—
The next day, their adventure sparks a small flick of recognition inside of Jax. It isn’t until he sees everyone in their suits inside a very average rendered spaceship that it hits.
“Is this Among Us?” He asks with a grin, twisting his body in front of the bay area’s window in order to appreciate it better. If anything, the small pop culture references Caine throws their way keeps him somewhat sane.
“Oh [BEEP], you’re right,” Zooble says with a voice that only holds despair. Pomni’s small groan shares the misery. Both Gangle and Ragatha only look mildly confused around, and Kinger is already nowhere to be found. This ought to be fun.
He realizes with a small frown that he’s not the Impostor. “‘kay, who has the impostor, I want to switch.”
“What does that mean?” Gangle asks, timidly. Jax realizes that with their uniforms he won’t be able to break her mask. This day keeps getting worse and worse.
“We got briefs, there’s normal people and there’s imposters,” he explains, flicking his wrist dismissively. “We need to find who the imposters are, and do our tasks, and the imposters have to kill us. Blah, blah, I want to kill.”
“Oh, so we’re so lucky you’re not the one who got that,” Ragatha sighs. Jax grins at her.
“I can make your life miserable in so many other ways,” he tells her, winking. He can see Pomni stifle her laugh from the corner of his eyes, and his mood improves quite significantly. “Anyway, maybe you’re the impostor! Maybe we need to throw you out.”
She tenses at that, and Zooble’s quick to reassure. “We’re not going to be doing all that. Let’s just all do our tasks and get over this quickly. With our luck, maybe Kinger got the imposter, so it doesn’t make sense to even vote someone out.”
“Boo,” he says, but doesn’t bother to argue against the idea, walking towards where Pomni has been messing with some buttons around the bay area. It tracks that she’d like to actually get the useless tasks done, too. He’s not going to bother, because he has bigger plans in mind, such as studying his favorite subject.
He leans down at Pomni, catching her attention. “What’s up, Pompom?”
“I’m not sure how to get the thermometer up…” She says. He can’t study her face completely from the spaceship mask, but he almost doesn’t need to. The tone tells him that she’s most likely pursing her lips in confusion, big eyes squinting at the machinery in front of her. It doesn’t help that, from this angle, she must barely be able to tell that there’s more buttons on the upper part of the computer.
“It’s right up here,” he says, holding her up without warning and making her yell. Jax can feel his own grin slowly grow genuine the most she struggles in his arms. She looks so cute, it’s almost impossible to stand.
“Jax, put me down!” Pomni insists, batting her arms back like he’d give her any opportunity. He remembers that when Pomni hits, she can make it hurt.
“I’m helping you!” He insists, making her swing in his arms.
Ragatha’s dumb voice shrills from their back. “Jax, leave her alone!”
“She’s fine,” Jax groans at the same time that Pomni’s voice picks up and yells, “I’m OK!”
They both stay quiet—Jax is not pouting—until her steps fade away, and then their faces find each other, a similar look of incredulousness appearing on their faces.
“She’s just trying to be nice,” Pomni says, trying to wrap the issue before Jax starts. She has probably heard him ramble about Ragatha enough.
“She can mind her own business,” Jax grumbles. He’s still holding Pomni up, but she’s travelled nearer him somehow, holding herself up on his shoulders and twisting her legs around his torso. She looks cozy in his arms, somehow, and with a tingle of fear Jax realizes that she’s too close to his face. If they didn’t have helmets on, he could just drop his head down and—
He drops her.
“Ow! Jax,” she grumbles, soothing her back where she hit it against some of the buttons.
“I keep telling you, pain is fake here,” he dismisses, praying the masks are bad enough so she can’t tell the flustered state of his expression. He tries to make himself grin, to no avail.
“It still hurts,” she complains, crossing her arms and kicking her leg at him. It does fucking hurts.
“Okay, chill!” He laughs, looking back at the panel. “Look, you can do your temperature thing.”
“Oh,” she looks at it, fiddling with the correct buttons. Once the small activity done announcement pops up, she looks back at him with a small smile. “Thanks, even if you could’ve been nicer about it.”
Whatever he has for a heart thumps once, twice. He’s mimicking throwing his hair back seductively before he can think about it. “Nothing, Poms.”
It’s good because she laughs. It must be a joke, because it’s Jax. He wouldn’t actually flirt with her. All Jax ever does is joke around.
His mission is quite simple. Pomni isn’t an open book, but she’s not a liar either. She must have a tell that he’s been missing that shows him who she likes from all of them, so it’s a matter of observing how she behaves with everyone in the circus, and draw his own conclusions. Not to feed his own ego too much, but he’s by far the best person at reading Pomni out of the room. He’d even argue that none of them have even tried, because they take in her fake smiles and small dismissals with ease. Jax is the only one pushing her, and he knows her enough to tell that she likes that.
They just work. And in order for them to work best, he needs to know who she likes.
It feels like a huge oversight on his part not to already know, really. But even with all that he knows about everyone he can’t figure out who it is, and it is sort of driving him mad.
He made a list of everyone he knows in his mind. He discards Kinger immediately, because she’s mentioned to him how much of a dad he feels to her. Bubble is dismissed, too, because of obvious reasons. Which leaves him with four true options, and each one is more absurd than the next.
Ragatha is one of his first thoughts. She’s nice, if you’re into that sort of thing. But for all that Pomni appreciates her friendship, it’s clearly overwhelming for her. And Ragatha is so fixated in being nice it makes her fake. If there’s anything Pomni can’t stand is fakeness, and he’d made that overwhelmingly clear at Jax. She doesn’t see her as a partner to Pomni’s willingness to connect. Besides, no matter how Pomni sugarcoats it, she does look weird.
Pomni doesn’t look weird. Her avatar is… nicer to the eyes.
Then there’s Zooble, who’s… even more weird. Or, well, he’d use the word abstract. They’re all uneven and changing shapes; he can’t see Pomni being interested in them. And while they’re very confident, and know how to match Jax’s fire in the worst way, they and Pomni don’t seem to get along swimmingly either. They’re both keeping their distance from each other, and it’s intriguing to witness.
Gangle is just. No. There’s no way. A bunch of otaku ribbons is so below Pomni’s league he can’t consider it for a second. And the thought of her being interested in Caine is…
He shudders.
Pomni notices this, making a small confused sound as they walk down the corridor towards Jax’s next task, that he’ll convince her to try first. He has simple pleasures such as watching her struggle, what can he say?
“Nothing, Poms,” he replies easily. And, because he’s never been perfect at self restraint, he continues. “Say, I have a question about that crush situation.”
He can’t see her face from the helmet, but she gives him a small nod. He gulps.
“You’re sure you can’t tell me?” He smirks, leaning down again. Her eyes are half lidded, clearly done with him already.
“We've been over this,” she says.
“C’mon!” He says, throwing his arms up. “You’re killing me, Poms!”
“Why do you even want to know?” She asks. Her voice has an edge of confidence he loves to bring out of her, that he'd mistake as flirting back if he didn't know far better now.
“How else can I make fun of you?” He says, grinning wider. It's a clever excuse, and he's proud of it. “Imagine if you like Rags of all circus toys, imagine the riot I could come up with.”
“You're insufferable,” she giggles.
“Is it Rags?” He insists, leaning back up. He doesn't know what he'll do if she says yes. But he can't promise his smile will stay in place, and that freaks him out the smallest bit. But it should be fine, as long as her big eyes stayed firmly away.
“I’m not gonna help you make fun of me,” Pomni says, finally opening their next door. The room is empty, thankfully, so Jax can continue his barrage of questions.
“You have the hots for Ragatha,” he continues, singing like they were children. He remembers, in a way that's a bit annoying, being exactly the kind of kid that'd sing about their classmates holding hands. “Rags and Pomni sitting under a tree, k-i-s—”
“Shut up!” She yells, mimicking covering her ears.
Jax doesn’t get the chance to finish before they’re met by the sight of a frantic looking Ragatha, bursting the door open.
“Where’s Zooble?” She demands, looking around like they may jump from the shadows. Jax’s eyebrows jump up.
“How should we know?” Jax snarks, on reflex. Her face falls.
“I think…” Ragatha sighs, like she’s under significant weight and not basically roleplaying. “I think Zooble may be the impostor?”
“Um…” Pomni hesitates. “What makes you say that?”
It strikes Jax as odd, how unsure she sounds. She’s anything but unconfident and Ragatha hasn’t given them any proof, but it’s not like she really should. She always takes these games too seriously.
“I think I saw her sneaking around with Gangle to kill her,” Ragatha pouts, crossing her arms.
That makes Jax smile. “No way you seriously think that,” he scoffs, staring down at Pomni in disbelief. But Pomni only stares back with her wide, curious eyes.
“What do you mean,” Ragatha asks, affronted.
Her defensiveness against him is exhausting, though not entirely undeserved, even if it annoys him that she does this with Pomni in the middle of it. And he isn’t even being mean! “C’mon, there’s no way I’m the only one who sees it. Poms, back me up here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, apologetic. Jax grumbles, but it makes sense. While she’s very smart, there’s only so long that she’s been in the circus. Despite what everyone thinks, he’s been stuck in this hell for the longest, and has seen too many things go down to even care all that much about anything. His capacity to brush things off even when he notices is what has kept him alive, after all.
“Dollface, Poms,” he announces, giving them pointed stares, “Zooble wants to get in between Gangle’s ribbons.”
"Huh?" Ragatha says. Pomni's inmediate face of disgust shows that she understood, and she taps Ragatha's shoulders gently and makes a rather crude gesture that, somehow, evades Caine's sensoring system.
The reaction is immediate. Ragatha yells, and goes as far as taking off her helmet to stare at him in disbelief. Huh, he didn’t think they could do that. He wonders what he has to do to get Pomni to take hers off. Just to mess with her, obviously. All her reactions are funny.
“You’re just like—you’re messing with us!” Ragatha screams, quite offended.
“Why would I, it’s so obvious!” He yells back, rolling his shoulders back.
“Stop yelling,” Pomni requests, and he abides by her words, but not without a small huff of displeasure.
“Tell that to her,” he insists, jutting his hip out.
“I—just—augh! Nevermind!” Ragatha exclaims, finally walking past them through the door towards the hall. “I'll keep looking for her! Pomni, take care!”
Jax stares at her, a little bit interested in how negatively she took those news. He doesn't think she is but he can't help the thought: what if she's homophobic? That'd be the cherry to the cake of her fake niceness, truly. But a pity for Pomni if she really likes her…
The thought makes him frown, all potential joy from the situation sucked out in an instant. In truth, the more he thinks about Pomni's secret crush, the less funny it becomes.
“Hey, Ragatha, wait!” Pomni calls, and whatever Jax has for a heart stops on its tracks. He sees the next five seconds play out in his mind: Pomni stops Ragatha and they stare at each other's eyes with feeling, before she offers to track down Zooble and leaves him in the dust to hang out alone. Just like it used to be. He's almost too afraid to breathe, tensing and staring at the way Pomni walks one, two, three steps towards her.
Ragatha turns back, without hesitation. “Yes, Pomni?”
“I'm sorry, Pomni says. “It's the game.”
Then, something snaps up and a monster comes out of Pomni's suit and eats Ragatha. Jax's jaw drops.
“No way, you’re the impostor?” He asks gleefully. Pomni finally takes off her own helmet, a guilty smile dancing around her face.
“Yeah, that was my brief. Uh, I didn't want her to keep looking if she was so mistaken. Also, I want to get this over with…”
“Poms, that was great,” Jax says, not an ounce of sarcasm in his voice even if it certainly sounds like it. “Her face was too good.”
Then, he realizes he's the other thing standing between her and victory. He assumes Caine went for the best drama approach, making the game a win only if every player is killed. He sighs, resigned to his fate.
“Ah, who would've thought,” he says, clicking his tongue and taking off his own helmet. “‘kay, come at me.”
“Actually,” she says, blinking up at him. “I kinda had a plan…”
There’s little he wouldn’t agree to when she is looking at him like that.
That’s how he ends up serving as Pomni’s bait for the next hour. The worst is that it’s genuinely funny: nobody thinks she’s the impostor, since surely then Jax would be dead by now. They get Zooble first, funnily enough, and Jax has a moment of pure glee telling Gangle that they just saw Zooble going through that door, what a shame… Pomni doesn’t look like she’s miserable, either, playing the theatrics as much as Jax is. She’s the perfect innocent bystander, and that makes it so the game passes in a flash. Before they know it, Jax is the last one standing.
“Throw me your worst,” he says, leaning against the wall of their last encounter, where Kinger hadn’t even seen the creature coming by being intrigued by models of butterflies on the big screen. He makes a finger gun and shoots it at Pomni, who giggles about it.
“Ah, I wish we could both be winners,” she mutters.
It makes Jax freeze. He knows she doesn’t mean it that way, but the words echo inside of him with force.
“Where’s your competitive bone?” He asks, going for light hearted, but his back straightens up on instinct. He feels like he should run, maybe, but where?
“I just think winning with you it’s better,” she admits, a bit bashful, and he wants to crack his skull against the wall. This is what doesn’t end up clicking about her. He’s seen her freak out more times than he can count, so many of those at the hands of him, on purpose. He’s been a terrible person to everyone inside this circus, her included, and despite all of that she’s like that. It makes a deep, cold fear crackle inside where his spine should be, how much he likes when she admits to that kind of thing.
And he thinks she’s aware. That makes him even sicker.
Last time, he hurt her badly. She hadn’t wanted to walk around the circus with him anymore, secluded inside her room as he remembered himself to do after Ribbit abstracted. For weeks, he thought he’d have to live through that nightmare again, having the only person that cared to look through the mask leave him. It’d almost driven him to abstract at the same time, which was so incredibly stupid, because the entire point was that he didn’t want to be hurt enough to get there again.
The memories are blurry. He mostly just cares that she’d allowed him to get inside her room without too much groveling.
He can’t do that again, no matter how much every part of code inside of him resents the idea of responding in kind.
“We are best, yeah,” he agrees, and the bile that rises up his stomach has nothing on the joy he feels looking into her grinning face.
It’s kind of strange, but he can’t help the thought.
If you agree we’re the best, why don’t you like me back?
The room sparks in confetti, Caine announcing the end of the adventure and the so-called tie. His grin disappears, but it’s not like anyone is paying attention to it anyway.