Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sound of running water was quickly drowned out by a sharp, constant ringing in the ears and muffled heavy breathing. Jax's grip on the porcelain sink tightened as his vision blurred, hoping the feeling of something solid in his hands would ground him back to reality. His soft, cartoonish gloves made it hard to feel anything, but the freezing temperature of the sink had slowly started creeping through the fabric, giving him something to focus on besides the voices in his head.

“This is what you wanted, right?”

“You're not going to look me in the eye and tell me nothing we've been doing together meant anything to you, because I know that's not true.”

“To push her away?”

“You're reached out to me, not the other way around.”

“You push everyone away.”

“You're scared you'll actual show a human emotion.”

“Not because you're scared.”

“Have you ever though that might be what causes people to abstract in the first place?”

“Because you don't deserve their friendship.”

“What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?”

“Why would anyone care about you, anyway?”

“Why didn't you fight back?”

“You are all you have.”

The ringing in Jax's gigantic rabbit ears slowly subsided, as did the voices. He felt the tightness in his chest start to loosen slowly, like knotted up shoestrings that were finally tugged in the right spot. The metaphorical sneakers are still a mess to look at and unwearable due to how tight the strings squeeze the bridge of the foot, but they're loose enough to finally kick off and not think about for a while.

Jax tilts his head up to the dirty mirror before him, blinking wearily at it. For a moment, he expects to see brown hair, a hooked nose, tired yellow-brown eyes…

… Nope. A purple rabbit stares back at him. The purple rabbit avatar he's been stuck in for what's probably been years. He tries not to think about that part, instead focusing on his black and yellow eyes, and the little frown on his face.

“God, you look stupid,” he mutters to himself. “God, I FEEL stupid,” he thinks more quietly, as flashbacks of Pomni staring up at him from the floor replay in his mind. He can't help but remember how crumpled and defeated her body language was, but how her red and blue eyes looked at him softly. Sympathetically. Knowingly. It made him want to throw up. It made him want to punch something— Anything but her. Jax couldn't lay a hand on her if he wanted to (and, he'd never admit it, he doesn't want to, either. His violent tendencies towards her had dissipated a while ago, exactly when he can't remember).

He's barely paying attention when Disappearing Guy walks out of the bathroom stall, more annoyed that his panic attack (borderline abstraction? They happened so often he wasn't sure what to call it) wasn't as “private” as he would've liked it to be. Jax let out another deep breath, eyes closed, head rolled back, letting the memories of what he said to the jester he's been growing fond of recede into the back of his mind. As this happens, his shoulders drop and he feels that ever-familiar, [BEEP]-eating grin spread across his face. When his eyes open, his black pupils are wide again, and a light chuckle leaves the bunny's throat as he saunters out of the bathroom and back to the auditorium.

Pomni noticed when Jax angrily got up and left the auditorium. She had noticed his small pupils, his clenched right fist, the way he was still staring at his open left hand as he walked off. Something stirred in the pit of her stomach, rising up and becoming a solid little lump in the heart of her throat as she turned back to the stage, trying to listen as Caine rattled off awards in his typical, broadcast-announcer voice.

Beside her, Ragatha shifted, head craning down to whisper where Pomni's ears would be if her avatar had any. Her red, yarny hair swayed forward as she did the motion, and it hit one of Pomni's bells making it jingle. The sound snapped the brunette out of the trance she was starting to slip into.

“Everything okay?” the ragdoll asked, her voice soft and melodic. 

Pomni, brows slanted and eyes clouded, shook her head slowly, ensuring the bells on her hat wouldn't ring as she did. Her voice was thick with concerns as she mumbled back, “I'm worried about Jax.”

Ragatha's eye softened for a moment, her smile small and unreadable. She turned to look back at the stage, attempting to mask the hurt look on her face (whether that pain was sympathy for Jax or upset that the focus wasn't on her, Pomni couldn't tell). Regardless, when the doll spoke, her voice was level and full of both wisdom and sorrow.

“He's always someone to worry about, whether it's out of compassion or fear,” she hums. “But as someone told me recently, sometimes it doesn't make sense to do the heavy lifting if the other person isn't in the mood.” 

Suddenly, Caine's voice cuts through their hushed conversation, and a spotlight whips through the audience to point at Ragatha directly.

“And the winner of the Heart of Gold Award is… Ragatha!” the ringmaster cries cheerily, spinning his cane in a circle and pointing it at the woman made of yarn. Ragatha lets out a high-pitched “Oh– Oh!” and covers her mouth as a simulated applause soundtrack plays. Pomni claps weakly beside her, not sure if she should feel proud or embarrassed for her friend.

Once the spotlight swings back to the stage, Ragatha's shoulders drop and she looks down at Pomni, smiling weakly. “Sorry about that. What I was trying to say is, as long as you're there when he needs you, that's all that matters.” 

Her gaze averts for a second, sharply, and one of her plush hands curls into a ball gripping a piece of her blue dress. “If he decides to come to you, that is.”

Pomni finally breaks her stare and turns back to the stage, watching Caine banter back and forth with Bubble for a moment. Under her breath, but loud enough for Ragatha to hear, she says “That's the part I'm worried about. He's probably not going to come to me at all.”

For a split second, she swears she feels the ragdoll's hand graze her own. “Well, if that's the case…” The redhead's voice is wobbly, unsure, but gentle. “What matters is that you tried.”

Pomni's mind starts to wander back to the argument she had with Jax thirty minutes before the show had begun. How he wouldn't physically hurt her. How even when he tried to emotionally hurt her, most of the words would pass through her. And his last words echoed in her mind, pleading not for her help, but for her to stay away.

“There's nothing more to me. So please, just stop looking.”

The jester stares down at her striped pants and mismatched gloves, hands clasped together tightly. She squeezed her own hands tightly, hearing a tiny, squeaking, rubbery noise as she did. 

At that moment, she hears the auditorium doors creak open, and she spins around to peer over the seat at Jax as he re-enters the room. His demeanor is the opposite from when he left – Eyes closed, smile wide, one hand on his hip and the other in his pocket as he waltz back toward his seat. Seeing his mask is back on makes her grip on the seat behind her momentarily tighten, and she starts to chew on the inside of her cheek at the sight.

Pomni slinks back down into her seat and faces the front, hoping the concern she feels isn't showing obviously on her face. Ragatha gives her a knowing, worrying look, and Pomni quickly shakes her head to answer the unspoken question. Despite the feelings and anxiety squirming in her stomach, her mind is calm.

“For now, I'll respect his plea,” she thinks solemnly. “But by God, do I want to keep searching.”

Chapter Text

The night after the awards show, Jax couldn't sleep. It's not like he slept well most nights, anyway - Always kept awake by self-depricating thoughts, or replaying abstractions he'd witnessed. He could never forget the sight of eyeballs sprouting along green skin, cracking open rapidly and staring at him with fear and sorrow, the final words that were croaked out—

The rabbit shot up in bed, panting, look frantically around the dark room expecting to see multiple colorful eyes staring back at him. As his eyesight adjusted to the dark, he thankfully didn't see any of them – Just the outside of his wooden, fence-like bedframe, his almost empty corkboard with just five pictures of the current cast members, and a key rack full of golden keys.

He rubbed half of his face with a gloved hand, his palm pressing hard against his fur as it traveled from chin to forehead, hoping the sensation would distract him from his own thoughts. He halfheartedly shuffled out of bed, his oversized padded feet dragging on the green, shag carpet as he walked to the wall of keys. With bleary eyes, he stared at the weird carrot-clock on his wall trying to make out the time. As he blinked at it, he internally cursed Caine for designing his room like an actual rabbit’s pen in a field. Not only did it not match his vibe at all, it also felt horribly patronizing.

He finally made out that it was five a.m-ish and scoffed before turning back to his rack of keys. He'd never tell anyway why he had keys to everyone's rooms – He tells himself it's to torment them easier and to always keep the characters on their toes, but that wasn't the real reason. His yellow gloved hand hovered over Gangle's key, debating on tying her ribbon feet to the edge of her bed as punishment for not partnering on him on their stupid gun adventure. If she had just stuck to the script, his whole blowout with Pomni wouldn't have happened…

… Pomni. 

Jax's eyes locked on the key to the jester’s room. He had never used it – He'd seen her room shortly after she arrived, and he told himself it was too open and boring to pull any pranks in. Truthfully, though, his respect for her generally outweighed his desire to screw with her.

“After yesterday, though…” he thought, fingers wrapping gently around the blade of her room key, “She deserves it. I can fight back in my own way.”

The purple bunny's too wide smile creeps into his face as he pushes his own bedroom door open. He beams wider as his eyes lock onto the sad-eyed jester portrait across from his room. He takes his sweet time crossing the hall, sliding the key into the lock, and twisting the knob open.

He doesn't open the door fully, knowing the bright fluorescent lights of the hallway could easily wake Pomni. In the time she'd been in the circus, Jax had learned she is a light sleeper. If he awoke her before he could torture her… Well, where would the fun be in that?

Instead, he let his eyes wander around the room, taking in the furniture and considering what he could use to his advantage. The chandelier of jewels was a good choice to hang something scary from. Or he could put something on top of the dresser next to her bed that was three times too tall for her to reach. The open center of the room would also be a good candidate for something unmovable to go…

His scheming comes to a halt as Pomni makes a noise in her sleep and rolls over towards the door. Jax quickly pulls the door to, not quite closing it but making sure no light slips in through the crack to wake her. He stays uncharacteristically still, ears pointed towards her and twitching, listening closely for the sound of her waking back up. It isn't until she falls completely silent again that the rabbit peeks back through the crack.

His ears tilt back slightly and his smile fades into a neutral expression when he spots something on the floor next to her canopy bed. A small Polaroid picture, that gleams when the hall lights hit it, seems to be staring at him from Pomni's red carpet. Even from the doorway, he has a suspicion he knows what it is.

The rabbit sinks down to the floor on all fours and crawls into her room, quietly yet quickly, snatching the photo off the floor. He stares at it with shrinking black pupils, as he and Pomni point their guns and the camera and grin. The tight feeling in his chest returns as he stares at it, and he has the urge to rip the photo into shreds. Maybe shove it down Pomni's throat, force her to swallow it, and then drown her in a toilet for even keeping it in the first place.

His violent train of thought instantly comes to a halt as the brunette stirs in her sleep, and without thinking Jax tucks the photo into his front overall pocket and scurries out of the room on all fours again. He quickly becomes bipedal again once he's out and shuts the door behind him, locking it back with the key and listening with an ear pressed to her wooden door for any more signs of life.

After a couple beats of silence, the bunny breaths a quick sigh of relief and pulls the photo back out of his pocket. He doesn't bother examining his own expression, it's the mask he's usually wearing, and he doesn't feel like acknowledging and overanalyzing the glassy look in his own eyes at the moment. Instead, his attention shifts to Pomni's face, which he looks at closely as he starts walking aimlessly towards the circus’s main room.

He looks too closely at her wide, pointy smile, her relaxed body language, the murderous gleam in her eye mixed with pure, unadulterated joy…

He doubts he'll ever see anything as beautiful from her again.

Jax stops in his tracks and looks up from the photo, not acknowledging the checkered floor and giant, colorful building blocks. His gaze seems to go through them all, looking at something out of reach instead.

“Beautiful?” he muses, his internal monologue taking on an air of mockery. “What are you, a rom-com protagonist? Ain't nothing beautiful about her poorly done clown makeup in the slightest…”

He can't bring himself to look at the picture again for a moment after that thought, because he knows he's lying to himself. Instead, he scans the circus floor, and his eyes fall on an overly realistic trash can sitting in the middle of the room. He cocks his head to the side, confused, but approaches it regardless. 

The textures within the trashcan seem fake and not fully generated, but so do most things in the circus when you squint at them hard enough. Jax's eyes dart between the picture and the trashcan, and while his classic, comical smile spreads across his face, it doesn't manage to reach his ears. Nevertheless, the rabbit holds the polaroid over the bin lazily.

“A fitting punishment, I think,” he coos aloud despite knowing no one can hear him. He lets the photograph go and watches at it slowly floats down into the can. “I don't care, and she shouldn't either. Besidesss…” He puts his hands into his overall pockets and rocks back and forth on his feet. “Not every moment is worth holding on to.”

He tries to ignore the way the smile on his face slowly morphs into a frown. He tries to ignore how his hands ball into fists in his own pockets, gripping the fabric like it owes him money. He tries to ignore the way his ears become flaccid, and the way his right eye twitches once, twice, thrice as he stares at the picture, perfectly covered by his stupid rabbit shadow.

He scoffs loudly and forces his body to turn away from the trash can, stomping back towards the hallway. He's barely thinking as he slinks back into his room and switches Pomni's key for Kinger's, and any thoughts of the jester that were still swimming in his mind disappear as he fishes out three pencil-sized centipedes out of one of Kinger's insect tanks and slips them underneath Ragatha's door.

Pomni was jolted awake by the sound of a bloodcurdling scream across the hall. In her panic, the brunette managed to get herself tangled in her bedsheets and toppled to the floor in a messy, uncomfortable satin cocoon of her own doing. She blinked a couple of times at the ceiling, groggy and physically sore from the previous day's shooting adventure. She hoped today's adventure would be less taxing on her cartoonish body – Just because they couldn't get seriously hurt in the digital circus didn't mean she wanted to feel pain.

As she fought a losing battle with her sheets on the floor of her room, Ragatha's high-pitched voice dripping with irritation bled through Pomni's paper-thin walls, and the answer to the unspoken question ‘Who was screaming and why?’ was answered for her.

“Jax! It seriously isn't funny, you know how much I hate these bugs!”

Jax's voice cuts through the air like a pair of scissors gliding through wrapping paper, and Pomni briefly froze in her struggle to listen to his words.

“That's exactly what makes it funny, Raggy,” he purred in his usual nonchalant tone. “It's not like they can even poison you through your… Whatever you're made of.”

Ragatha's muffled voice is filled with horror. “Poison? Are these VENOMOUS centipedes–”

“I dunno, they came out of a tank with a red skull and the words ‘Do not handle without gloves’ on it–”

“Jax!”

“Okayyy, so they're a little venomous, so what?”

At this point, Pomni had managed to kick her striped sheets fully off of her and had made it to her bedroom door. She wasn't quite sure how to help with a possible venomous-bug infestation, and she was heavily debating pretending that she hadn't heard a thing and climbing back into bed. However, before she could make a decision, her bedroom door was flung open by a wide-eyed, flailing Kinger.

“POMNI! I'm missing three centipedes from my insect collection. Do you happen to have them?” The chess piece's voice fluctuated between a paranoid and a curious tone. 

The jester could do nothing but blink up at him, confused why he picked her specifically to ask as opposed to the two people already standing in the hallway bickering over the centipedes in question. Over the king's shoulder (can it be called a shoulder?), she could see Ragatha and Jax had redirected their attention towards her. While Ragatha's expression was one of slight relief, Jax's was tense and almost unreadable. Pomni locked eyes with the rabbit, trying to decode what his strained grin and glassy eyes meant or if they were just a part of his mask. Before she could truly figure it out, Ragatha piped up.

“I think they're all in my room, Kinger,” the doll said shakily, gesturing vaguely to her room and taking another step away from it with a shudder. Pomni watched as Jax rolled his eyes and picked Ragatha up by her waist before tossing her over one shoulder. She yelped in surprise and started hitting the rabbit's back with her fist as he walked back towards her bedroom.

“Jax! What're you doing? Do NOT–”

“I'm sure nutcase would like some help finding them, and since you know them so intimately already…” He stopped next to her open doorway and gestured with his free hand for Kinger to walk in. “I thought you'd be the perfect little assistant for him.”

“Great idea Jax!” the king piece chirped cluelessly. He shuffled into the room as Ragatha continued to kick and shout as she dangled over Jax's shoulder. The rabbit's smile didn't fade as he hoisted the ragdoll up and threw her straight back into the room. Pomni watched uneasily as Jax quickly shut the door behind them and locked it as Ragatha banged on it and pleaded to be let out.

The brunette watched as he closed his eyes and brushed his yellow gloves together like he'd accomplished something, sighing dramatically. “Geez, she acts like she'll die if they're in the same room, it's so funny…” His eyes open into small slots and meet Pomni's, and despite not needing to breathe she feels a breath catch in her throat. He seems to be looking at her expectantly, like he wants her to comment on what just unfolded, but she didn't have any words, just mixed feelings of concern, disappointment, and confusion. She tries to form some kind of jumbled sentence in her head that would relate, but the second her mouth opens Jax has turned away from her and struts away, a hand on his hip and his posture more upright that she thinks she's seen it in a while.

A feeling she can't quite name swims in her stomach, but she knows it's not a happy one. She watches as Jax goes to round the corner at the end of the hall, but hears a faint snap in her ears and she's suddenly teleported to the main dining table, the white table cloth on it fluttering as dishes of pancakes, eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice are dished out in rapid succession. She quickly looks to her left and right, seeing she's been place between Gangle and Ragatha, one who looks like they just woke up while the other looks like they just suffered a panic attack (which probably wasn't far from the truth, considering they were locked in a room with their worst fear).

“Good morning my steadfast superstars!” Caine's voice booms from the sky above them. When Pomni looks up, she sees the AI is floating on his stomach, hands on the edge of his gums and his feet kicking in the air. “I've prepared a special adventure for today, one that requires a lot of energy, so make sure to stock up now!”

Pomni hears Zooble grumble something about them not needing to eat from the right end of the table, but she tunes them out to focus on her plate. She eats slowly, deliberately, trying to place what the feeling that's still churning in her stomach is. Disappointment? Regret? General anxiety and unease? All of them felt close, but not quite right. All she knew is when she glanced to the left and saw Jax trying to talk to Gangle in a patronizing yet teasing tone, the waves in the pit of her stomach grew stronger.

“What if he never talks to me again?” she thinks somberly as she nibbles on her bacon, eyes glued to the plate for no reason other than that she knew if she looked up, her discomfort would be painted clearly on her face for all to see. “Even just casually and jokingly…”

She kept her head down and gaze on the half-eaten plate as excused herself from the table and made her way to the random realistic trash can in the middle of the circus floor. “There's no way he really doesn't want to be friends anymore ri–”

Pomni swears she hears a physical record scratch play in her head as her thoughts die out and she stares at the photograph sitting atop the low-poly garbage. Her poor handwriting of “Team Bad Guys” on the bottom is unmistakable. She glances over her shoulder at the dining table to see if anyone's looking, then back at the picture. She picks it up gingerly, expecting it to be covered in grime and dirt from the trash, but instead it's pristine, only just a little bit more faded from its direct exposure to the circus's fluorescent lights. She stares at it, perplexed, as she dumps what's left in her plate into the trash.

“How did this get here?” She wonders aloud, just quiet enough to not be overheard by the others. She turns it in her free hand, inspecting for any obvious signs of tampering. “Didn't I fall asleep with you in my hands last night?”

Something clicks in the jester's head and she turns her body ninety degrees to look at the table. She stares at the back of a purple rabbit ears, and a waist pocket with a golden keys poking out of it. The only person she knew that could get in their rooms besides Caine and Bubble. (She remembers the first time Bubble appeared in her room, staring at the mirror in her corner and spinning clockwise, head facing the mirror the entire time and playing some crackly record song out of his mouth. She shudders briefly every time she remembers it.)

Pomni pulls the polaroid to her chest protectively as she continues to stare at the back of Jax's head. She isn't quite sure when he got into her room, or why he was there, or why this was the only thing he decided to touch… But something told her it was because he wanted her to stop pursuing him entirely.

As Pomni tucked the photograph away into her hat for the time being, she thought about how she, unfortunately, would not forget about Jax and his empty words anytime soon. Even if he was trying to forget about her and hers.

Chapter Text

The last few adventures, Pomni had noticed Jax was staying far, far away from her. She couldn't even get close if she wanted to, because he'd tactfully slide a prop in between them to block her while not looking at her (though she figured he definitely saw her out of his peripheral and was doing it on purpose) or he would immediately strike up a conversation with someone else so he wouldn't have to acknowledge her. The few moments they did actually make eye contact, it was brief and fleeting, and the moments always consisted of the jester desperately trying to analyze the bunny's vacant expression and his millisecond-long pupils size changes. Each of his successful attempts to ignore and avoid her was starting to make her blood boil.

Today, she found her mind was plagued by the lilac rabbit more than usual. She kept replaying their argument in her head, focusing more on his actions than his words. How he tried using humor to deflect her questions. How seemingly every other thing she said or did was enough to actually piss him off. How after his dramatic, villain-esque monologue about the other circus members being “playthings,” he swore and expressed remorse for at least five seconds. Everything he did, especially now, pointed to something deeper, and Pomni wasn't stupid and missing that subtext. 

She could feel her pulse in her ringing ears, and whatever she was holding in her gloved hands snapped in half. The sensation made her snap back to reality (well, digital reality) and she stared down at the now-broken garden spade, wooden handle in hand and the metal shovel part sticking out of brown soil.

Caine had put them all on a strange garden adventure, with multiple rectangle box plots stretching for miles, all growing different crops like tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, watermelons, potatoes and other fruits and vegetables that definitely weren't real like “aspear berries” and “wumpa fruit”. There were also multiple flower beds, which is what Pomni was currently tending to – if you could call it that. Each plant grew rapidly once watered, but the seeds still had to be planted by hand. At the front of the garden was a tiny farmer's stand selling all of the fruits, vegetables and flowers they were cultivating. Gangle was desperately trying to manage the stand and sell all of the goods to the massive crowd of wooden doll NPCs, while shouting orders back towards the other gardening circus members with a mixture of strained enthusiasm and barely concealed frustration. Pomni thought the ribbon-made woman's managerial history was shining through again in this adventure.

A cottony hand touches the brunette's shoulder and she flinches slightly, tensing up. Her body doesn't relax even when Ragatha starts to speak.

“You doing okay, Pomni?” Her concerned voice flows smoothly like butter, but Pomni mentally compares the inflection within it to the sound of breaking pasta noodles. “I could hear the spade break from all the way over by the pumpkins!”

As gingerly as she can, she takes Ragatha's hand off her shoulder. When she looks up at the redhead, she's met with one worrying frown and an eye that kept saccading across her face, clearly trying to read her to her core. It made her insides squirm with unease.

“Is this how Jax feels when I try to search his face for answers?” she asks herself before quickly shaking her head, trying to physically shake the thought away like her brain's an Etch-A-Sketch that's had the rabbit's face ingrained into it for a little too long. If her brain was an Etch-A-Sketch, some of the aluminum powder in it wouldn't fully erase the drawing of him.

“I'm fine, just…” Pomni breaks eye contact to stare at the bed of purple hyacinths she was working on. “Still worried about Jax, I guess.”

She didn't notice the way the doll's eye twitches and a frown briefly crossed her face. She did, however, notice how the sweetness in her voice changed from natural to artificial. “Well, he seems to be having a blast ruining the regenerating supplies in the greenhouse, so I wouldn't worry too much about him right now.”

“So that's where he went,” she muses, standing up from her kneeling position and brushing some dirt off of her knees. She hopes her enthusiasm to see him is relatively hidden as she speaks. “Well, wanna come with me to get a new spade, then? I think Gangle needs more strawberries and blueberries planted too.”

As if on cue, the masked ribbon girl hollers from across the garden, “Hyoi pears! I need two hundred hyoi pears, pronto!”

The jester sighs and pinches where the bridge of her nose would be if she had one. “... And those too, I guess.”

Ragatha hums what seems like a “yes,” and the two make their way over to the green, tent-like structure just a few rows down. Despite the tent being tall enough to block out the sun, Pomni still felt like she was baking in the heat. If her clown makeup styled face was actual makeup, she believes it would have melted off by now.

Ragatha holds one of the tent flaps open for her and Pomni mumbles a soft ‘thank you’ as she walks inside. The jester is almost hit by a flying ceramic plant saucer as soon as she enters, and her arms shoot up in a “X” shape to protect her face as she hears the sound of it shattering to her right.

“Jax!” Ragatha's shrill voice is unmistakable behind her. “You could've hurt someone!”

“Eh, that would've just meant I got bonus points,” he remarks dryly. Shuddering briefly to shake off her nerves, Pomni drops her arms and spins to face the rabbit. He's holding a shovel over one of his shoulders, and scattered on the floor around him are multiple broken pieces of pottery and other shattered garden tools. Within seconds, they start blinking in and out of existence rapidly before completely vanishing. Somewhere distant in the greenhouse, she hears the quiet clinks and rattles of more pottery and tools respawning on a shelf.

“Wowza!” Kinger's voice cuts through the air a bit too enthusiastically. Pomni didn't even know he was in the room. “Fifty-seven, that's a new record! I'll go get more to throw at you, champ!”

Ragatha's voice is tinted with worry again as she finally walks into Pomni's sightline. “Wh– Kinger! Aren't you suppose to be watering the plots?”

“The water started getting too furry,” he says confidently, as if that's something water can even do (Though in the circus? There's a chance that could be true). “Zooble's got it, and I've got Jax rage room training!”

The brunette notices the ginger's one eye twitches as it moves from left to right, presumably following the king piece as he walked away. Her next words are spoken deadpannedly. 

“Rage room training. Lovely,” she turns to face Jax, who's still wearing his signature yellow smile and big eyes. “That your next adventure idea, huh? Turn us into shatterable objects and have your fun in a rage room with us?”

The purple bunny's gaze travels to the ceiling, and with his free hand he taps his chin thoughtfully. “It wasn't, but now that you mention it…”

The ragdoll growls loudly and starts pulling at both sides of her hair in frustration. She starts to go off on an irritated tangent that Jax just grins stupidly at. Pomni watches on, unsure what to say, and her multicolor eyes mostly focused on Jax. He did seem like himself, at least, but Pomni had come to the understanding his bully persona was more of a coping mechanism than his real personality. 

“Then again,” she reasons, “I don't know what his real personality actually is, so who am I to assume?”

The rabbit's eyes drift from the screaming doll towards her, and Pomni does her best to fix her face and prepare to acknowledge him properly. Her mind runs rampant throughout the process. 

“God, what face was I even making? What's a normal, uncaring expression suppose to look like anyway? Unclench my jaw, blink a little less, stand a little taller maybe? I don't know I don't know I don't know—”

“Why'd you drag the clown with you? Needed backup as you berate me or something?”

The words, clearly not directed at her, still felt like a harpoon to the chest to Pomni. The uneasy, unhappy squirming feeling grew in her stomach again like a pit of snakes awoken with a poked stick, along with her body temperature rising rapidly out of anger at being undermined.

Luckily, Ragatha speaks before Pomni can. “She's here because she needs a new spade, some seeds, and some pots for her flowers.”

The latter part was never requested, but the jester didn't feel like arguing. Instead, she paid attention to how Jax looked her up and down, a slight toothy frown frozen on his face and his pupils still large, but eyes lidded. He looked disinterested and bothered by her presence, but like voicing his announce wasn't worth the hassle. His expression didn't change as he reached behind him and pulled out a small, relatively in-one-piece clay pot. 

“I guess it's your lucky day, cause I still have a pot here,” the rabbit's tone is dull as he waves the pot up and down in front of Pomni's face. She glances up at him skeptically, then reaches out cautiously with one hand to intercept the pot.

Jax immediately lets go, using the hand that was holding the pot to brush something off his shirt as the pottery shatters into a million pieces on the concrete ground. Pomni stumbles back slightly as the shards fly towards her feet and chest, and she would have hit the ground if not for Ragatha steadying her fall.

“Oh, come on!” The ragdoll sounds more exasperated than angry. “She's already torn up about you and you still have the nerve–”

“It's okay,” Pomni cuts her off as she stands back up fully, eyes locked on the ground and the pieces that certainly would have cut her if she hadn't moved. She can feel her bottom lip starting to quiver, and she bites it to prevent herself from crying. With what little fire she has left in her from her earlier angry thoughts, she glares up at the rabbit, whose apathetic facial expression has wavered. “Figured something like that would happen, anyway.”

Ragatha's cottony hands find the jester's shoulder and turn her away from Jax, walking towards the back of the greenhouse where the other seeds and pots are located. As she does so, Pomni swears she sees his frown deepen and his brows furrow, but as quickly as it appeared it was gone again. Maybe she had just imagined it.

Jax hated the way he could feel his mouth and eyebrows twitch further down at Pomni's words. He hated how as she walked away, he had the urge to follow her, to grab her shoulder, shout at her to not take [BOING] so seriously. He hated the dirty look Ragatha shot over her shoulder at him as they walked away, like she knew anything about their relationship.

“There is no relationship,” his brain reiterates as he takes the shovel down from his shoulder and rests the metal end on the concrete floor below him. He leans halfheartedly against it, trusting the cartoon logic of this world to prevent him from completely falling over. “You severed that, and for good reason. Stop thinking about her. Stop looking at her when she stops looking at you. Stop wishing things were different, because they're not. Deal with it.”

He groans in frustration and pushes his ears back with one hand, like it's the long, brown hair he used to sweep back when he was human. He closes his eyes and forces his mind to clear completely, and when he opens them again Kinger is rounding the corner with a handful of pottery and some tiny bags of soil. His signature smile creeps back onto his face as he stands back up and holds the shovel like it's a bat. “Ooh, soil! I like your style, old man. Let me at ‘em!”

His mind completely numbs as the air and surrounding floor is filled once again with shattered ceramic pieces and showered dirt. He hardly notices when Ragatha and Pomni slip back out the tent flaps with the supplies they need, fearful and worried expressions seemingly permanently stamped on their faces.

Chapter Text

‘The pot debacle,’ as Ragatha started to call it (Zooble kept snickering at the name and lightly suggesting a new one be chosen to the doll's dismay) had really altered the circles Pomni started socializing in. The jester found herself partnering with the other women in the circus plus Zooble when she had the chance, and she had found they all looked out for each other very well, even if the other three didn't speak as much outside of the adventures (Well, Pomni had noticed Gangle and Zooble growing closer, but chalked it up to them working well together during tasks). 

After a series of demanding, high adrenaline and anxiety-inducing adventures, Pomni found herself vomiting up the strange, black goo she had back during the Candy Kingdom adventure in one of Zooble's bedroom waste bins as she sat hutched on their bed. The zolo block patted her back with one of their clawed hands as she coughed and gagged, and the brunette could barely make out Ragatha's shrill, nervous voice over the cloudy, cotton-ball-in-ears feeling she was experiencing.

“Maybe we should tell Caine to give us a break from adventures for a few days?” The ginger's statement came out more like a question, unsure and worried. “You know… Before it cause any more damage to us.”

“Agreed,” Gangle's voice is even further away, quiet and meek. Pomni hears a faint sniffle and what's probably ribbon arms wrapping around ribbon legs. “I… Don't think I can handle another beating from Jax minutes before the plot changes again.”

At that, Zooble audibly growls in frustration. “Tell me about it,” they say gruffly as the patting motion on Pomni's back changes to slow, deliberate circles. “Honestly, I'll take another high-stakes adventure soon as long as Jax is left out of it.”

Through the taste of bile, the clown girl manages to utter a quiet “That wouldn't be a good idea.” When she looks up, the other three characters are staring at her, with looks of confusion and concern. She swallows thickly before added on, “Everyone needs the adventures to not go crazy… Besides, if we left him here, he'd probably just ransacked all our rooms while he has the chance.”

That earns small chuckles from the group as Pomni wipes her mouth with her blue glove, the red one setting the waste basket back on the floor. She watches in real time as the black goo fades away into nothing, and the can looks good as new again. On her right, a green hand with yellow spots holds out a water bottle to her, and she takes it before giving its owner a weak smile. “Thanks, Zooble.”

“Don't mention it,” they say firmly and confidently. “I had to help many friends and bar patrons with hangovers worse than this.”

Before any more of them can speak, Caine zips into view of Zooble's open bedroom door, riding his cane like it's a flying witch's broom. His heterochromic eyes seem to shine brighter than the pearly white teeth that make up his head as he speaks.

“Good evening ladies and Zoobles!” He swings down to hang off the floating cane by the back of his knees, tongue rolling out and covering his eyes for a moment. Pomni shudders as he seems to lick the eyeballs before putting the tongue away. “What's this I hear about needing a break from my adventures?”

The room grows slightly tense and everyone but the zolo block starts stammering and stuttering to try and explain. If the AI had picked up on their fear, he wasn't making it known. Finally, Zooble's gravely voice cuts through the nonsense.

“Not a break,” they sigh as the cross their arms and lean on their right leg, which looks like a golf club and is significantly longer than the left leg that looks like a squiggly line. “Just… Something relaxing. Maybe something without Jax… Or Kinger, maybe.”

Caine hums loudly and for a solid fifteen seconds straight as he swings back on top of the cane and drums his fingers on his molars. For a moment, Pomni swears she can see binary code dancing across his eyes, actively trying to “code” an idea of sorts.

“I don't think I can exclude the boys,” he says matter-of-factly. He starts floating off the cane and grabs it with his left hand before pointing it dramatically in the air. “But I do think I have just the thing!”

Pomni goes to protest as the ringmaster snaps his fingers, but suddenly Zooble's room morphs into an entirely different one, one that's dark and incomprehensible at first. She blinks rapidly and sits up straighter, noticing a soft gray throw blanket is laying across her lap and she's wearing a set of red and blue flannel pajamas. She blinks rapidly and scans the room, trying to figure out where they had been transported to.

Glow in the dark stars are littered across the ceiling, glowing faintly but not strong enough to make a difference in visibility. A wave lamp sits in one of corner of the room, slowing cascading across people's faces and melding through different pastel colors. The beginning of a cheesy rom-com is being projected onto an empty wall by a mini projector in the other corner. She notices the other circus members are also dressed in various sets of pajamas and with their own blankets, blinking and looking around confused.

Ragatha speaks first on Pomni's left, her silk pink pajama set and matching sleep mask seem to reflect the most light and causing her to have to squint at her as the redhead speaks. “Is this… A sleepover?”

“Oh great,” Jax's jagged tone echoes from directly across from the jester. Somehow, he's wearing pink footie pajamas that cover his feet, but instead of having long sleeves for his arms, he still has the classic overall straps and no hood to pull over his head. His chin is resting in his hands, a bored expression crossing his features. “And here I thought I was going to sleep in peace… Instead, I get more time surrounded by you idiots.”

“Don't act like I'm happy about it, either,” Zooble's voice is just as sharp from Pomni's right. They appear to be wearing (well, as well as their bean shaped body would allow them to “wear” clothes) a t-shirt and sleeper shorts. “We specific requested you not to be here, actually.”

“Oh really?” An ear-splitting grin crosses his face and his eyes widen with what is, the jester presumes, barely contained masochistic glee. “That just means I get to turn this little daydream of yours into an absolute nightmare.”

“Not before I make you all cookies!” Kinger's eyes are shining as he stands in the doorway of the bedroom. “Is this a house?” Pomni asks internally, wondering if so how many rooms they could even travel to. Clearly a kitchen, at least, if the chess piece was offering to make something. She takes one look at the older man in his old-timey nightgown and droopy nightcap and can tell his lucid side is starting to take the reins. “Have fun, you five!”

The jester watches him walk out of view as Gangle's soft voice speaks up. The masked woman is wearing a short white nightgown, and her red ribbon is visible through it. She notices an empty brown cola bottle wrapped in ribbon ends (Where did it come from? Who knows).

“We could play Spin the Bottle or Seven Minutes in Heaven?” Her voice trembles as her body turns towards Zooble, and Pomni does not miss the way the two's eyes shimmer when looking at each other. “I mean, it looks fun in all the anime I've seen use it…”

The ragdoll to Pomni's left laughs awkwardly. “Isn't that a little bold to start out with? I mean… Why don't we start with something simpler to bond with, like cards or Never Have I Ever?”

“I'll start!” Jax shouts with forced enthusiasm. “Never have I ever been as much of a [WHIRRING MACHINERY] as Ragatha.”

Zooble grumbled, ignoring the rabbit's crude remark and fidgeting with the hem of their shirt that wasn't going down all the way. The brunette felt slightly sympathetic as they spoke. “Only problem is I don't think Caine's aware of most modern sleepover activities… No MarioKart, no Netflix, no Uno–”

As they say that, a pack of Uno cards spawns from the ceiling and lands in the middle of the carpeted floor. They all stare at it for a moment before Jax scoops it up and shoves it behind his back.

“Jax!” Ragatha's voice seems to boom in the contained space. 

“Listen listen,” he waves the box of cards in the air like it's a piece of bait he wants someone to take. “We can play Uno, but AFTER Gangle's seven minutes suggestion.” His creepy smile spreads across his face again, and it makes Pomni feel queasy all over again. “I think she was cooking a little with that one. Who knows what torture the person put with me will go through…” 

Ragatha stutters in protest, but Gangle has already put the glass cola bottle in the middle of the floor. Without hesitation, she spins it with her ribbon, and it lands on the zolo block sitting directly next to her. The two hurriedly throw of their blankets and make their way to a small closet directly behind Pomni.

“Will somebody time us?” Zooble asks, and Pomni just nods before they slip inside. When the jester turns back around, the room falls eerily quite for a moment, just her, Ragatha, and Jax.

Ragatha's hands are crossed her lap, fidgeting nervously, meanwhile Jax has decided to lay down on the floor and stare at the ceiling, visibly a bit bored. Pomni finds herself fidgeting with the buttons on her flannel pajamas and looking between both of them awkwardly, not sure who to talk to or if she should even bother trying. She was still trying to process how tired her body felt after Caine's other grueling adventures from earlier in the day.

“God, the waiting part SUCKS,” the rabbit cries out, reaching up to tug on his own ears. “Can we skip to the part where I'm beating the [SPLAT] out of someone in a closet uninterrupted?”

“I'd like to skip this, too,” the ginger's voice waivers, stringy and raw like the sound of an untuned violin being played. “But we can't all be winners.”

Jax rolls over onto his stomach so he can look at Ragatha directly. He has a faint smile on his face, but the brunette notices his pupils or narrower than usual. She can't tell if his tone is meant to be playful or vicious mockery. “I think you're just scared cause you wanna kiss somebody in this room.”

Ragatha's back straightens and gradually, the hair on her head starts to stand straight up like she's been hit by a bolt of lightning. When she doesn't say anything after a while, Jax scoffs and mutters loud enough for her to hear, “Unluckily for you, I don't want to taste stuffing, anyway.”

Whatever lump seemed to be blocking Pomni's throat she finally manages to swallow, and his voice is scratchy as it comes out. “I think they're done now, though, so…” She turns to the ragdoll, who hasn't moved an inch and whose hair is still sticking straight up in the air. “... I can take the next spin if it makes you feel any better.”

The doll's hair finally drops as gasps, taking in gulps of air at a time. Out of breath, she pants, “Yes, thank you, that'd be great.”

Pomni attempts to push the blanket off of her and stand up, but before she can the closet door creaks open and the two characters waltz out of it. She tries to ignore how their clothes clearly are wrinkled and not on as neatly as they were before. She doesn't bother to put the blanket back on as she grabs the bottle and spins it.

She watches it glide with ease on the carpet, breaking some kind of law of physics, before slowing down. Pomni's breath catches in her throat for a second as it looks like it might kand on Jax, but instead it inches a couple degrees past to point at Ragatha.

The redhead laughs nervously as she stumbles to her feet. “Oh, okay! Us two! I think that's fine, yeah!”

Pomni watches her nervously as she stands up as well, and as they walked towards the closet she can't help but notice the way the doll's is trembling, as if the room had gotten dramatically colder in the few seconds they had been up. As the white louvered doors shutter behind them in the contained space, Pomni tries to give her friend as much physical space as possible in what's, relatively, a very enclosed space.

The air is still, and it's quiet enough in the closet the jester thinks she could hear a pin drop. Little bits of light come through as horizontal lines, and she can see the wavy yarn line of Ragatha's mouth and her glossy eyes averting eye contact.

The jester presses her back against the nearest wall and slides down it to sit on the floor.“We… Don't have to do anything, by the way,” she says carefully, hoping she isn't hurting the doll's feelings. “We can just talk, I wouldn't mind that.”

Ragatha lets out a shaky breath of relief from above before sinking down to the floor. Her eye mask is no longer evenly on her forehead, but cattycorner along the top of her head. “Okay… Okay,” she sighs, clearly still a little on edge. “I didn't know if– I was scared that– Maybe you knew if–”

“Hey, it's okay,” Pomni says, holding a hand out to touch her friend on the shoulder. She hesitated for a moment, unsure, before putting her hand back down to her side and gripping the carpet instead. “I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”

“You don't,” Ragatha blurts out, and Pomni blinks and her twice, taken aback slightly. She watches the ginger's eye widen and quickly look away. “I meant– Thank you, for not pushing anything.”

The brunette let her gaze linger for just a moment longer, concerned and confused, before turning to look at the doors. Her hands found the buttons of her flannel again and she fidgeted with them, reinforcing what was probably becoming a bad habit. She focused intently on the shapes her mouth made, trying to choose her next words carefully. “Do you think anybody in the circus is really attracted to anyone else here?” 

When Ragatha doesn't comment, she continues. “Like, Gangle and Zooble could have something going on, and Kinger had a wife apparently, but besides that. Do you think romantic stuff is even, like, an option? I feel like it's not even in Caine's programming. I'm surprised he even put on a rom-com in this adventure.”

A giggle finally escapes out of the ragdoll's mouth. “Yeah, I saw that too. Looks really old, too, so it probably doesn't even hold up nowadays.” 

The two talk a bit more about the film before they hear a soft knock on the door. Zooble opens it for them and gently ushers them back to the circle where everyone else is sitting, and Pomni has barely sat back down on the floor when Jax reaches across and spins the bottle as hard as he possibly can without breaking it.

“I'm tired of waiting, I wanna kick some [BLEEP]!” he exclaims, eyes and smile wide as he leans in to watch the bottle spin. The jester watches it anxiously, knowing if it landed on Gangle or Ragatha, this sleepover would turn sour rather quickly.

Her anxiety only grows when the bottle starts to slow near Ragatha. Within the span of five seconds, Pomni feels her heartbeat quicken and then drop to her stomach as the bottle finally settles on her instead. When she looks up, the excited expression on Jax's face has been wiped clean, replaced with sunken eyes, flat back ears, and a twitching eyebrow that seemed to be saying ‘You've gotta be [CASH REGISTER CHING]ing kidding me.’

Begrudgingly, he stands and walks to the closet, not even saying a word. Around the jester, the girls and Zooble give her worried looks. Not all of them knew about her argument with the rabbit – Only Ragatha knew the details, really – but all of them seemed to think being stuck alone with Jax was a fate worse than death (and, in the moment, she was inclined to agree).

She doesn't even remember getting up and walking to the closet, nor shutting the door behind them. Her brain only starts working again as she watches him slide to the floor, eyes glassy and a small, fake smile grazing his face. Slowly, she gets down on her knees across from him, and for a second she's brought back to the end of their argument where she was in the same position. She blinks the thought away and instead scooches a little closer, trying to look into his eyes. However, he was tactfully avoiding her gaze, staring at the door, the ceiling, the empty clothing rod, sighing loudly and dramatically.

“Really?” she snips, feeling an eye twitch. “We're literally a foot apart right now. You can pretend I don't exist in other adventures, but right this second that's kinda impossible and kinda stupid to do.”

Jax's eyes finally flick to her, and his smile widens slightly. She notices his eyes get clouded when he speaks, his voice dripping with venom that's coated in fake playfulness. “What, were you expecting a kiss or something?”

A small fire lights in Pomni's stomach again, and it's the first feeling she can latch onto besides nausea and lethargy. In a flash, she reaches for and grabs onto one of his overally-pajamay-strap-things. It's surprisingly soft in her unloved hands, but she's not focusing on that right now. A ringing noises starts to grow louder in her head as he laughs straight in her face.

“Jeez, I know the game's called seven minutes in heaven, but I didn't take your ‘Heaven’ as being treating me like a plaything,” he tuts, waging a finger at her. “You know that's my job to treat everybody else like that, anyway. Unless you're taking over my archetype?”

Pomni feels like she understands the bulls forced into bullfighting torments for a moment, because all she can see is red. Her fist that isn't gripping his clothes flies at him, not caring if it hit him square in the face or not. She hears the loud thud as it hits the wall, and Jax's additional verbal jabs seem to immediately die in his throat. The jester starts panting, staring down at the floor until her vision comes back. When she gazes back up at him, his pupils are narrow, and his face is full of genuine fear. 

“Good,” she thinks smugly. “Be scared of me. Feel something towards me. Acknowledge I exist in some way.” She decides to verbalize those thoughts in a less desperate, but still straightforward way. Her voice is thicker and more raw coming out of her throat than she thinks it will be.

“Talk. To. Me.” Her grip on his overall straps tightens. “We don't have to be friends again. But quit pretending I'm not in the room, because I am, and if you can make everyone else's lives here hell by reminding them you exist, I sure as hell can make yours feel like hell reminding you I exist, too.”

As the brunette stares at the purple rabbit, she watches something flash across his face for a moment. She swears she sees his eyes tremble, the tip of his ears turn red and his face both drain of color and rapidly darken all at once. As quickly as she sees it, he rolls his neck and his mask is back on. The bunny's own hand shoots up and wraps around the wrist that's against the wall as he snickers and shakes his head.

“Calm down, Terminator,” he snorts. “It's not like you can successfully murder me anyway…”

Pomni contemplates the words in her head. In the real world, she'd been involved in her fair share of high school fights and bar fights. It's just a side of her she didn't really tap into often, and she doubts she would have tapped into it here if it wasn't for the stupid smirking rabbit sitting before her. He definitely didn't bring out the best in her, she reasoned – but he did bring out what was real about her. The things that made her human and imperfect. And, even now, she didn't feel like he judged her for expressing those sides of her.

All of these thoughts circled back to the fact that, yes, she'd definitely try to murder him again if he tried anything. Even if it wasn't successful, she'd do it.

Her mouth moves before her brain does. “I literally attacked you repeatedly before. Don't test me again.” She lets go of his overall strap and tries to lean back on her haunches, but Jax is still holding her other wrist tightly. It's only now that she's noticed he's still holding it. 

“What… is this about?” she gestures to his grip on her. “And what was that look on your face a minute ago?”

The bunny chuckles, but it sounds forced. “Bwwwwhat's your deal?” He sits up straighter, but doesn't let go of her wrist. Her gaze starts flicking between his hand and his face, suspicious and concerned as he keeps talking. “I didn't make a face.”

“You absolutely did.”

“It's dark in here. You're deffffffinitely starting to see things.”

“Jax.”

“Pom pommm–”

“Don't call me that.”

“Relaxxx, maybe you're exhausted from everything else today and starting to hallucinate!"

“I didn't–”

The door flies open, and it's Ragatha who's standing there, yawning and stretching an arm over her head. It's only then that Jax finally lets go of Pomni's wrist, and she immediately starts to rub the spot. Before she can process anything, the rabbit has stood up and pushed past the ragdoll to leave the bedroom. She scrambles to her feet quickly and follows him out, stopping next to her friend amd watching him strut out slowly, casually, like the conversation they had moments ago had never occurred.

Her voice is quiet, but not quite enough. “... What. Was that real?”

“Nothing is~!” Jax sings back from the doorway before he rounds the corner and disappears out of sight. The jester sighed deeply, physically deflating a little as she looks back over at Zooble and Gangle, who were dealing Uno cards in preparation to play.

Next to her Ragatha's voice is tinted with worry. “Are you okay? He didn't hurt you, did he? We heard a loud thud and git really worried–”

“I'm fine,” Pomni says curtly as she pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. She glances up at Ragatha and smiles weakly, trying to silence the overlapping voices that were trying to rationalize Jax's ever-unrationalizable behavior. “So… Uno?”

Jax's upright, confident posture immediately droops into a slouch as soon as he's away from the bedroom door. His mind is running, and he can't stand when it starts to do that. He doesn't like facing his thoughts and feelings, and he really doesn't like how easily Pomni seems to be able to bring them out of him. It's part of why he pushed her away in the first place. 

He walks to what seems to be the only other room in this adventure: the kitchen, lit up by three measles candles. The rabbit could barely make out the outline of Kinger, who was pulling out a baking tray of oddly shaped cookies out of the oven and humming a tune he didn't recognize and didn't care to figure out. He dragged his feet with every step as he went, noting the linoleum tile somehow felt warmer than the carpet in the bedroom and hallway. He lumbers lazily towards the fridge and opens in, pulling out a coke bottle that was full of soda this time and taking a swig.

“Oh, Jax! I didn't hear you come in,” the chess piece's voice is warm, and surprisingly to Jax, unwavering and coherent. He reasons that it must be a fluke, and chooses not to acknowledge him as he bends ninety degrees and rests his elbows on the counter.

To his dismay, Kinger keeps talking. “I just finished up these cookies. I tried to make them shaped like everyone but, well– Pomni and Ragatha have such complex head shapes so they're a little wobbly. Did you want to help me ice them?”

The rabbit felt the bottom of one of his eyes twice as he chugged more of his cola. After a beat and a swallow, he said sharply, “No. No, I don't want to do that. Why would you think I'm the best candidate for that?”

The king piece blinked at him before sliding the tray further down the counter. He then turned and leaned against the counter as best as he could with his semi-rigid body. Jax was not expecting the next words out of his mouth.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

He scoffs, setting the drink down and standing up straight. He spins around to lean back against the counter, the rigid granite edge digging into the small of his back. “Why is that always what everyone wants to do?” He stretches his arms out in front of him dramatically, gesturing openhandedly at nothing. “Ragatha, Pomni, you, always talk talk talk about your feelings or they'll destroy you…” He throws his hands up, exasperated. “Maybe I want them to destroy me. Maybe that'd feel better than facing them head-on.”

Kinger is quiet for a moment. “Is this about Ribbit?”

Jax's hand ball into fists. “Don't you say his–” He pauses, eyes narrowed and darting wildly, and then he exhales, letting his fingers flair out instead. He doesn't even know why he's entertaining this conversation, but he's already started now, so what's the harm in jumping off the deep end? 

“It's not like nutso will remember a word of this,” he thinks with a snicker, bringing the bottle to his lips before giving his real answer. “No. It's Pomni, actually.”

“Ah,” Kinger makes a lip smack noise, his tone suddenly more collected. “Young love. I remember when–”

Jax spits out his cola, coughing. The chess piece looks at him bewildered before handing him a kitchen cloth with downcast eyes.

“Love?” he laughs dryly once he finally has some air in his non-existent lungs again. “No no, I am not in love with her.”

Kinger raises an eyebrow. “Really? I thought you'd been courting her for months, with your questions and your jokes, and all the touching–”

“No!” His tone is shrill, and he immediately clears his throat afterwards in an attempt to fix it. “No, I don't… Think I like her like that.” He looks up at the ceiling, noticing how the three candles scattered across the room seem to cast yellow glows on it that create an unrecognizable shape. “It's more like– I don't want her to get attached to me. Cause what if she loses me, or I lose her?” 

Like an electric shock collar went off on his neck, his mask slips back on and he laughs again. “Like that'd be SUCH a waste of time getting to know somebody who ends up not even being important to the story.”

Unfortunately for him, Kinger sees right through the act in this moment. He can tell that when he glances down and sees the sympathetic look in the marble piece's eyes. Instead of facing it, the bunny turns his eyes back to the ceiling, desperately trying to make out what shape the yellow lights are making on the popcorn ceiling.

The king's voice is soft, wise, almost paternal as he speaks. “I think everyone's important in some person's story… And maybe Pomni is part of yours.”

Jax doesn't say anything, which Kinger takes as an opportunity to keep going. The rabbit's right ear twitches at the sound of squeezed piping bags blending in with the male's voice. “Losing people is inevitable. But I think what matters more is the memories you make with them that you can look back on even when they're gone. But you can't make those memories if you avoid spending time with people while they're here now.”

Suddenly, the ‘lesson’ is over and he hears the sound of the tray getting picked up. “I'm gonna bring the cookies to the others. You can grab yours later when you're ready to.”

Jax's eyes are still locked on the ceiling, confused how the character who usually makes the least sense was suddenly making him rethink his entire stance on friendship. Somewhere faintly in the back of his mind, he hears Ribbit's snorting laugh, and it makes him grip the counter tighter. Those were good memories – but remembering them just made him ache.

Suddenly, as if a switch has been flipped, his brain fully registers the shape he's been trying to make out of the candles’ lights and shadows. It's a heart.

He wants to rip his own out at the realization. But instead, he decides drinking and eating his feelings away will do for now.

Soft piano music, quiet snores and the flicking of cards fill the otherwise calm bedroom. Pomni, Gangle and Zooble were still deep into a round of Uno that seemed to be never-ending, thanks to the inclusion of rules such as stacking, jump-ins and 7s and 0s forcing hands to change. The masked ribbon was currently winning, humming softly like she hadn't absolutely annihilated Pomni with a draw-16 moments ago. The group spoke in hushed voices as Ragatha slept peacefully on the raised queen-sized bed in the middle of the room.

“I just don't understand,” the jester mumbles as she tosses a blue three onto the ever-growing, scattered pile of cards. “Why have the desire to still talk to him after what he said, and after he treats me like I'm not even there.”

She had just fully told the two about the argument she had with him after shooting Zooble (which she attempted to apologize for, but the zolo block character just waved their ‘normal’ hand at her and told her not to worry about it, since it was just a game). While Gangle hadn't commented very much on the situation, Zooble had attempted to reassure her every now and again. Now was another one of those times.

“As tough as he acts,” they sigh while placing a card down, “He doesn't know what to do when people don't budge the way he wants them too. Why do you think his attacks on me are only verbal and end almost as quickly as they start?” They turn their triangle head to Gangle and give a sympathetic look. “No offense.”

“None taken,” she chirps, putting down yet another wild draw 4. Pomni playfully groans as she starts drawing from the deck and speaks again.

“Still, I don't want to push any boundaries. But at the same time, I'm not going to tolerate the disrespect.” She watches Zooble’s head nod along and continues in a whisper. “And then there's what happened in the closet…”

“Wait! What happened in the closet!?” Gangle's voice rises an octave and her cards suddenly flutter into the air and down in front of her. Ragatha whines in her sleep and rolls over behind them, and Zooble shushed her friend with a glare while trying to help her recollect her cards. The ribbon lady laughs sheepishly and sweeps her cards back towards her own lap as Pomni's neck grows hot and throat feels tight.

“Well…” the jester's voice cracks as she speaks, and she rubs the upper arm that's holding her cards with her free hand. “I may have tried to punch him. And told him to stop ignoring me or I'd do much worse, but…”

The zolo block chuckles quietly at this and gives her a thumbs-up while Gangle smiles a little hopefully at her. At this point, they had all stopped playing the card game properly, just listening to what the brunette had to say. She clears her throat before carrying on.

“He seemed to… Get weird afterwards?” She starts gesturing with her hands vaguely as she goes, not really carrying if she exposed what cards she had while doing so. “Like he made a strange face and grabbed my wrist and wouldn't let go, but not in a painful way just kinda lingering, and then he tried to claim there was no ‘face’ and I was acting crazy while he still wouldn't let go–”

Her tangent is cut off by Gangle squealing and covering her mouth with both ribbon hands. “This sounds almost like that scene in Kimi ni Todoke!”

Pomni blinks, not understanding the reference in the slightest. The room grew darker as the film playing on the projector comes to a close and the credits start to roll. They barely lit up Zooble's face as they spoke.

“It's a… romance anime,” they mumble, and for a moment the jester thinks they might be embarrassed admitting they know that. “Though I don't think the ‘face’ you're talking about was one of love…” Their voice turns gruff as they start picking up the Uno cards on the floor and slipping them back into the box, not bothering to shuffle them. “I don't think Jax is even capable of loving somebody.”

Pomni's eyes had grown wide and her mouth had gone dry. She doesn't think – no, she refuses to think – that the look on his face was a flustered one. She replays it in his mind, his shaking pupils, his ears and face changing color, the slight wave of heat that she felt against her fist on the wall just before he grabbed her wrist. “None of that implies he likes me like that,” she concludes with a straight face. But her lips curve into a slight frown as a new thought appears in her head. “... But could I like him like that?”

She decides seeking council might help before she starts to spiral right here on the carpet of this imaginary bedroom. “Do… either of you know what love feels like?”

Both of their heads whip towards her with wide eyes, and she can see both of them looking her up and down, left and right, almost analyzing if something was wrong with her. Stuttering, she quickly added on, “I mean, I never really dated anyone when I was human or had the desire to, so I don't know what people mean when they say that, I guess.”

The inquisitive looks fade into more understanding ones as Gangle and Zooble share a look with each other. Pomni thinks they stare at each for a bit too long before answering her.

“It's… like sunshine beaming in your chest,” the masked ribbon hums thoughtfully. “Or like you're on a permanently hot air balloon ride. It's nice and airy, a very happy feeling.”

“That's true, but I compare it more to electricity at the start,” the zolo block cuts in. By this point, they had finished putting the cards up and gently tossed the box to the side before pulling their own yellow blanket up to cover most of their bean-shaped body. “At first, you're all jittery and nervous, and a lot of touches feel like jolts of lightning or like closing a circuit. It's nerve-racking, mainly because you don't know if the other person is feeling the same way or not.”

Pomni's head had been nodding nonstop, absorbing the information like a sponge. The second definition seemed to describe her feelings better, she thought, but she didn't want to fully connect those dots right now. Instead, she glanced backwards at Ragatha, making sure the doll was still asleep. She was, sleep mask down, mouth wide open and yarn hair strands not neat in the slightest. Part of her wondered what the doll's definition would be, but the other half of her was glad she wasn't awake for this conversation. Considering what had happened when the two women were in the closet together, as well as the ginger's general opinion of Jax, she figured it'd be a bit of an awkward situation to involve her in.

She turns back to the group and instead asks another question. “I guess the only way to really figure out that's what your feeling is to spend more time around them?”

Gangle had started bouncing in her seat, ribbon hands crossed over her mouth in the shape of a plus sign and white, starry pupils appearing in the center of her usually black eyes. Zooble, on the other hand, was laughing softly and shaking her head. When she answers Pomni, her voice is much softer than before. “Yeah, that's a good way to test it out with her.”

“Her?” the jester thinks, brows furrowing in confusion. “I was talking about Jax though…”

She doesn't bother to correct them, though, and a few minutes later Kinger knocks on their open door to deliver the cookies he's made. Pomni takes the one that vaguely looks like a fool's cap on a circle and smiles softly at the chess piece to show her gratitude. As she nibbles on it, her thoughts swim between different moments she had shared with a certain purple rabbit in the past, including the moment she had shared with him in the closet about ten minutes prior. Her thoughts are still plagued by him as she curls up on the far left side of the queen bed, doing her best not to touch or bother Ragatha as she drifts off to sleep to the sound of the ragdoll's snoring.

Chapter Text

The following week, Jax started attempting to take Kinger's advice to heart. The morning after the sleepover adventure, he hadn't felt ready enough to physically put the socializing factor into practice – He knew if he kept ignoring Pomni she'd likely bite the [BICYCLE BELL] out of his leg like a chihuahua again, but that was a risk he mitigated by locking himself in his room for three days straight. When Caine attempted to pull him into adventures, he got out of them by saying he was “working on something,” which caused the other members to glare at him or look doubtful, but Pomni's expressions changed every time. Sometimes she looked hurt, other times annoyed, the third time genuinely pissed off. 

“After today,” he thought, shuddering and forcing his smile to hold fast as the jester pointed two fingers at her eyes and back towards him, “We'll start going back on the adventures.”

The rabbit hadn't lied to Caine, per say, but what he was doing wasn't necessarily grand or anything. The corkboard on his wall had mainly only included the default portraits of all the ‘living’ avatars in the circus, along with a sticky note giving them an archetype and noting what tended to spook them, make them mad, or what he could use as blackmail against them. The photos and sticky notes were displayed in a crooked line in the middle of the board, surrounded by vast, open brown space. But considering Kinger's words to him that night about ‘importance in stories’ and ‘memories’ and whatever other sappy stuff the bunny was trying not to let stick to him too much, he decided it needed an upgrade. And considering Caine had gifted him a camera many moons ago and never really taken it back for whatever reason, he decided to use it to aid him on his self-created quest.

The first day, Jax moved all the characters to their own corner (except for Pomni, who sat smack dab in the middle), stapling their original sticky notes next to their photos and writing additional ones that described them beyond their archetypes. He never got past three bullet points with any of them, because he'd feel himself start to get antsy and hyperventilate if he went further. That's part of what was taking his craft so long – he had tried so hard to remove the humanity from the circus cast members when he looked at them all, and now even attempting to perceive them as human again was like a shock to his system. The negative voice in head would berate him, fighting tooth and nail to convince him making the board wasn't even worth it.

“They don't care about you,” it hissed in his mind as he rocked in a ball on the floor. He had just finished writing that Gangle was a gentle soul, but he admired how she could be assertive and seem happier when placed in specific situations. “You could abstract tomorrow and no one would bat an eye. You shouldn't be bothered when they leave, either. Don't you remember the last time you cared about someone like this? How a piece of you was ripped out when he left? Why subject yourself to that torture again when you can just torture. Them. Instead.”

These two minute bursts of work, half an hour of breaking down consumed his waking days, and the few hours he did get any sleep was because he'd crash out and shred a sticky note and cry himself to sleep on the floor. These breakdowns are also why he didn't want to confront the other cast members just yet. He knew once he did, everything he wrote about them he'd see even more clearly, and he'd be forced to process how real they were. How real losing them could be. But when he thought about that, a wise chess piece's words would echo in his mind, words that had become his motto and sole motivator for doing anything.

‘What matters more is the memories you make with them that you can look back on even when they're gone.’

Within the three days, Jax had accomplished making the mini-sections for the five characters, all adorning two polaroids (one being their default door portraits and the other from a time he had pranked them), two sticky notes, and a silly sticker he thought matched their personalities and/or archetypes. There was still a lot of brown space to fill, but he felt like it was progress he was allowed to be proud of nonetheless. The rabbit had not accomplished his fear of losing people in that timeframe, but he figured that would be a steep and long hill to climb anyway, one that would take even more self-reflecting (yuck), rewiring (gross) and processing with others (ewewewewEW. That one was the most daunting and definitely unnecessary, he told himself). 

The morning of the fourth day, however, he found to be the roughest of them all. It was the day he decided that while the board was meant to remember the current circus cast, he wanted to honor the two he knew closely that fell, too. 

In one of his dresser drawers, Jax had buried photos and notes from his past friends underneath other adventure ideas. He'd never admit it to anyone, but making character sheets like he had for the President Pomni adventure was cathartic and fun for him. He had destroyed the vast majority of Ribbit's when the frog had abstracted and been banished, but one polaroid remained: A half-burned one, with the only part of Jax visible being his yellow gloved hand making bunny ears above his friend's head. Ribbit's eyes were closed as he grinned widely, and the bunny remembered the photo being called ‘unflattering’ multiple times. As he stared at it in his hand, he had the urge to find another lighter and finish burning it. Instead, he took a push pin and pinned it to the bottom middle of the board, next to a picture of Kaufmo slipping on a banana peel and a piece of notebook paper in his handwriting with three horrible jokes written on it. The only one that made Jax exhale a laugh read “How many rabbits does it take to change a light bulb? One, if it hops to it!”

After forcing back the violent thoughts that told him to rip the board off the wall with his teeth and shake it around like a dog with a chew toy, he plastered on his fake smile and big predator-style eyes and sauntered out of his room for the first time in a while. He hadn't realized just how stuffy it had gotten in there until he was in the hallway. The rabbit only had time to take three steps before he was teleported to the dining room table, which walked straight into. The whole thing made an awful scraping noise as it skewed a few inches forward, making the table uneven and jostling some of the digital southern food displayed on it. Muttering under his breath, he looked up to see a sea of familiar faces painted with surprise and amusement.

“Jax-y boy!” Caine's artificial boastful voice cried from across the table. The AI had summoned a chair and was scooting it closer to the table across from him inch by inch, squeaking against the floor with every attempt. “Finally ready to join us again today?”

“Oh, you know it,” he says dryly, picking up his spoon and stirring it around in his mashed potatoes and gravy lazily. He doesn't look up until ten seconds later, realizing Caine is still staring at him expectantly, eyes and teeth gleaming and unmoving.

“Oh right, he doesn't understand sarcasm or tone or anything,” he realizes. He clears his throat and raises his voice, still sounding as disinterested as before. “Yeah, I'll join today.”

“Wonderful!” The ringmaster immediately flies out of his seat and over the dining table in back and forth horizontal lines. “Today's adventure is going to be a little less taxing on you all, but requires just as much mental maxing! We're doing an in-house scavenger hunt, where you'll be looking for…”

Jax tuned him out and stopped watching him float above, planning to go back to his food since he hadn't really eaten in a few days (of course, they didn't need to eat, but the phantom hunger pain their body had were not enjoyable, either, and he wanted to get rid of those pronto before running around like a chicken with his head cut off for this adventure). Instead, as his head careening down, he found Pomni was staring at him from the far right end of the table. He could tell it wasn't accidental, either– the jester was purposefully leaned forward to peer around Zooble's weirdly shaped body. The bunny fought the urge to look away as his chest tightened, the negative voices in his head started to whisper, and other uncomfortable feelings in his body swelled up and made him want to squirm in place. His discomfort is short-lived, however, as he watches Pomni's pupils suddenly shrink and the odd, dumbstruck expression on her face switch to one of mild panic as she spins away from him, knocking her silverware up in the process. He sees her gasp and frantically reach out to catch them, momentarily juggling them like a real clown would before finally firmly grasping them and slamming them down on the table. He swears he sees the little painted pink blush circles on her cheeks grow bigger and he chuckles, shaking his head before returning his gaze to his plate.

Soon, the adventure properly starts, with all of them starting at the circus stage and collecting the same clue on a piece of paper that would direct them to the next location and object. Caine had said the adventure was ‘self-paced’ and encouraged them to ‘start whenever, finish whenever,’ so Jax had gotten the first clue slip and decided to sit on one of the many colorful couches clustered together by the stage. He lets himself lean back, crossing one leg over the other, leaning his head back and draping both arms across the back of the couch. With his right arm, he lifts the slip of paper high in the air above his face and squints to read it, trying to decode some riddle about pillows and darkness and ‘secrets of old left untold’.

A crackly voice breaks the rabbit's concentration. “Is… this seat taken?”

“Heh?” Jax drops his arm and tilts his head up to see Pomni standing by the furthest couch from him, fidgeting with one of the giant yellow buttons on her clown outfit. He ignores the way his body attempts to tense up and tells her to back off, and instead shrugs and lets his head fall back down. “Eh, knock yourself out.”

There's quiet shuffling and the sound of polyester creaking, and he can tell she's sitting on the very edge of the couch by the sound of swaying feet. She doesn't say anything for a while, which he both appreciates and despises as he stares up at the tent ceiling and pockets his clue. Eventually, he decides to bite the bullet and ask her something first - after all, he's gotta get over his fear somehow. 

Doesn't mean he can't still do it from behind his carefully constructed persona, though.

“So, you starting this dumb wild goose chase now or later?” He glances over at her, seeing she's reading over her slip of paper with squinted eyes and mouthing the words to herself. For a moment, he thinks it's kind of cute. The next moment, he's squashing that thought like a bug and instead hoping she just says something so he doesn't look like a fool for finally properly breaking what's been an awfully long silence between them in a platonic, every-day sense.

“Later,” she replied, seeming more sure when she spoke. He could hear that the jester's voice was still high and strained, but definitely less nervous and squeaky than before. “I think everybody else is rushing to Kinger's fort right now, and I don't really want to become part of that tackle pile.”

The line gets a snicker out of the bunny, and he finally peels his head off the scratchy couches material to look at her. “What is this, football?” He uncrosses a leg and sits up a little straight, back still curling down but less shrimp than usual. “It's not like we're getting points for bum rushing anybody.”

Pomni's multicolored irises blink slowly at him, clearly perplexed. All he can think about is how they're practically a mirror image of the big top ceiling miles above them. “Actually, Caine did say there are points based on how many are found by the end of the day.”

Jax rolls his eyes and flops down onto his left side, his right arm hanging off the couch and barely grazing the floor. He decides to start tracing circles into the dusty floor as he bickers with her. “What, do the points actually add up to anything?”

“Caine said whoever gets the most gets out of the next adventure free, no questions asked?” her delivery comes out unsure and more like a question. “I think it was just to get Zooble convinced enough to do it.”

“Sounds about right,” he hums, eyes glued to the floor and his circles. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the jester's blue shoe bouncing nervously while her red one is flat against the ground. His next question comes out a bit gruffier than he intended it to. “Why aren't you jumping on that bandwagon? Sounds like a dream to you.”

Her leg stops bouncing, and for a second the rabbit stops breathing, thinking he said something wrong. He hears her sigh shakily before she responds.

“Well, I was considering it… But then you showed up today and I figured a few more unskippable adventures couldn't hurt.”

His laugh is forced and fake as he rolls onto his stomach, kicking his legs in the air and smile widening so much it makes his face start to hurt. He thought maybe he was just out of practice with his facade. “Awww, did you miss me or something?”

The brunette rolls her eyes and leans back against the couch on both hands. He's internally praising the Digital Circus's programming that his wide pupils don't noticeably move up or down that much, because he is shamelessly drinking in that image of her (well, until the shame kicks in about five seconds later, and he imagines one version of him kicking another version of himself that's curled up on the ground). Because she doesn't respond, his brain goes into overdrive and blurts something stupid out for him.

“I missed you too, Pom-Pom, don't worry.”

Pomni holds her pose but physically tenses up, her pupils slowly traveling from wherever she was looking straight into his soul it feels like. Her question sounds almost empty, like a husk had spoken it instead of her. “Why?”

While Jax's facial expression is frozen, stuck on his classic jokester mask, his brain feels like it got stuck on a treadmill that had its speed ramped up to max, and then it tripped and was sent flying into a wall. He takes one of his hands and sweeps his ears back, letting them immediately bounce back up as his thoughts go into panic mode.

“Why did you say that? Why is she reacting like that? She sooo did not miss you with that reaction, you dumb[TRAIN WHISTLE]. Act cool and you can fix it, no worries.”

“Obviously because I haven't found out what makes you tick yet!” he chirps, a dark giggle slipping out from his yellow teeth. He points at her and waves his finger in small circles as her shoulders relax and a frown deepens on her face. “C'monnn, you know my biggest fear is those close little hole thingys. I don't even know what yours is. Tell me, tell me.”

He can't ignore the way the jester's eyes turn cloudy as she turns her head away from him, staring off into the distance. To him, it felt like that small gesture had made the emotional chasm he'd created between them grow even wider. He only tunes into the second half of her sentence.

“... you're just going to use it against me, anyway. Already have.”

This is where the bunny's three days of mental preparation and half-[DONKEY BRAY]ed training should kick in. He knows he should shrug off the persona, should treat what she's saying with more weight, should prove he's not just a no-good [JET PLANE]hole that wants to keep hurting her. In the back of his throat, he can feel a wave of apologies bubbling up – not just for making her uncomfortable in the moment, but for everything horrible he had done to her, from throwing her out the candy truck to telling her he wouldn't care if she, metaphorically, died.

Instead, of course, he says something dumber. Cause you can't fix what's broken with some lazily applied bandages that still have blood seeping through them. 

“Already have?” he repeats, sitting back up fully on the couch. While his posture is relaxed and leaning towards her subconsciously, one hand rubbing the back of his neck and the other finding a loose string on a couch cushion to tug at, his voice is still dripping with poison. “Guess I'm even better at torturing you than I thought. Matter of fact, don't tell me the fear– It makes it more fun when I finally figure it out and can exploit it properly.”

Jax closed his eyes, cursing his mouth for not saying what he actually wanted to. When he cracks them back open, he can feel his heart shattering into a million pieces as he looks at Pomni.

Her face has contorted into a pained expression, pupils wide and vibrating as tears formed in the corner of her eyes. He felt the smile on his face melt away as he watched her wipe her face with the back of her blue glove, sniffling quietly. Within seconds, the emotion is gone, eyes hard and tired and her mouth in a thin line. The only sign she might still be upset was the way her bottom lip kept quivering. He could do nothing but watch on in silence as the jester gets off the couch, gripping her clue so hard it was becoming a wrinkled, crumpled wad in her hand that barely peeked out.

“[CLOWN NOSE SQUEAK] you, Jax,” she deadpans before she starts walking off in the direction of Kinger's pillow fort. Watching her leave seemed to jumpstart something in the rabbit's brain, and for once, his mouth and mind sync to say the same thing.

Pomni was doing everything in her power to not cry more than she already had. She felt like an absolute baby for doing it in the first place – Jax said cruel [CHAINSAW REVVING] like that all the time, and she never let it get to her before. Even when he said he wouldn't care if she abstracted, she didn't let herself cry until the adventure ended and she was safely back in her room. She remembers the way she took shallow breaths, her grip on the gun loosening, as he told her the thing she was scared of the most: He wouldn't remember her.

The jester didn't think Jax had seen her tears when she wiped them. She refused to look at him as she stood up and stomped off – she knew if so much as took a peek behind her, she'd see him either stifling back a laugh or looking absolutely mortified at her being upset. While she assumed the latter was a stretch, she could not handle either reality right now.

“Wait!”

His voice cuts through the tense air like a butcher knife. Pomni stopped in her tracks, unflinching. She doesn't turn back around to look at him, and instead lets her eyes lock onto the checkered flooring, counting each corner that intersected.

“I… Don't want to exploit your fear,” the rabbit sighs from behind her, something about his voice sounding… Softer. Almost the same tone she remembers hearing him say ‘Not gonna let me out of this one’ during their shootout adventure. The sound of it makes the brunette hold her breath, waiting to hear if he said anything else and maybe provided an explanation for his sudden change in attitude.

“Unless it's for, like, a harmless bit,” he mumbles, voice sounding further away and less real to her. “But whatever you're scared of probably isn't silly and simple and harmless or whatever… Which means it wouldn't be fun or… nice … to pick on you for it.”

Pomni still hadn't turned around, but his delivery on the words “nice” shook her to her core. She tilts her head up, locking her eyes on the multiple massive pipes on the ceiling and counting all the red ones. “Nice?” The way her voice crackles even startles her. “Since when did you care about being nice to people?”

She hears him fidgeting with polyester behind her, stuttering and tsking. “I– That wasn't the right word, I meant– You–”

The jester can feel a headache coming on, whether it's from the colorful, overstimulating circus big top or whatever emotional manipulation trip Jax was trying to put her on (she didn't think he was purposefully trying to give her emotional whiplash, but that's what was happening). She drops the crumpled up scavenger hunt clue on the ground and receives up with both hands to rub her temples.

“I don't have the energy for this right now,” she snaps, voice brittle and the edges of her vision blurring with more oncoming tears. “Figure out what you want and what you're feeling, and figure out how to talk to people in a way that isn't just attacks on their character, then we'll talk.”

She makes what she thinks is, arguably, a dumb decision and glances over her shoulder to look at him. Her breath catches in her throat for a second time when she sees Jax's pupils are tiny dots, panicky, and his yellow mouth is curved downward into a concerned frown. His hands are fidgeting in his lap, but his body is fully pointed towards her. He could be in front of her in less than a second if he really committed to running at her, which she honestly feared he might try to do, and while she normally tolerated him touching her now was not a time she wanted to be touched. Regardless, the bunny at least looked genuinely concerned about her, instead of just trying to save his own [BONK]. 

A sigh escapes her and her shoulders drop from their tensed state – she didn't even know she had them so tight. “I… still want to talk to you,” she admits solemnly. She prays he takes her next words seriously and doesn't attempt to poke the sleeping bear of anger in her chest cavity that was a little too eager to leave hibernation again. “Just… not right now. Please.”

Pomni barely catches the sight of his ears folding backwards before she turns around and forces her feet to move her away from him, vaguely in the direction of where Kinger's pillow fort is. Her feet feel like they're weighed down by cinder blocks the entire time. Granted, she didn't care too much about this scavenger hunt, but she needed something to make her temporarily forget about the terrified, nerve-wracking, genuine expression on that purple rabbit's face and what it could possibly mean in relation to her. She thought he was avoiding her because he wanted to stop caring about her, but if anything, she thinks that look on his face and the strange backpedaling proved he definitely still did. 

And somehow, the concept of that was a little more terrifying to her.

Chapter Text

The next few days, Jax distracted himself by spending time adding more to his corkboard project. While he found he still couldn't write down nice things about the circus members without almost sparking a panic attack, he discovered he was capable of complimenting them verbally if he said it with just the right inflection; ways that it could easily be forgotten, misinterpreted, or considered a backhanded compliment. 

Additionally, the rabbit had started sneaking his camera along with him on the adventures, snagging more photos of the cast. Most of the time it was photos after he had pulled a prank on them, like that time he shoved Zooble into a vat of slime or when Gangle got her ribbons tangled up in the Olympic hurdle she'd been trying to jump over. He did have some nicer photos, too, though, like when he sneakily caught Ragatha laughing at a dumb joke and spotted Kinger bonding with a dragonfly that had landed on his finger. 

He had finished pinning the dragonfly photo to the lower left corner of the board with Kinger's other bits and pieces. The bunny took three steps back, his hands on his hips and his head tilted so far to the side his ears were touching his elbows. “This is coming along kinda nicely, actually…” he mumbled to himself, a small, genuine smile growing on his face. 

Jax's ears twitched as he heard a knock from across the hall. While giant rabbit ears gave him both the gift and the curse of hearing things a bit more acutely, he didn't bother using that power to eavesdrop very often unless it would give him more blackmail material to work with later. This time, though, the sound of a groggy yet smooth jester speaking made his head and ears swivel against his will. 

“Huh? Oh… Morning, Ragatha.” Pomni's voice felt like a cool drink of water next to a bedside table at three in the morning to the bunny. He hadn't spoken to her since she told him to ‘figure out what he wanted’ after threatening to weaponize her fears against her. The whole situation had struck a nerve with him, and while her second demand of not communicating with people through attacks hadn't really come into fruition yet, he did feel like the edge of his razor-sharp, witty tongue had softened into more of a butter knife kinda vibe. 

In comparison to Pomni's glass of water, Ragatha was a flat soda left out overnight. His ears swivelled away from the door as the ragdoll spoke, her cheery tone grating on his ears. “Heya, Pomni! Caine said he's going to use one of my suggestions today, and I was hoping you'd maybe want to come along for the ride today?” 

Jax raised an eyebrow at this, his smile quirking down into a frown. Something about her tone sounded desperate, and he didn't like that one bit. The jester was practically glued to the doll's side these days, he noticed, and while she had managed to skip out on the last adventure, he figured the behavior would continue until he finally managed to swing her back to his side of things. 

“If she even wants anything to do with you,” he thought bitterly, his gaze turning back to his corkboard. While the other character's corners had become more fleshed out, Pomni's middle section was still as bare as the day he created it. No matter what adventure they went on lately, he felt like he could never find the right moment to snap a photo of the brunette. It didn't help that they weren't really talking at the moment, so he couldn't really pull any stunts on her and capture those moments, either. His mind continues to run as he tries to get himself prepared for the day ahead. 

“I'll try talking to her again today,” he tells himself, his inner voice totally sounding as confident and nonchalant as the posture and sleazy smile he carried as he walked over to his dresser. “She doesn't have to know I've only done an eighth of what she asked. It's not like she'll notice, anyway.” He opens one of the drawers and pulls out his camera, examining it for a moment lazily. “You're definitely not getting a picture of her today, but hey, other opportunities could present themselves.”

Jax shrugged his shoulders and cracked his neck left and right as he pocketed the camera and slipped out of his room, his thoughts fading into white noise and his winning smile appearing as he faced Ragatha and Pomni. “Showtime.”

“Raggyyyy~!”

Pomni nearly jumped out of her skin as Jax's bedroom door flew open and the rabbit leaned against his doorframe, one arm overhead and wrist bracing on the frame while his other hand slipped into his pocket. Next to her, she watched Ragatha's nervous smile morphs into an irritated one, her eye twitching at the interruption. The jester wouldn't admit it, but she was slightly grateful for the intrusion.

As she looked over her friend's blue cottony shoulder at the rabbit, he gave her a slight nod of acknowledgement before turning his attempt back to the fuming doll. “What's this I hear about it being one of your picks today?”

“It's nothing!” the ginger hums unconvincingly as she spins around to face him, toying with part of her ropey hair. “If it is my suggestion, you'll just have to see it later!”

“Woah, slow your roll, dollface,” his tone is sly, but Pomni can't detect anything inherently ‘rude’ about it - yet, anyway. After the last conversation they had, she was always bracing to hear his tone sharpen and the malice to appear. Lately, it was getting harder to tell when that switch was being flipped (if it was at all). “Nobody said it was gonna be horrible. Maybe a little uppity… But c'monnn, spill it.”

Before Ragatha could open her mouth to respond, Caine teleported them into the center circus room and started rambling about the plot of the adventure he was about to send them. The brunette was barely processing the words out of his mouth, instead focused on the way the ragdoll swayed side to side excitedly and the rabbit cocked an eyebrow at the ginger, frowning slightly but not saying anything. Her hands found her buttons and fumbled with them nervously as her eyes found the floor, barely catching the end of the ringmaster's tangent. 

“... It's up to you all to figure out who is Lady Hawethorne, and then befriend her so you can become the belle of the ball!” The chattering teeth AI cheered, opening a swirling green portal for them with a snap. Pomni felt her heart drop to her stomach at that part, not wanting to participate in social gymnastics. As the strength of the portal's suction lifted her off the ground, she flailed her arms and started to stutter. “Woah woah, that sounds a little stressful–!”

“That's the whole point!” Caine sang a little too cheerfully as he directed them all towards the spinning vortex. “Have fun!”

The jester's vision went white as she entered, then faded to black. As she tried to blink and take in her surroundings, she suddenly realized she was wearing something that was way too tight around her ribcage, but way too open around her legs. Confused, she patted her body, feeling three-dimensional polyester pieces, tiny beads and tulle instead of her normal cottony and poofy fool attire. She looked down, at first only seeing puddles of water on pavement that reflected multiple yellow squares, probably windows from a house. Then, her eyes locked on red heels, and tulle, icy blue fabric. 

“... Ragatha did NOT put me in a ballgown,” she panics internally, spinning around like a dog chasing its tail to see everything. On the dress. She can tell it's a sweep train, and the bottom edge has a lacey red trim on it. Multiple, red 3D star shaped cruciform flowers with jeweled and beaded pistils climbed up from her waistline to wrap around her arms, creating illusion sleeves. Her upper back and chest felt chilly, and when she reached to touch them both she realized they were v-cut. It took her even longer to realize she was no longer wearing a fool's cap – her hair was down, but still chopped just before her shoulders.

“This is…” the brunette clasped her hands together and brought them to her chest, already feeling the sweat beginning to accumulate on her palms and her face growing hot. “So, so embarrassing."

Besides the smell of wet pavement, Pomni also heard music playing distantly in front of her. Slowly, her gaze traveled upward and her eyes widened as she realized she was standing in the back parking lot of a giant, white Antebellum mansion. The lot was barren except for three fancy cars that had pulled up carpool-style: A black limousine, a white Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon, and a slim, red Jaguar. 

The latter caught her eye the most, mostly because of how out of place it felt compared to the other two. She was even more surprised to spot Zooble stepping out of it, dressed in a simple hot-pink pantsuit. The jester thought the outfit really complimented them well. What caught her attention even more, however, was how the zolo block doubled over laughing, then tossed their keys across the lot. She just barely noticed the ungloved, purple hand that caught it.

Pomni looked around awkwardly, realizing she was not provided a car for this adventure. Lifting her dress up with tight, trembling fists, she hobbled over towards the mansion, teetering in the red, shiny pump heels. “I guess it's implied I walked here, or that I own the place or something? I don't know,” she thought, annoyed, as she rounded the front of the limo and realized what Zooble had been laughing at.

Jax stood on the lawn between the parking lot and the mansion's back door, fumbling between three sets of car keys and muttering to himself. He was dressed in a pale pink valet uniform, with an oversized bellhop hat on his head that his ears could poke through. Just behind him, she could see the other characters minus Kinger were chatting excited and walking inside, in other blue and red dresses (or, in Zooble's case, a pink pantsuit). She felt her cheeks fill with air as she tried to hold back a laugh.

Of course, she laughed, a harmonious wave of giggles overcoming her as she covered her mouth and squinted her eyes to prevent tears from spilling out. The purple rabbit's head shot up, angry at first, but the moment his eyes landed on her she swore she saw the expression melt away into something… strange. At this point, though, the tears had started coming out, and she threw her head back trying to wipe them away. Behind her eyelids, she thought she saw another flash of white, but it had dissipated as soon as she opened her eyes again and the laughter had died down.

“I'm–” she hiccupped, then cleared her throat to kill the rest of the giggles before tucking a strand of hair behind her ear self-consciously. “So sorry, just… she put you on valet duty?”

Jax's face wore a smile now instead of a frown, and Pomni noticed he had pocketed most of the keys except one. “Yeah yeah, something about not letting me ‘ruin this for her’ or whatever…” He put the key's ring around his index finger and started to spin it. “Kinda sucks she doesn't trust me enough to let me in, but hey, can't really blame the girl.”

“Trust?” the brunette pondered as she walked over to him, her heels click-clacking in a grating way as she did. Her tone held the same amount of confusion as her thoughts did. “Since when have you cared about getting on people's good side? Especially Ragatha's…”

The key he was spinning suddenly flung in Pomni's direction, and without thinking her hand shot in front of her face to protect herself. Instead, her finger closed around cool metal and plastic, and when she turned her wrist back towards her face and opened it, she was shocked to see she'd actually caught them. The rabbit before her didn't acknowledge it as he answered her question.

“C'monnn, can't a guy decide to turn a new leaf?” Sarcasm seeps through his yellow teeth, but when the jester looks up in his eyes, she sees his pupils are small and his eyebrows are downcast. Before she can process what that meant, his pupils return to their normal, large and eerie appearance. “Besidesss, it's a party! Who doesn't want to get [SCHOOL BELL RING]ed up at a party?”

Her right hand finds the back of her neck. “I don't,” she confesses softly, sparing another glance at the open backdoor. She sees a swarm of wooden doll NPCs dressed in fancy attire and dancing around lankly and off-beat. The sight makes her shudder a little.

“Not even if there's alcohol?” the bunny asks her, purposefully leaning his head down to block her view of the door. Sheepishly, Pomni shakes her head no. He clicks his tongue and stands back upright, and her eyes follow his movements. “Tell you what, why don't you at least sneak me a drink out of there?”

A small fire rushes through her veins, and her confidence comes back for a moment. If there's one nice thing she could say about Jax, it was that he made her feel passionate, whether it was over getting the last word in for a joke or to physically beat the [BOING-OING-OING] out of him. “Don't you have to drive?”

“Driving's more fun when you've got some liquid courage in ya.”

“Why don't you get it yourself?”

“Watch,” he purrs, swinging his arms dramatically at his side as he walks towards the mansion. She watched as he took about five steps forward and then suddenly bounced off of an invisible wall and crash landed on his own butt. A second wave of giggles overcame the brunette as it happened and she covered her mouth with both hands in false shock in an attempt to hide it. The bunny tilted his head backwards and shouted back at her, “See? I'm fully banned from the premises unless Lady Hawethorne herself invites me in, or something.”

“Okay okay,” she chuckles, strutting over to where he's landed. She goes to hold a hand out to him, then hesitates. In this outfit, she's also not wearing any gloves, and the idea of touching people without them made her wince. But then she watches the rabbit fall back flat on the ground dramatically before holding a hand out to her.

“Help me up, Pom-Pom,” he coos, closing his eyes and resting the back of his other hand against his forehead like he had fainted. “For how am I suppose to do it myself…”

A gear seems to click in place in her head, and she leans down slightly with an arm outstretched, but purposefully holds her hand a few inches out of reach. If he wants to grab it, he'd have to sit up a little bit. “Not until you agree to something.”

Jax cracks an eye open narrowly, his voice rough as he speaks. “I'm not wearing the maid dress again.”

Pomni rolls her eyes and moves her hand back another few inches as he swipes for it. “Not that,” she sighs. “I want us to talk about our argument.”

He doesn't move an inch, but both his eyes open and he doesn't look at her. She isn't quite sure what he's thinking about, but she's at least thirty percent sure he's considering what she said. His voice is soft when he speaks again, and it almost makes her give in and yank him back onto his feet immediately. 

“Would you consider us friends again if I said yes?”

The jester's hand trembles and she curls her fingers in slightly. “I thought you'd said we were never friends?”

“We both know I was lying through my teeth.”

Just like that, her pity simmers down and her rage boils back up. The stove that is her emotional state is very volatile these days. “Even if I could tell, that doesn't mean it still didn't hurt to hear,” she says sharply, her fingers curling into her palm as she stands back up. “Same with you saying you didn't care if I abstracted tomorrow.” 

“I didn't say I wouldn't–” She raises an eyebrow as Jax sits back up on the grass, one leg out straight and the other pulled up to his chest. His pupils are small again, and his mouth is frozen into a permanent small frown. Her eyes search his face further as he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before pushing himself off the ground with one hand and stumbling back onto his feet. When he reopens them, the pupils are still small as he speaks. “Look, how about I make it up to you?”

“Not what I was looking for, but let's see where this goes,” Pomni thinks, crossing her arms and giving him a once over with his eyes. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

He gestures at her other hand, which the brunette looks back down at. She had forgotten she was holding somebody's keys. She makes a noise of surprise and shoves them back towards Jax, voice squeaking. “Here– Wait wait wait. What do you mean with these?”

Still frowning, he points his thumb back behind them at the red Jaguar Zooble had climbed out of. “I'm the valet,” he deadpans. “I'm probably not supposed to let other guests ride in other people's cars… But who's really enforcing any rules here?”

Pomni blinks a couple of times, confused. The night air had gotten chillier somehow, and she shivered slightly as she spoke. “Where would we even go? This is just an empty parking lot.”

For the first time in minutes, Jax smiled. It was a wide, mischievous grin, and his black eyes almost completely covered the yellow parts in his eye. “You're an adrenaline junkie, Pom-Pom. Use your brain a little bit…” He leans down and wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and pointing off towards a distant hill. She squinted, trying to follow his finger. When she saw a few car headlights whiz by on what looked like an interstate, her eyes shot back open.

“You're not going to go night riding?” she sputters, hoping the anxiety she's feeling isn't bleeding into her voice too much. She feels her heartbeat quickening as the bunny shrugs.

“Well, I was going to start with donuts in the parking lot, but if you wanna jump off the deep end immediately…”

“Donuts is fine!” she blurts out, causing Jax's ears to perk up and an eyebrow to quirk up. Her face grows hot as she starts stuttering and trying to correct herself. “I meant… a ride is probably better than attending this stuffy, rich people party…”

He cackles loudly and starts sashaying towards the sports car. “Wowww, tell me how you really feel about the adventure. I'm sure dollface would love to hear your opinion on it.”

The jester huffs in frustration and hikes her scratchy dress back up, following him with slower, wobbly, uncoordinated steps, her eyes glued to the dewey grass that her heels keep sinking into or straight stabbing through and getting her stuck for a second. When she looks back up, Jax has already reached the car and popped over the vertical car doors. She stared at them in awe for a bit, ignoring how badly stuck she had become in the grass.

The rabbit went to slide into the driver's seat but stopped, poking his head up at her for a moment. She watches with shaky legs as he immediately climbs back out and jogs over to her.

“Woah woah woah, yeah we're not doing this,” he pants as he meets her halfway. Her brows furrow in confusion, then spring back up in surprise and he gets down on one knee and lightly grabs one of her ankles. She gasps in shock and almost falls backwards as he lifts her foot up and out of the shoe.

“Jax, what the–” her voice dies in her throat as he sets her bare foot back down on the grass and takes the other shoe off just as gingerly. He stands back up holding both heels by the counters with two fingers, wagging him in front of her face before chunking them haphazardly into the middle of the grassy lawn. She follows the arc of the shoes as they bounce and roll on the green, then turns and blinks at the rabbit in shock as he turns back around and walks towards the car like nothing happened. His playfully annoyed response was carried to her by the breeze.

“You should be thanking me, you looked miserable in those. Unless being miserable is your style, but personally, I want you to enjoy yourself at least a little bit while we're stuck in this adventure.”

She stares, unmoving, at the back of the bunny's head for a moment. She cannot wrap her head around why he did that – doesn't he generally like seeing people struggle a bit? As she stood there, frozen and beginning to zone out, he looked back over his shoulder at her and rolled his eyes. “Hurry up, I wanna see how fast this puppy can go.”

She shakes her head rapidly and scrambles to catch up to him, feeling the ache in her feet subsided with each step. She hadn't realized the shoes were already starting to cut off circulation, and she was silently a bit grateful they were lost somewhere in the yard. She slipped into the passenger side's red leather seat and reached up to close the door, kicking her feet a little bit since they weren't quite touching the floorboard. Jax was already in the driver's seat, clicking his seatbelt into place and turning the key in the ignition as Pomni readjusted her seat. Even when she finally got it where she wanted it, her bare feet were still barely grazing the black floor mat. 

“So, donuts and then some ghost mode?” the rabbit asked, his tone upbeat but seemingly also a bit hollow as Pomni buckled her own seatbelt. She hummed in agreement as he slowly backed up and drove around the other two parked cars in the lot. Her eyes darted around to the lit up dashboard, the black pavement still glistening wet with the occasional puddle, and to the way Jax kept glancing at her using the rear view mirror. She felt something flittering around in her stomach but wasn't sure what the name of the feeling was at the moment. She was also a little more focused on the way the car went from a crawl to a steady canter in less than five seconds. She reached up clumsily and found the grab handle, already latching onto it with her right hand. She heard Jax laugh as he started turning the car in slow, lazy circles.

“What, you think I'm that reckless of a driver?” he snickered.

She glared at him from across the car. “You literally said you want to go ghost mode on the highway. You know, the thing where you speed at night with no headlights on.”

“Ah, so you do know a little bit about speed racing,” he chirped, grinning back at her with crinkled eyes. The jester rolled her own in response and turned to look out her window. The streetlights and lights from the mansion windows had started to slowly blur as the car started speeding up.

“Might wanna hold on a little tighter, Pom-Pom,” Jax purred as the engine started to roar louder and the world felt like it was no longer perfectly right side up. Pomni let out a tiny ‘Oof!’ as she was thrown into the right side car door as it spins, tires starting to screech and burn against the pavement. She had her eyes closed tightly and could feel her own heart hammering in her chest as the rabbit driving whooped and hollered next to her. Slowly, her body adjusted to the feeling and she opened her eyes to peer outside the windshield. 

They were definitely going in a circle, and she was starting to think the way they were tilting and swerving in such perfect equilibrium was a little… fun. She felt the familiar thrill of adrenaline rush through her veins and down to the pit of her stomach, and she started to laugh as she turned to look at the bunny next to her. His eyes were more black than yellow, and he was beaming, his whole body leaning towards the right but his head stayed firmly in place upright like nothing had happened. His stretchy, bendy neck just made her laugh louder and made him turn to look at her.

“Oh, you like this, yeah?” He took his foot off the gas slightly and shot forward, breaking the circle and heading towards the edge of the parking lot. The motion made the brunette jolt forward a bit, but her seatbelt locked into place and made it so she didn't go very far. He kept looking at her as he navigated the entryway to the freeway, slowly speeding up so he'd match or exceed the pace of the NPC drivers with them. “I thought you might, you little freak. Well, you haven't seen nothing yet.”

The speed at which he accelerated pressed Pomni flat back against her seat, ripping her away from the handle she was holding and forcing her to grip her seatbelt in terror instead. A feeling that skirted the line of fear and excitement danced in her heart, and Jax was holding onto its hand like it was a ballroom partner he'd been working with for years. Her breathing hitched as she watched his speedometer climb – 80, 87, 94, 103, 115 in a matter of seconds. Her eyes then locked onto the cars in front of them and how Jax seemed to zip around them flawlessly, like he knows what's going to happen next. Her mind starts running as she turns to look at him and hollers over the roaring engine, “Have you done this before?”

“Oh, dozens of times,” he shouts back, a glint in his eye as he spares a glance at her before locking back in on the road. “Caine reuses this interstate asset all the time. After a few driving-related adventures, you start to get the lay of it, and Caine's made it entirely crash proof too so there's no risk if I did hit anyone anyway.”

Her next words drip with sarcasm. “Lemme guess, you've tried that out before to know that?”

“Oh, dozens of times,” he mimics himself from earlier, and a genuine smile crosses the jester's face as she turns back to the road and watches the cars and taillights whiz by in a blur. In her heart, she feels Jax tug the feeling into a graceful spin and dip, and she finally has a name for it. 

She lets out a whoop and throws her hands up in the air as the rabbit speeds up another ten miles, zipping between cars so fast it almost gives her whiplash. She hears him start cheering with her as they go. Moments later, the brunette is rolling down her window and clicking off her seatbelt to lean backwards out of it, feeling the wind whip through her hair and forcefully tug teardrops out of her closed eyes. She rests both elbows against the outside of the door and tilts her head back, and when she opens her eyes she can see an ocean of stars above, glittering and showing constellations of rabbits and jesters and comedy masks and triangles and hearts. She feels something tug on the bottom of her dress and ducks back into the car, laughing so much her ribs had started to hurt. 

Jax eventually started to slow his roll back down to around 60 miles per hour, and he took the first (and only) exit on the freeway that led back to the mansion. Pomni was panting, still trying to recover from her laughing and screaming fits, but she couldn't wipe the smile off her face, no matter how much it had started hurting her cheeks. She wasn't able to speak properly until he had crept back into the parking lot and reparked behind the white G-Wagon.

“You are a certified madman,” she laughed breathlessly, smacking him in the arm. He chuckled in response as he turned the car back off and popped his door open. 

“Why thank you, I try,” he joked, before slipping around to the other side and opening her door for her. He offered an arm out to her, and she carefully wrapped both hands around it as she stood up. “Does this count as a good apology for all those things I said?”

She hummed thoughtfully and chewed on her bottom as he guided her up the lawn. She didn't answer him until he stopped in the middle of it, right where his force field would have started. “While that was nice… I think you still owe me at least one nice, not-stressful gesture before I can really forgive you.”

He scoffed teasingly and rolled his eyes at her before lightly shaking her off his arm. “Well, it sounds like you already have something in mind,” he mumbled, unamused.

“Was it that obvious?” Pomni asked with a tone of fake hurt, playfully pouting at him. She wiped the expression off of her face and took two steps back so she was behind the forcefield. She held a hand out to him, this time without hesitating or worrying. “Dance with me.”

He blinked down at her hand, his pupils small and his mouth not visible. He made a small noise of disbelief and waved her away with his hand. “Not gonna happen. I can't go inside, remember?”

“Not true,” she chimed, keeping her hand extended. “You said you couldn't unless you were invited. Well, I'm inviting you in.”

He laughed quietly at her, shaking his head, before taking a few steps forward. “Like that's gonna… workkkk…” his voice trailed off as he passed through where the invisible wall should have been. Pomni dropped her hand and stepped back in surprise as he took a dramatic bow towards her.

“Well, I didn't know I was treating the Lady Hawethorne to a joyride…” he declared loudly, and the NPCs near the open door all turned their heads to look at her for a moment before returning to dancing. “I suppose I must dance with you now, since you pay my imaginary bills.”

The brunette erupted into laughter and pushed past him, heading towards the open doorway she had yet to walk through. “Yeah yeah, whatever. I just wanted you to embarrass yourself in front of everyone as an apology.”

“Ouch,” he scoffed, easily catching up with her, his relaxed, lanky steps shorter and slower in order to keep up with her shorter legs wrapped in tulle. “But deserved, I guess.”

As they passed through the doorway, they were greeted by a high ceiling, donning a massive golden chandelier that dangled dangerously down to human height in the middle of the checkered ballroom, as well as two, spiraling gold staircases on each side that met to create a massive upper balcony. She could see Kinger had found his way up there somehow, and he was waving at them both enthusiastically. Pomni waved back meekly before more determinedly pushing herself through the crowd of wooden NPCs to find an open spot to dance, preferably where the others could see so they could mock Jax a little. The rabbit in question was having more trouble navigating through the crowd since he was taller, and every time she looked back to see if he had caught up she'd see him kicking or shoving another doll out of his way.

Eventually he made his way to her as some classical cover of a pop song started playing, and she smiled weakly at him before awkwardly holding a hand out to him. Whatever suave had possessed her while outside she was convinced had come from the adrenaline high of the car ride, and now she was starting to cringe and her bold ask, even if it was just to embarrass him and get an apology out of him. 

Eyes and smile wide, Jax bent down and took her hand gently, before sharply yanking her forward. The jester yelped and crashed into his thighs, swearing she saw stars and bluebirds spinning around her head for a second. When the purple bunny waved a hand in front of her face and the bluebirds started tweeting in surprise and flying off in different directions, she realized they were, in fact, real.

“Oh right, you're short,” he says casually, standing back up straight and swinging her around the same way they had when singing Daisy Bell. The brunette held back a barely muffled scream as her feet left the cool, checkered porcelain ground and she closed her eyes and winced as she felt an arm wrap around her waist and pull her into a firm, cotton surface. When she opened her eyes, she was staring straight at Jax's gleaming yellow teeth, his breath smelling like…

“Cinnamon?” she wonders, her lips parting slightly as she continued to look at his teeth. Besides the yellow sheen on them, she thought they were relatively clean. She forced herself to tilt her head up a few degrees and met the rabbit's relaxed gaze, pupils still wide but something else glittering in the back of them she couldn't quite place.

“There, now you get to look stupid too,” he hummed, his fingers intertwining with hers as he started to sway left and right, taking wide, overly-stretched steps back and forth that made her feel like she was being jostled around. She groaned playfully and pushed against his chest with her free hand, only making the top half of her body lean back away from him as he kept her in place with the arm he had around her waist. “Thiiiis was not the plan,” she mumbles, a hint of annoyance in her voice that quickly melts into tiny giggles.

“Well, tough turkey,” Jax sighs matter of factly, picking up his pace and slowly starting to spin along with his side steps. Pomni's body physically leans left and right with each motion, and while she keeps flailing her legs in an effort to jokingly kick him, she keeps missing. His voice shifts to a quieter, less teasing tone as he does. “I think it's only fair if we're gonna have eyes on us that we both have to take the fall.”

“You know who's about to fall?” the jester huffs, still squirming in his grip and laughing. “You, flat on your [LAWNMOWER CRANKING] when I finally land a shot!”

Suddenly, Jax's grip on her completely disappears, and the brunette shrieks as she falls for about 2 seconds. As quickly as it happens, the rabbit's hands catch her on both sides of her waist and lift her high in the air above him like she's a stuffed animal. Whatever she was about to say immediately dissolves on her tongue, drowned out by the sound of her own heart pounding as she looks in his eyes and sees whatever was glimmering in them before is now shining even brighter.

“Tough talk for someone so droppable,” he chuckles, bringing her back down to eye level. His dancing had slowed to more of a gentle, in-place swaying, and she couldn't help but notice his chest rising and falling a little faster than normal, likely out of breath from his tomfoolery before. With both of her arms and legs more free than before, and with how her dance partner's guard seemed to be down, Pomni strongly considered punching him and scurrying off. But that would only embarrass him in front of the others for a moment - the memory of him dancing with her would be priceless and mocked for days instead. So, the jester settled on wrapping both of her arms around his neck loosely and playing along.

“Touché, touché…” she sighs, meeting his gaze defiantly while trying to ignore the way his thumbs seemed to slip into the spots above her hip bones like a key slips into a lock. “Still, I'm not gonna let you live this down anytime soon.”

“Fine by me,” he says with a tone of sincerity. The brunette watches with shifting eyes as his smile falters slightly and his eyes soften. She's convinced she's imagining things until he speaks again, voice gentler and almost a whisper. “As long as we can be cool again.”

The jester feels her mouth twitch into a frown, and an ache sprout in her chest. She wanted to forgive him right then and there, act like their fight had never happened and go back to the way they would hang out around the circus and partner up for adventures. She missed it so, so bad – But she also knew she needed to stand firm in her ways. He didn't deserve to get access to her again that easily, nor to get off the hook for what he said about her or the others. 

But she doesn't say any of that to him right now, because she doesn't have the energy to argue. Not after all he'd done for her tonight. Against her better judgement, she decides to be honest with him. 

“I never stopped seeing you as a friend, Jax,” she says, voice breaking. She's almost made speechless when she sees the way his smile is replaced with a neutral expression. Not wanting to ruin the moment further, she turns to the right and presses her cheek against his chest. Her eyes focus on the edges of the pink sleeveless vest and the wrinkles on his white, long-sleeved button-up shirt as she mumbles. “What you said just… Really hurt.”

Silence befalls them, and Pomni focuses on the gentle rocking motion of their shared dance that keeps her grounded in the moment. Her fingers keep twitching a little behind the rabbit's head, brushing his shirt collar on occasion. She feels his head and neck bend down slightly, along with the tips of his ears tickling her exposed shoulder blades.

“I'm sorry,” she hears him whisper roughly where her ear would be if she had one. “I would remember.”

The brunette freezes up, unable to pull away and look him in the eye even if she wants to. She can feel her own heartbeat hammering against her ribcage and echoing in her head as the ache in her chest widens to cover more ground. “What?”

Jax sighs loudly and shakily above her, the heat from his breath hitting the back of her neck and causing the hairs on it to raise. “If you… abstracted,” he says wearily, “I wouldn't forget you. Or anybody else.”

Pomni exhales, and it feels like the balloon of anxiety that had been steadily growing in her body had been popped with a needle. Her entire body melts into the rabbit against her will as she hugs him tighter. For a moment, she braces her legs in case he decides to drop her and point and laugh in her face for believing him. Instead, she stops breathing as he wraps his left arm fully around her waist and his right arm across her back, hugging her even tighter. The jester smiles softly and closes her eyes, missing the giant marquee letters that appear above the ballroom reading “Lady Hawethorne (Pomni) Wins!” and the green portal that swirled to life in the center of the floor.

Chapter Text

The night after the ballroom adventure, Jax couldn't sleep. But this time it wasn't because of self-loathing or bad memories – It was because his brain was wired with thoughts of a certain tiny jester.

He remembered the anxiety he felt apologizing to her, like a ball of yarn where each string was getting crossed over and tucked into the wrong places just to get it into a ball shape. He also remembered the way that yarn ball completely unraveled when she hugged him back, and the absolute flood of relief that overcame him when he chose to hug her back instead of push her away. 

Laying in his wooden bed, he stared at his left palm, feeling far less anger disappointed at it than he had weeks before. Because that same hand was responsible for ripping those ugly red heels off of her, for spinning her in the air and holding her by her waist as they danced. 

“Something that once pushed her away,” he thought as he pulled the hand to his chest and cradled it for a moment, smiling, “also brought her back to me. And all it took was days of self-depricating and re-evaluating my entire worldview to do it!”

The rabbit went to roll over onto his right side to fall asleep when he heard something crinkle in his overall pocket. Rolling his eyes, he reached down and fished it out, bringing it up close to his face and squinting in the dark to see it. His vision slowly morphed the blue and red blobs he was seeing into a coherent image: a polaroid of Pomni, in her blue dress with trailing red flowers on it, laughing in the front lawn of the mansion.

Jax shot up immediately in bed. “I forgot I took this,” he thought as his feet immediately swung to the side of the bed and planted themselves on the floor. He continued staring at all her features as he walked over to his corkboard, like how her hair perfectly framed her jawline when it was out of the hat, the way her painted red blush seemed to grow bigger when her dimples appeared, and the way her exposed collarbone was… well, he didn't know why it caught his attention. He remembered glancing at her collarbone during the noir bar adventure Zooble suggested, too, and chalked it up to just never seeing it before because of the way her jester outfit was. He didn't want to think about the implications of focusing on the area a second time.

When he reached the board, he glanced up from the photo to look at Pomni's section on it. Her area was still the most bare, with only her default portrait and a photo of her giving a weak thumbs up on the softball bench, a bit of the maid dress the rabbit was put in visible along the bottom edge. With a soft smile, he took a random thumbtack from one of the empty spaces and used it to pin her dress picture to near the default one. He took a step back to take in the composition, putting his right hand on his chin and using his left hand to support his right elbow.

“Something doesn't feel right,” his mind grumbled, darting around and seeing the other characters' corners were organized in a similar fashion: Their default profile picture in the middle, surrounded by sticky notes and other photos in a relatively random order. But looking at Pomni's three pictures and two sticky notes (one describing her vaguely, with “No archetype” in large font on the bottom and another stating the few things he knew bothered it or that she was scared of), he couldn't help but feel like that format won't work for her.

His ears suddenly perk straight up as he reaches over and switches the pictures around, putting her laughing photo in the middle and her default photo to the lower left side. A small, natural smile crosses his face, his eyes lidded as he looks at it. “Better. Though it still needs a lot of work…”

The next few days, Jax decided his sole mission was to further expand her section so it looked less empty. Now that they were on better terms again, that task was much easier to accomplish.

“Say, what was your favorite food back in the real world?” he asked as he leaned on her desk with one hand in another high school themed adventure. The pink letterman jacket he had been given for it was oversized and kept sliding off his shoulder.

The jester was stuck in what Jax kept calling ‘sad, cringy little scene attire’ which was really just an oversized band t-shirt, a short back skirt, red and blue striped knee high socks and way too many pieces of jewelry and belts. She didn't look up from the nonsensical math test they were suppose to be taking as she answered him. “Um… I really wasn't too picky, but I never went wrong with cheap Chinese food after work. Why?”

“No reason,” he purred, before slipping into the desk that was beside her and clicking his pen so he could write her answer down on the pack of sticky notes he had brought along with him. This behavior continued throughout the adventure, with them bickering about nonsense with the occasional question slipped in. Later on in a gym class, he watched in glee as she blocked the dodgeball he had chucked at her with another ball, and moments later hit him square in the crotch with the same ball. He doubled over in the middle of the gyms squeaky court, much to the delight of the women and Zooble who cheered her on from the sidelines they were already out on.

“Good shot, Pom-Pom,” the bunny wheezed as the jester walked up the metal bleachers seat and sat on the row below him. He was still recovering a little from the blow, but mentally was way more impressed than mad. “Thought you didn't like sports?”

“I don't,” she affirmed as she watched everyone except Gangle participate in a random game of Four Square they had set up with jump ropes. “I only fight back as well as I do cause I had to fend off plenty of weirdos in the buildings I explored,” she tilts her head back to look at him, smirking. “Oh, and I was involved in a few bar fights in college. That's probably where most of it came from.”

“Ohoho, little miss goodie two shoes over here in bar fights?” he teases, not breaking his gaze as he scribbled the two new pieces down. ‘Went to college… Bar fights???’

“Oh, I was not always a goodie two shoes,” the brunette laughed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and looking back at the game on the floor. “I got arrested for one of the fights, you know. Didn't end up going on my record, but my dad was not happy about bailing me out, regardless. I stopped going out with college friends after that happened.”

Three things. ‘ARRESTED?!?!?!?!?’ the rabbit scribbled furiously on the same sticky note, large enough it forced him to need a new one for whatever new information came out of her mouth. “Well, [QUACK] me, Pomni. I really didn't know the kinda girl I was dealing with.”

He could practically hear how hard her eyes rolled at that as she shook her head, still looking straight ahead. “I think you have a pretty good idea,” she replied sincerely.

That night, Jax properly organized the notes onto the board around the jester's pictures, including the two new ones he sneakily took of her while she was in the school adventure. Some of the notes he had to re-write so they would be neater or more coherent, but overall he felt proud when he stepped away and looked at the larger picture. 

This process repeated over the course of a week, collecting even more photos and asking more questions not just to Pomni, but to the other cast members.

“So, Pom-Pom, you never did tell me your favorite color.”

“Hey dollface, didn't you own horses or somethin’? Name ‘em, rapid fire, go.”

“Knock off LEGO bricks! What's your least favorite part? One of Kinger's moths flew up to the big top and won't come down and he's losing even more marbles that I thought he possessed because of it. No, I'm not doing it to be nice, I just want him to stop screaming. Stop looking at me like that.”

It got to the point where when he walked back into his outdoor-themed bedroom, he'd immediately look for the corkboard and smile at it, whether he was about to add something to it or not. Additionally, he had noticed it was getting easier to write nice notes about people, without the feeling of his throat tightening and his hands trembling.

“This is stupid,” the negative voice in his head growled as he wrote down two notes saying that Gangle's sketchbook drawings seemed to be improving, mainly because it looked like Zooble had been drawing with her. “Nobody is even going to see your hard work.”

“They don't need to see it,” he whispered to himself in response. “What matters is I like it, and I like making it.”

“What are you going to latch onto when the space is filled?” it bit back at him as he crawled into bed. “How will you distract yourself from all the horrible things you've done? From all the people that hate you?”

The bunny flopped onto his side and pulled his blanket up to his chest, legs curling into what vaguely resembled a fetal position. “I dunno,” he mumbled aloud into the soft fabric. “But not everyone here hates me… And last I checked, I thought they weren't people to you…”

The dark thoughts immediately washed away after that, like a tide pulling seashells back into the ocean, and the rabbit dozed off very quickly, sleeping better than he had in years in the circus.

Pomni woke up to the sound of three, heavy knocks on her door. She sits up sluggishly, silk sheets quietly slipping off her and the bells of her hat tingling. “What's with people waking me up lately?” she thinks, annoyed, and she yawns and stretches her arms above her head. “I'm not a child, I can wake up on my own…”

Jax's cocky voice seeps through her wooden door, and her arms shoot back down to wrap around herself in an awkward hug as he speaks. “Oh Pomni~! I'm respecting your privacy by knocking, but asserting my authority as your bestest friend ever by coming in anyway!”

“Of course he would,” she muses. Wide awake now, she clambers out of bed, half-hazardly fixing the covers. Out of the corner of her eyes, she spots the Team Bad Guys photograph she was still holding on to. She stares at it for a moment, doubt swimming in her mind. “He wouldn't try to throw it away a second time, right?” she contemplates, eyes shifting between the door and the polaroid. “Then again, I don't think he knows I found it.” Her doubts win the ongoing battle in her mind as she quickly snatches it up and drops it into the bottom most drawer of her dresser before slamming it shut with both hands. With a quick exhale to shake off her nerves, she spins back around and pops open her door, seeing Jax bent over, key in hand and inches away from where the lock would be if she hadn't pulled it away from him.

“Perfect timing, Pom-Pom,” he cooed, a wicked smile spreading across his face and a familiar glint in his eye as he straightened his posture and crossed his arms. The jester had noticed the look in his eye more frequently since their night at the ball, and while she was skeptical to call in a “happy” glint, she mentally connected that it was. Before she could ask the rabbit what he was here for, he strutted into her room like he owned the place, eyes closing a sigh escaping his lips.

“Caine let us off the hook today, but I figure if I casted my rod out to you, you'd bite.” The brunette feels her blood simmer a little as he sits on the edge of her poorly made bed and leans back on his left hand. With his right, he gestures vaguely up and down at his body. “So, you like the worm on the hook or not?”

The heat in her body grows, but not in an aggravated way. She feels it spread primarily in her stomach and up, through her chest and neck but not quite reaching her face as she rolls her eyes and closes the door behind her. She subconsciously mimics his body language and she crosses her own arms and leans her left shoulder against the door, crossing her right leg over her left. “Yeah yeah, congratulations, you caught a clownfish.”

The rabbit audibly shouts ‘Ha!’, mouth splitting open in that two-dimensional way that Pomni still found a little unnerving. He smiled proudly afterwards, eyes still sparkling. She felt like a boiling pot of water about to spill over the brim as the heat finally rose to her face. “Good one, Pom,” he hummed, looking down and fidgeting with a loose string on the edge of her satin pillow. “Maybe I should start calling you ‘clownfish’ from now on. Find you a giant anemone to plant in this boring room of yours.”

The playfully biting reply slips past her lips without her thinking. She noticed Jax had a way of getting her to do that, and he'd match her wit with his own just as quickly. “If it's so boring, why'd you wander in, so-claimed ‘bestest friend’ of mine?”

Jax gasps dramatically, the hand that was supporting him flying to his chest and gripping it like he'd been shot. “Are you saying I'm not your bestest friend ever?”

“Maybe I think that, maybe I don't,” she contemplates aloud, pushing herself off the door and walking over to her own bed. She pushed back part of the princess curtain and sat down to the bunny's right. When she felt their knees brush for a moment, she flinched away like she'd been burned, hoping he hadn't noticed how much it startled her. Stuttering a little, she continued, “What I'm saying is I didn't think the circus's mascot of peak masculinity had best friends.”

She didn't see any changes in his expression, still smirking down at her with lidded eyes. She did, however, notice him quickly and wordlessly move his knee over to forcefully bump into hers again. “What, you think I don't have friends here?”

“Gangle still acts terrified of you, Zooble openly dislikes you and you still talk negatively about Ragatha every day.”

She sees his mouth twitch down and his pupils shrink into medium-sized squares. She winces back a little as his nonchalant tone frosts over into one of apprehension. “Yeah, well,” he sputters, waving his hand around randomly as he talks, “That's cause she's always putting pressure on people to be happy. It's like - what do they call it - toxic positivity or somethin’?” He scoffs, turning away from Pomni to the point where she can't see his face anymore, but she can hear what he mutters under his breath next. “It's like I can't be myself around her.”

The jester's brows furrow, and she looks down at their knees that are touching. She lifts her red gloved hand tentatively, hovering it over it for a moment as a strange lump forms her throat. “Is there…” she commits to the motion and rests her palm on his kneecap. “... Anyone you can be yourself with around here? Or any place you can do that?”

The purple bunny feels tense under her touch, and she forces herself to keep meeting his gaze as he turns back around and looks at her, eyes wide open but pupils shrunk down to small dots and his mouth a flat line. 

“What am I doing?” she asks herself as her eyes rapidly flick around his face in a triangle shape, from both eyes to his mouth and back to each eye. “Was that the wrong thing to say? What if he leaves and chooses not to speak to me again? What if–”

Pomni snaps back to reality at the feeling of Jax's hand gripping the top of hers so hard it made one of her knuckles crack. She whines in pain and winces, shutting her eyes for a moment. As she closes them, she feels him flinch and loosen his hold, now something gentler but still firm. When her eyes open, she stares down at their hands on his knee, eyes widening as he rubs the back of her knuckles with his thumb. When her eyes flick up to his she sees he's also staring at their hands, with his brows lowered and mouth curved into a squiggly frown of sorts. His pupils are still dots, and she swears she sees them shaking. She watches his mouth open as he sighs shakily, then feels a soft squeeze on her hand before he gently removes her hand off his knee and lets it go. Pomni feels the sudden coolness against her palm as gravity takes over and pulls her arm down to her side. She continues staring at the rabbit, eyes wide and worry swirling within her like autumn leaves.

When he speaks again, his voice is quiet yet distant, like his mind is somewhere far away. “You…” he swallows nervously, and the brunette can practically hear the gulp. “Remind me of someone I once could do that with.”

It grows quiet for a moment, a weighted blanket of tension covering and swaddling the room, creating a freshly made bed the two of them are now forced to lie in. Pomni's eyes shift away from him nervously, fixating on the far corner bottom corner of her dresser. Multiple different reassuring phrases swim in the back of her throat like tadpoles, but she can't find the right one to turn into a frog and let leap out of her mouth. Her indecision makes Jax attempt to kick the weighted blanket he created for them off with a terrible joke.

“Either way, that person was not Ragatha,” he cackled, slapping his own knee as he laughed before rocking back on the bed and using the momentum to spring himself forward onto his feet. The jester blinks at him, perplexed, as he starts walking towards her closed door with the typical bounce in his step. She trips, both over her own feet as she stands up and her own words.

“Woah, hey, wait– Do you wanna, like, talk about that?” she questions, posture hunched and a weak pointer finger in the air as she stumbles a few paces behind him. Her raised arm slowly drops back to her side as he waves her off with a hand, not sparing her a glance.

“Nah, I think I answered your question fine,” he chirps, his other hand gripping her gold door handle. Desperation and fear start to bubble up in the jester's chest as she blurts out in reply, “Are you saying you can't be yourself around me?”

The rabbit's ear twitches once, twice as he turns his head to look at her, eyes squinted, pupils large, smile too big and too forced. Pomni's mentally laying down a brick wall as fast as she can to protect herself from the wreck ball of cruelty she expects him to hurl at her. She doesn't finish it by the time he speaks again.

“Hey now, that's what we call jumping to a conclusion…” The bunny shifts his body so it's half towards her, half towards her door. He still has one hand on the handle, but the other rests on his waist, and he cocks an eyebrow at her as he followed up with another quip. “You might've had to do some crazy parkour in those buildings you explored back in the real world, but I promise you don't need ‘em in this conversation.”

Pomni growled and frustration and threw her hands up in the air, smacking the bells on her fool's cap and making them jangle harshly next to where her ears would be. “Then what are you trying to say?”

“I'm saying I'll tell you later,” Jax hissed through gritted teeth, eyes narrowed but posture not changing as he flung the door open. A sharp, womanly gasp is heard from the other side of it, and Pomni's head jersey over to see Ragatha standing there, arms locked to her sides and her eye wide and darting around nervously. The bunny doesn't look away from Pomni as he takes his hand off his hip and gestures it at the ragdoll outside. “Because you have a guest.”

“How did you–” the ginger snaps at him, before suddenly fixing her face and giving a weak, trembling smile to the brunette. “Pomni! Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt anything– I didn't know anything was going on at all, seriously, I mean it– I was just hoping–”

The rabbit cuts her off as he shoulders past her out of the room. “You're not interrupting anything, I was just leavin’,” he snickered quietly, which would sound convincingly rude to the untrained ear. But to Pomni, she could hear the slight strain and irritation in his voice as he left, followed by a sigh of… Disappointment? Hurt? Longing? Something. Her eyes lock onto her own mismatched colored shoes as she heard the sound of her door shutting again and shuffling feet on carpet. At the edge of her vision, she sees the doll's black shoes standing just inches away from her own.

“Are you alright?” her friend asks with a wobbly yet melodic voice. The jester points her own toes together and doesn't take her eyes off the floor as she shrugs. “As well as I can be, really,” she mumbles.

The brunette jumps as a hand is placed on her shoulder and her head finally shoots up to look in Ragatha's one eye. The eyeball is filled with sympathy and glittering with something… weird. She thought it was similar to the glint in Jax's eyes, but it felt more foreign coming from the woman in front of her. An uneasy, anxious feeling swam in her stomach as the ragdoll spoke in a soft, concerned tone.

“I'm worried about you hanging out with him,” she mumbled, rubbing Pomni's shoulder gently. It just made her want to recoil even more. “You've seen the way he treats people.”

Pomni knew she wasn't wrong, but also thought back to the course of the week. She had noticed his attitude changing slightly, and had caught him complimenting Gangle's artwork just the day before. The Jax she first met would have snatched the notebook and threatened to set it on fire just to make the ribbon girl cry. She decided to mention it as she brushed Ragatha's hand off her shoulder. “I know… But he's been improving kinda, don't you think?”

The ragdoll's eye darkened for a moment. “Maybe,” she muttered, “But that doesn't erase years of bullying and torment we've had to endure.”

“You know what, fair point,” she thought solemnly as she pulled her legs up onto the bed, sitting criss-cross. “True… But I like spending time with him.” She shrugs and tears her gaze away from her friend, finding her own reflection in her body length mirror in the corner instead. She locks eyes with herself, exploring the red and blue, big-top styled pupils with a faint smile. “He makes me feel… Normal, I guess.”

In the reflection, she sees Ragatha's mouth twist into a frown and use her right arm to rub her left arm awkwardly, not making eye contact. “But… he's really not the best company, Pomni.” Her eye met the jester's in the mirror, and it was filled with worry as her mouth moves again. “You're a good woman, Pomni. I don't want you to get wrapped up in the wrong circles and not be able to get yourself out of them.”

The brunette watched her own pupils expand, her own smile wipe off her face and her own hackles raise in defense before she looked up at the ginger next to her. “I'm sorry,” she deadpanned, trying to prevent the anger building inside her from reaching her throat. “Do you think I'm incapable of handling myself?”

Ragatha visibly tenses up and starts waving her hands back and forth in a sweeping motion, laughing nervously and stuttering as Pomni does her best not to glare daggers at the woman. “No no, that's not what I meant! I just– Don't want you getting hurt!”

The jester felt her mouth quirk into a frown for a moment before returning to a neutral position. “I appreciate that, but it's still my choice to make.”

Panic rises in the ginger's voice as she looks around the room frantically, trying to avoid the brunette's eyes. “Yes, of course, but– what if he corrupts you?” She stammers, finally making eye contact and swallowing nervously. “I mean, I kinda want you to stick around for a long time, and I'd love for us to become even better friends, or more than that I guess.” She continues to ramble and change her hands positions, from hugging herself to rubbing the back of her neck to clasping them together. “I mean, I missed seeing you at the ballroom adventure! I asked Caine to make you Lady Hawethorne on purpose so I could– I mean, so we could all gush over you and bond… But Jax prevented you from getting to experience that! What if he keeps you from making other happy memories, too?”

The knives in her eyes fully become unsheathed as Pomni glared at Ragatha, her chest rising and falling quicker and her mind running with multiple, not-so-nice thoughts. She took a deep breath before she spoke, filtering herself but still letting a bit of venom and irritation slip through her teeth. “Jax and I had a phenomenal time outside the ball, and when I invited him in,” she spat, voice and shoulders shaking. “He was there for me when I started getting anxious over it. A yeah, he's not perfect, nobody in this [DOORBELL] circus is. But at least he encourages me to be myself, and to not take myself so seriously.”

The jester pushes herself off the bed and takes a few steps towards the ragdoll, watching her friend back up a few paces in response, hands up in defense. The gesture made her growl in frustration. “You may not be friends with him, but I am, and I can see that he's trying to be better. I'm not going to give up on him just because he's got some emotional walls and a bad attitude.”

Ragatha's eye squints up, tears starting to well up. Pomni can't tell if they're tears of sadness or anger, but at the moment she doesn't really care. The fire coursing through her is much stronger, and she thinks the doll is lucky all of that aggression is being heavily restrained. She watches her friend fumble with the bedroom door handle, looking back between her and the door. 

“Yeah, well, good luck climbing over the walls he's built around himself,” the ginger sniffles as she finally manages to pop the door open. “Cause they were too tall for even me to climb, and I'd be surprised if he lets you even touch them.”

Pomni watches her leave, breathing hard and fast up until the moment the door closes behind her. Her vision starts getting blurry as she switches from staring at the door to the floor, tears forming in her eyes and her face growing hot with rage. She lets out a frustrated scream as she picks up one of the many alphabet blocks in her room and chunks it as a wall. She watches the object clip through the wall for a minute, making multiple collision noises and twitching around rapidly before despawning and respawning back in the center of her floor again. She groans and kicks it with her foot, this time with only enough force to roll it from one face to another. 

She stands there and pants to catch her breath, feeling all of her limbs suddenly grow heavy, like they had become dead weights. Sluggishly, she climbs back into her bed and flips her silk sheets back on top of her, feeling them float back down on top of her body as she passes out from exhaustion.

Jax had every intention of walking back into his bedroom and ignoring the tight feeling in his chest. He planned on forcing himself not to state at the hand that had squeezed Pomni's too hard, and had then removed her hand from his knee. He was planning to write ‘clownfish’ on a sticky note and adding it to the ever-growing collection of notes and photos in the middle of his board, and least, and then planned to try not to think about the shirt jester for the rest of the day as he found someone else to collect info about for his board. 

But he swears, as soon as he touched his bedroom door handle, his left ear swiveled backwards against his will. And upon hearing Ragatha's muffled voice say “I'm worried about you hanging out with him,” he had decided to creep back across the halfway and press an ear to it. While the doll may have been horrible at eavesdropping, the rabbit was an expert at quiet invasive behaviors.

He heard the brunette's tone change from nervous to serious, and he grinned at the sound of her standing up for herself. It immediately dropped when her heard the redhead says he would ‘corrupt’ her, though, and he was taken back to the day of the shootout, when he loaded an entire clip into her, panting and terrified by what she meant by that. He shook the thought away as he heard the doll say the next sentences.

“I'd love for us to become even better friends, or more than that I guess.”

Glass shattered in the rabbit's chest, cutting what felt like bits of his heart, lungs, and ribs as his breathing stopped for a moment. His whole body went rigid as his pupils kept gradually shrinking, and his mouth seemed to sink into a sea of purple. A slow growing, high pitched ringing noise began in his ears, and Ragatha's voice become more and more muffled from beyond the door.

“... I asked Caine to make you Lady Hawethorne on purpose so I could– I mean, so we…”

“She likes her,” his own internal voice laughed drily, and words continued to echo and repeat in his mind. “She likes her she likes her she likes her she likes her she likes her she. Likes. Her.”

“What if he keeps you from making other happy memories, too?”

That line felt like the final punch to the chest as Jax stumbled backwards away from the door, his ears pointing sharply backwards, his breathing fast and shallow and his vision starting to blur. Hardly thinking, he spun around and bumbled into his room, closing the door behind him with a soft thud and sinking to the floor. He gripped the shag carpet tightly in his fists in an effort to ground himself, and squeezed his eyes shut tightly and he tried to steady his breathing. His mind raced with destructive and violent thoughts, like grabbing Ragatha by the neck and slamming her repeatedly against a wall for even saying what she said, ripping down the doll's entire section on his corkboard, or trying to pull his own ears so heard they'd pop off his head like one of Zooble's parts and he wouldn't be able to hear anything like he'd just heard ever again. 

Instead, the bunny ducked his head down in between his knees and crossed his arms so his elbows rested on top of his kneecaps. He stared down at the green carpet with spotty vision, each breath he took feeling more ragged than the last. The only symptom that subsided was the ringing in his ears, and when they did he could just hear his thoughts more clearly, which hindered him more than it helped him.

“Pomni must like her, too,” a negative voice spat at him. “And then you'll lose her, sooner than you thought you would. Did you really think she would keep being your friend? That she would like you for you? Look at you, pitiful and curled up on the floor. Did you really think you would have a chance with her?”

“No, no, no, no,” he murmured to himself, rocking back and forth and fighting the urge to punch himself in the head. As badly as he wanted the thoughts to go away, he felt like the only way to get through this panic attack of his was to ride the wave.

“She could never love someone like you. That's wishful thinking.”

Jax whined to himself, his breathing starting to slow and his eyelids growing heavy. He didn't bother trying to stand up or even crawl back into his head, instead just flopping down on the ground and curling up into the fetal position, hoping at the very least he could just doze off once the anxiety finished running its course. He waited in the floor for what felt like hours, but was really only a few more minutes, until the pain in his chest turned into a sore aching feeling. He closed his eyes again, hearing his thoughts return to whispers and prepared to fall asleep…

“... Wait a second.” The rabbit sat up so fast the back of his head cracked against his bedroom door, and he hissed in pain as his pupils turned into little swirls for a few seconds. He shook his head rapidly to fix his eyeballs, and then stared at nothing, his heart rate climbing back up, but not nearly as fast as it was beating before. “Did I say love?” 

He chuckled to himself and shook his head again, glancing over at the corkboard littered in photos of her and sticky notes about her. He knew her section was a bit… larger, than the other four members, but that was just because she was in the middle, naturally that would result in her having more space to fill. “There's no way I'm in love with Pomni, come on.”

He scanned the sections and the pictures, feeling like most people had equal amounts. The sticky notes, though… the jester definitely had the others beat there. He goes to look away from it when something catches his eye and he looks back at it.

When you weren't concentrating too much on the details, and instead looked at the bits of brown cork space left in between sections, Pomni's section almost looked like a lopsided heart shape. He scoffed at the image and looked away from it. “I didn't do that on purpose, right… Right?”

His mind started to wander back to the brunette. To the way he planned a presidential adventure just for her. The way she looked in that unbuttoned shirt in the bar. How much he poked and prodded at her, more than the other members. The way she laughed magically when trying to be ‘evil’ in the hallway. How easily she started beating him up at the end of that same adventure. How she looked so stunning in that dress that he had to take a picture of it. How she looked even more breathtaking leaning out the car window and laughing in the wind. How she bickered back with him…

Jax's ears dropped and he put his face into his yellow, gloved hands. “[BEEP]. I've been falling in love with Pomni.”

Chapter Text

Pomni had sworn the day before, Jax had told her he wanted to talk to her later and explain what he meant by ‘reminding him of someone he could once be himself around.’ Granted, she did end up sleeping for about ten hours after her spat with Ragatha, and by the time she had woken up and went to check on him it was nighttime. He didn't answer the door when she quietly knocked on it, either, so she figured she had just missed her window and could talk to him tomorrow.

But now, the jester was stranded at an overstimulating carnival, sitting on a bench by a fountain and picking at the funnel cake on her paper plate. Jax had decided not to go, with the excuse of ‘working on something’ that she totally didn't believe but Caine ate up like the AI he was. Now she was stuck watching batches of tiny gloinks bounce around unattended, tearing into the food carts any time they saw one and knocking over the wooden mannequins that were punching tickets and running the minigames.

Over the course of the adventure, the brunette had only managed to stomach about two windy rollercoasters with Zooble before vomiting black goo into a sidewalk trashcan, and the mirror maze her and Gangle went through right afterwards she had gotten lost in for about thirty minutes with her masked friend squealing so much she felt like if she had ears, they would have been bleeding. The only attraction she had kind of enjoyed was the ferris wheel she rode with Kinger, who simply danced side to side as he sat in the car and commented on how the stars that had started peeking through the sunset sky looked like fireflies. Despite the plethora of distractions around her, her brain kept circling back to the purple rabbit she had started to grow rather fond of.

The clip-clop of heels pulled the jester out of her thoughts, and when she looked up, she saw Ragatha standing over her, two giant plushies in one arm and a fast food drink in her free hand. The redhead tilted her head and smiled. “Is this seat taken?”

Pomni shook her head wordlessly and let her eyes fall onto the fountain just a little ways in front of them. The sound of rushing water was enough to drown out her thoughts, and the lights underneath the water that slowly faded in between different pastel colors also helped soothe her. She felt the left side of the bench creak once as the plushies were put down, and a second time as her friend sat down, but didn't look over at her until she spoke.

“Sorry we didn't get to go on any rides together,” the ragdoll apologized, her tone cheery but with a hint of sorrow. Pomni could see her friend was nervous to meet her gaze as she kept talking. “But Caine said he's ending the day with a firework show, so I figured we could do that as a pair at least!”

The brunette hummed in response, trying to search her friend's face to figure out what was wrong as she broke off a piece of the powdery fried batter and nibbled on it. “Sounds like a good way to end the night,” she mumbled, before extending the plate out to the ginger. “Funnel cake?”

Ragatha laughed nervously and waved both hands at the plate like she was trying to shoot it away. “Oh! No, I'm good, thank you, really.” Her features soften as the plate was pulled away, and she looked up at the night sky with a small sigh of contentment. The jester followed her gaze, staring at the stars and trying to make out any silly constellations Caine had hidden in them. She spotted her own fool's cap painted within them in a matter of seconds. 

“The stars are really beautiful tonight,” the ragdoll hummed from beside her, scooting over a little to her right and closer to Pomni. She pretended not to notice and just nodded in agreement as her friend continued. “I see why you and Jax were just admiring them during that one stargazing adventure.”

“Jax,” Pomni thinks dreamily, her thoughts drifting back to him. “I wish he was here right now. He probably would have stolen a bunch of tickets or found a way to completely break that ‘Test your Might’ game with the bell at the top.” The mental image of the bunny ripping the giant hammer out and chasing her through the park to squash her with it made her giggle aloud, and she only falls silent again when she hears Ragatha gasp quietly from beside her.

“Sorry,” she says through the remainder of her laughter, “I agree, they are really pretty.” When she turns her head to look at the ginger, she isn't expecting to see literal stars in her eyes and her mouth opens in a small “o” shape. A lukewarm wave of awkwardness washes through the jester as she turns away and looks back up at the sky, pointing as she spots the trail of a firework shooting upwards. “Uh hey, look! They're starting!”

The lukewarm awkwardness turns into a too warm kinda quickly for the jester as she sees out of the corner of her eyes the doll hasn't stopped looking at her with those starstruck eyes. She fights off another nervous laugh as her friend scooches even closer to her, the sound of fluffy cotton sliding across the metal bench an unforgettable sound for all the wrong reasons.

The hair on the back of her neck stands up as Ragatha speaks in a low voice Pomni had never heard before, let alone thought the usually soft-spoken, squeaky voiced woman was capable of. “I think you look beautiful tonight, too, Pomni.”

“Oh, thanks,” she sputters, moving to her right an inch to create some distance between them. Alarm bells start ringing in her head as the ragdoll also moves to the right, closing their gap even more than before. Anxiety coats her voice like it's a soft gel pill that feels impossible for her to swallow, even if she had water on hand to help her. She hears the fireworks crackling and fizzing overheard, but her eyes are locked on the ginger who is smiling a little too sweetly at her. “Ragatha, what are you doing?”

The nervous tone in her voice seems to snap the redhead out of whatever trance she's in and she frantically looks away, tucking strands of yarn hair behind her ear. “Oh, sorry! Was that too forward? I can tone it down some.”

Pomni blinks, her right hand gripping the bench armrest like it's going to save her from whatever predicament she's accidentally walked into. She was starting to suspect the predicament was just a sliding glass door she was never meant to figure out how to walk through, because she was at the wrong building in the first place. Confusion floods her voice. “Too… Forward?”

The doll has spun back towards her now, eyes darting around wildly from her face to anywhere else in the carnival. “Or– Or I can be more forward! Whatever you'd like from me.”

The jester's eyes widen and she pulls her legs up to her chest, wrapping her left arm around them. “I want you to tell me what the [SQUELCH] is going on,” she answered flatly.

At this point, the finale of the fireworks had started, popping and hissing and booming and thundering in the sky so loudly she couldn't tell what the redhead had said to her.

“What?”

A louder yell, but still muffled.

“What?”

“I said I think I'm in love with you!”

One of the fireworks fizzes as it sinks back down to Earth, and it's the same feeling that Pomni feels in her chest, like a seed of dread has been planted and is just started to be watered. She's terrified to find out how fast that plant will sprout and consume her from the inside out. Before she can ask any questions, Ragatha launches into a ramble, hands flailing as she talks and her voice rapidly changing octaves throughout.

“Gosh, I thought I was being really obvious about it, with the conversation in the theater and the flower pots and the sleepover closet game and of course that whole ballroom adventure– I was hoping to really woo you there but you never showed, so I had to get a little more creative and just find a time that was right! But it's like no time is right if Jax is involved, so when I heard he wasn't gonna be here I had to really jump at the opportunity and–” 

Ragatha stops and looks at Pomni as the last of the fireworks die out and a simulated soundtrack of distant cheering starts playing. The jester is still frozen in place, eyes wide and not sure what to say. Her friend? Thinking she's in love with her? Hell, she didn't think Ragatha even knew what her favorite color was, how could she know she loved her?

The ragdoll's voice cuts through the uncharacteristically quiet night air now that the festivities were coming to a close. “Ugh, sorry, I'm probably overwhelming you a bunch, just–”

The brunette is frozen as the ginger leans over a presses a quick, fleeting kiss to her right cheek. If her skin was already freakishly white in her clown, cartoon body, all the color would have drained from it in that moment. Instead, she feels that plant of dread finally sprout and wrap about her lungs, suffocating her, and a wave of cold wash over her body. She's barely listening as the woman in front of her stammers and stutters “Come to me when you're ready and we can talk about it!” before running off towards the carnival's exit portal that had spawned just next to the fountain. 

Pomni does not move from her spot on the bench. All she does is wrap her right arm around her body as well and hug herself tightly as her eyes shift back and forth as she zones out. She doesn't even notice when Caine floats in front of her, waving a hand in front of her and gesturing at the portal aggressively. She only snaps out of her trance when the AI physically grabs her hand and drags her through the portal, dropping her off in front of her room and patting her on the head twice before blinking out of existence.

The brunette stares at the portrait on her door, knowing her face is contorted into the same, comically large watery eyes and tiny frown. She can feel the doubt and anxiety still clawing at her, and there's only one thing she knows at the moment: She does not want to be alone right now.

Without giving it a second thought, the jester walks up to the rabbit's door directly across from hers like it's second nature when it is, in fact, not. She had never seen the inside of his room, and from the conversations she had with the others, they had either never seen it either or it had been a long time since they had. She held her knuckles up nervously, not knowing if he was even awake or willing to chat. Letting out a deep, shaky breath, she raps on the door. “Jax? Can I come in?”

Silence. She scans the vacant hallway, making sure she hadn't woken anyone up with the noise. Mentally kicking herself in the shins, she knocks again. “If you're up… I kind of don't want to be alone right now.”

The sound of shuffling feet on carpet come from the other side of the door, and the brunette stumbles backwards onto her tailbone when the door flies open and Jax leans out of it, one hand gripping the top of the doorframe to give him leverage.

“Clownfish!” The rabbit is beaming at her, his eyes crinkling up with his smile. There's a sparkle in them too, she notices as she gazes up at him, but it's a familiar gleam that makes the tension in her shoulders and jaw loosen for just a moment. Before she can protest, he reaches out and grabs her wrist with his free hand and yanks her off her feet and into his room. 

Pomni ends up faceplanting on shaggy carpet, which was the furthest thing she expected his room to have. When she manages to push herself off the floor and back onto her feet, she can barely make out it's green due to the pale orange lighting coating the room in a sunset-like glow. It took her even longer to notice where it was coming from - a touch lamp in the shape of a carrot laying down on its side on the rabbit's bedside table. Confused, her eyes wander around the room, and she realizes there are more of random carrot shaped objects, like an analog clock on the wall and a rug underneath his bed that he likely never even stepped on due to how long his legs are. Her eyes travel up the bedframe, seeing it looks like a light brown picket fence, and it takes her too long to realize the walls looked like an open field dotted with flowers with blue, clear skies on its horizon line. 

“Welcome to my humble abode~” Jax sings from behind her, side stepping her and leaning down on her right side to make eye contact with her. He poked her in the forehead, pushing slightly to the point she thought he might have left a small, circular indent behind. “Thought you forgot about me entirely yesterday after dollface went to hang out with ya. Can't blame you though, she's far nicer company.”

The brunette pushed the bunny's hand away, ignoring the strange flicker in his eyes as she did. Her voice sounded hollow and echoed in her head as she sarcastically replied. “Nicer, sure…” She looked through the giant purple ears and saw a key rack lined with golden keys. Not the weirdest thing she'd seen today. She doesn't notice when he tone shifts into something even duller. “But I think I get what you mean by not being able to be yourself around her.”

She watches as one of the ears flick down and back up again, the slight toothy frown on his face unreadable. His equally deadpanned delivery didn't help her figure out what was going on with him any faster. “So she finally got you too, eh?” He stands back up, one hand on his hip and the other swiping his ears back. They bounce back up just as quickly as he speaks. “And I thought I was the only one here immune to her charm.”

Pomni's gaze flicks to the floor, focusing on her shoes and the way they seem to sink into the strange, grass-like carpet as if it was real grass. She whispers under her breath, not expecting the other to hear it. “I dunno if charm is the right word for it…”

The dramatically loud gasp Jax lets out proves her wrong and he had, in fact, heard her. She still doesn't look up as she sees his bare pawed feet walk in front of her, nor when she hears his bed creak as he sits on it. “Woah-ho-ho! I didn't know you were a gossip, Pom-Pom.” 

The jester barely registers what's happening when she sees yellow gloves shoot out and grab her by the waist. She freezes up in fear and yelps as he swings her onto the bed to sit next to him. He releases his hold on her immediately, but she's still breathing heavily for a few seconds. Her legs, surprisingly, can touch the ground, and she focuses on that for a minute before looking up at the grinning man beside her, who seems to have not noticed her discomfort as he keeps chatting. “Is that why you wanted to come in here? Cause if so, I'm all ears.” The rabbit points at his own ears without breaking eye contact, his smile widening as he did. “More literally than figuratively, but stillllll, lay it on me.”

Her eyes flick in a triangular motion again, from his eyes to his mouth and back up again. The vines of dread seem to squeeze at her heart again and she tears her gaze away and towards the ceiling. Her left hand finds the back of her neck and her right arm wraps across her midsection. “I… Don't really wanna talk about it. I just didn't wanna get stuck with thinking about it all night.”

She hears the bunny let out an annoyed sigh as he leans back on the bed, his legs still bent at a ninety degrees angle and touching the floor. “Suit yourself…” he mutters, disinterested.

The brunette tilted her head back down, and her eyes landed on something she hadn't seen when she first walked in: A large corkboard that took up almost an entire wall, filled with random photographs she couldn't make out in the dark, orange-lit room, as well as multiple colorful sticky notes seemingly all over. She mentally compared it to something a detective or private investigator might have in their office. “Was that always there?” she wonders, trying to remember if she saw it behind the rabbit's body when he kept standing close to her and playfully getting in her face. 

She points at it weakly despite knowing the other isn't looking at her. “What's that about?”

“What's what?” Jax sits back up lazily and she watches him out of the corner of her eye. Her attention turns fully towards him as his pupils shrink and he leaps out of bed to stand in between her and the board, arms outstretched like it would really hide it any better. “Oh! This? This is… Nothing worthwhile,” he tsks, his smile strained and eyes darting wildly. She raises an eyebrow as he walks over to her and nudges her off the bed. He starts walking her to the door with a hand firmly planted on her upper back and pushing a little as he continues rambling nervously. “Some passionately evil scrapbooking, actually. A prankster never reveals his secrets, and you've already seen too much. Might have to kill you now, the old fashioned cement shoes way. You're a clownfish, I think you'd do fine sleeping with other fish.”

She rolls her eyes, whatever upset feelings she had overridden by curiosity. In one quick move, she spins away from the rabbit's hand and ducks under his legs as she struts back over to the corkboard to get a better look at it. She hears him sputter, then whine as she walks away, but he doesn't follow her.

As she gets closer, the jester realizes the photographs are of the circus members, including her. She sees polaroids of Zooble's body in pieces on the floor with their triangle head glaring at the camera, Kinger hanging upside down from a tree looking distraught and a photo of herself covered in colorful powder that she thinks came from a weird photograph adventure Caine concocted for them a while ago. 

Among the mean pictures, she sees some nice ones of everybody, too, like a picture of Gangle and Zooble laying on the floor doodling in sketchbooks or one of Ragatha getting overly excited about a field of wild horses in another adventure. She notices next to these photos there are matching notes, such as “Gangle's drawings are getting better. Think Zoobs has something to do with it” and “Dollface had three horses: Biscuit, Penelope and Dynamite.” The one that caught her attention the most, however, was in the dead center of the board. It was a picture of her laughing, wearing that uncomfortable blue dress with the three-dimension red flowers. She couldn't read the note next to it very well, but she made out the scribbles of “adrenaline junkie” and “looks nice.”

Pomni's glances over her shoulder and Jax, whose nervous demeanor from earlier has seemed to have melted away as he leans against his doorframe, one hand in his pocket and looking at the nails on the other (Well, where the nails would be if he wasn't wearing gloves). Her voice is quiet and careful as she speaks. “Is this… a memory board of everybody?”

“Eh, I guess you could call it that,” the rabbit hummed, his eyes flicking to her for a moment before going back to his hand, changing its position to look at the non-existent nails better. Despite how nonchalantly he did the useless action, the brunette could tell he didn't know why he was doing it, either. “Batty old man said I should try appreciating people while they're around or somethin’, so this was the best way to do it while keeping my hands clean from the actual emotional labor half of everything.”

“But… This is a lot of effort,” she thinks, turning back to take in the whole board again. “And some of these details are so… intimate. That takes a lot of emotional capacity and attention to detail to accomplish.” As her eyes drift over the different familiar faces, they land on one at eye-level she doesn't recognize: A green frog with a red bow tie on, eyes closed and smiling. She can faintly make out Jax's gloved hand behind the frog's head, making bunny ears with two fingers. She tilts her head, before asking loudly, “Who's this?”

“Huh?” The jester hears footsteps behind her, then they stop suddenly. The room falls eerily quiet as she looks at it, trying to remember if she had seen any pictures of the character before, even on the doors in the hallway. When she turns back around to face Jax, she freezes when she sees he's staring at with dead, tiny eyes and a frown that's not angry, but genuine sorrow. That dreadful feeling in her chest swells again, screaming at her that she said something wrong. She stammers out an apology. “Sorry, you don't have to answer that–”

“No,” he cuts her off, his voice soft but firm. Her eyes widen as she looks at him, not hearing that tone from him since his whispered apology in the ballroom. She sees his ears have dropped down, resting on each side of his head. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before offering her a weak smile. He crouches down next to her to meet her face to face, and the brunette sees a gentle, vulnerable look in his eye that almost scares it because of how raw it is. She falls entirely silent as he starts talking.

“His name was Ribbit,” he whispers, thumbing at the photo and sighing as he stares at it. “He was a very, very good friend before he…” His mouth twists into a frown, and Pomni feels a gear click in her head in understanding. When Jax reaches up and puts his other hand on her shoulder, turning her towards the picture, she doesn't flinch. She keeps her mouth shut, absorbing the rare moment of vulnerability from him like a sponge. “When I said you reminded me of someone, that's who I was talking about.”

Pomni searches the frog's features, thinking in a sense she did look kind of similar to the guy. She started to wonder how he used to act, if he bickered with the rabbit the same way she did now, or if he was the reason her friend acted the way he did now, messing with people and pushing them to their limits just for a laugh. As if on cue, she hears him chuckle from beside her as he stands back up and squeezes her shoulder before shaking her arm a little roughly, just enough to jumble her around but not hurt her.

“Hey, at least your skin isn't slimy like his, though!” he snickers, but the lighthearted tone in his voice comes out as more shallow and false to the jester. She turns around to catch the bunny flopping back down on his bed with closed eyes, crossing his arms behind his head and laying down on it normally. She finds it impossible to ignore the way his left ear keeps twitching and the smile on his face is a small, strained line.

Against her better judgement, she walks over and sits on the bed next to him, noticing how her weight barely makes an indent on the mattress. Now that she's paying attention, she notices his blanket is a scratchy wool material and his bedsheets are made of cotton. She isn't sure want to say, but she knows she has to say it carefully. Instead of it being something poetically reassuring or gently probing, she blurts out something that makes her cringe.

“Were you guys… More than friends?”

A quiet, muffled laugh bubbles out of Jax's throat. It grows louder and more hardy as she glances over her shoulder at him. She watches as one of his hands slips to his forehead and his face morphs into a genuine smile, all signs of discomfort melting away.

“That's–” he cackles again, rolling over so his body is facing her, “the dumbest thing I've heard someone ask about him. Hell no, I did not wanna date him.”

As he continues laughing, she feels a small smile creeps onto her own face as she giggles a bit alongside him. She almost missed the next thing out of his mouth. “That is something that differs between you two, at least.”

Pomni gives him a once over with his eyes as her laughter subsides, trying to wrap her head around the gentle look on his face. She thought maybe the orange glow of the lamp on his face was making him look kinder to her than he really was. The expression stays on his face as he playfully shoves her a little, making her almost fall off the bed. His voice is back to normal, cocky, crass, and teasing.

“But we're not here to gush about me,” he scoffs, sitting up and crossing his legs. He puts both hands on his knees and leans close to her face. If it was anyone else, she would had leaned away. “I'm suppose to be making you feel better or something stupid like that.”

She rolls her eyes, the sarcastic tone in his voice enveloping her like a familiar hug. A hug she probably wasn't suppose to like, she thinks, but unfortunately she did. Her eyes travel down to his rabbit feet as she mumbles a reply. “I do feel a lot better really…” She feels the doubt and anxiety from her earlier interaction with Ragatha creeping back in, and it reminds her why she's here. The way she acted made the brunette really uncomfortable, and she wasn't sure there was anyone in the circus she would have reacted positively towards if they had tried that.

“Well…” she thinks to herself, humming aloud as a buffer in their conversation and to give her time to think. “Maybe Jax.”

She stiffens for a moment. “Wait a minute.” Her mind starts running through past moments the two had shared together – him teaching her how to fire the gun, the situation in the closet she couldn't read, the way he took off her shoes for her and danced with her ridiculously later that night, the way they kinda-not-really held hands in her room… Hell, when she spoke to Gangle and Zooble at the sleepover, she came to the conclusion the only way to figure out what crushes felt like was by spending time with the person.

“No,” the jester panics internally as she watches his hands move off of his knees and into the little pit between his legs. “There's a reasonable explanation for this feeling.” She tilts her head up to see he's staring at her, a lazy, sleazy smile on his face. “Maybe he can help me figure it out it's not a crush.”

“... Can I ask you a dumb question, actually?”

“Fire away,” he purrs, and she sees one of his hands leave his lap to instead support his chin as he leans on it. Her own hands find the buttons on her fool's costume and start fumbling with them mindlessly. She can't find the courage to meet the rabbit's eyes, looking at any other part of his purple cartoon body instead as she asks her question. “Do you know… how to tell you're in love with someone?”

Above his head, both ears tremble before shooting straight up in the air. She blinks at them, confused, seeing as his facial expression and body language hadn't changed. He chuckles as he answers.

“This may come as a surprise to you, but I was not the playboy I oh-so-look like,” he coos, eyes crinkling but pupils still large. “I don't date much. Why do you wanna know?”

She feels a heat grow in the pit of her stomach and wash over her arms and legs in one quick wave. She hopes she isn't stuttering as much as she thinks she is. “I'm… not quite sure I know what love feels like, actually. And I want to make sure that's what I'm feeling before I do anything about it, cause…” she swallows thickly as she finally locks eyes with the bunny. “Well, I kinda don't wanna [AIRPLANE CALL CHIME] with anyone's feelings.”

He snickers and rolls his eyes, taking his hand off his chin and waving her away with it. “Listennn, you're asking the D1 emotion wrecking champion for advice on this. That's your first mistake, Pom-Pom.”

For a moment, Pomni's anxiety disappears as she gives Jax an unamused look. It immediately flourishes again when he rolls his shoulders and looks at her with gleaming eyes and a small, genuine smile. His voice is low and unwavering as she speaks. 

“For the sake of your argument…” he hums, and she watches his pupils shrink down more into squares, that in-between state of joking and serious she had become familiar with identifying. “I have an idea of what it feels like when I look at them, yeah.”

She draws in a sharp breath, her mind playing through more of their past scenarios together, like the way he had looked flustered in the closet or the gentle looks and words uttered in the ballroom. She had to be overthinking this – Hell, he was still acting kinda violently towards her. He literally pulled her flat on her face into her room minutes ago. She shakes her head rapidly, thinking there's only one way to solve her dilemma without using any unnecessary words.

“Give me a kiss on the cheek.”

Jax laughs sharply in the way that makes his face turn two-dimensional and splits his mouth open. The jester watches him in the orange light as he continues to snicker and wipe a tear from his eyes, her face grows hotter by the second. 

“Good one, Pomni,” he wheezed, straightening his back and leaning back on his hands, his eyes on the ceiling. She watches his pupils slide down onto her face, and then the way his smile curves into a quick frown. Whatever playful glint was in his eyes before has dissolved, and Pomni can feel a lump forming in her throat as he mutters with a hint of concern, “Wait, are you being serious?”

She purses her lips, fighting the urge to start chewing on the inside of her cheeks. The fumbling with her buttons turns into gripping her poofy jester pants tightly in her palms.

Jax's eyes flick up and down, and the brunette watches him shake his head rapidly and a smirk spreads back across his face. “Geez, I know I'm hot, but c'mon…” He scoots a little closer to her, and she notices that instead of the bad anxious feeling that she felt with Ragatha, she feels a thrilling kind of anxiety when he gets closer. “Something tells me it ain't that simple, though. Why you want me to do it?”

“Cause—” she huffs, rolling her eyes and forcing herself not to look into his eyes. She instead chooses to fixate on a randomly painted cloud of his wall, ignoring how she can still see the side of his purple face and one ear in her peripheral. “I don't know. I thought it would help me figure out what I'm dealing with.”

For a moment the bunny doesn't move, which she's both grateful for and stressing over. Then, he leans over so that she's forced to look at him. The teasing tone is still in his voice as he speaks. “Can I pull an Uno-reverse on you before I do?”

The brunette blinks. “What?”

His eyes and smile are wide. Too wide. Too unmoving. She can tell there's a mask back on, but it's not the ‘funny’ mask she was used to. His voice is cold as he replies, with a hint of warm undertones underneath.

“If I kiss you on the cheek right now, are we still gonna be friends afterwards?”

The words hit Pomni like a truck, so much so that she physically recoils away from him on the bed. Her heart jumps to her throat when his smile falls into a flat line and he starts crawling towards her to make up the lost distance. She can't tell what emotion is in his eyes, they're glassy and wide and in her face, and she doesn't know what she's suppose to say. Does he want her to say no and push him away this time? Is he expecting her to be honest? Is this his way of saying he doesn't want to be friends anymore? Is he saying he wants to be more than friends afterwards?

Her running thoughts come screeching to a halt as Jax leans in closer, pupils shrinking for a moment back into squares. She swears she sees his eyes flick down to her mouth and back up again, before he turns his head to the side and presses a gentle, sweet, warm kiss on her left painted-on blush mark. It feels like the fireworks that were going off in the sky an hour ago are now going off in her chest, and another wave of heat rushes to her face. The vines of anxiety that Ragatha had made grow around the jester's heart, lungs and ribs seem to rot away, replaced with batches of small, colorful butterflies that tickle her insides in a pleasant way.

She finally understands Zooble's electricity metaphor. And the answer she was seeking is painted out for her in a series of orange, yellow, pink and purple hues. A very specific purple hue, really.

He holds it there for what feels like minutes, but is really only a couple seconds. She hears a quiet ‘mwah’ as he pulls back away, crossing his arms and tilting his head so far left his ears flop over on top of each other. She's speechless, terrified of what will come out of his mouth and if he'll want nothing to do with her after this.

Her remaining anxiety melts away as he speaks, his voice like honey added to tea. “So what's the verdict, clownfish?”

The nickname gives her a bit of peace of mind, and she exhales deeply, which the rabbit notices and seems to do as well. She isn't completely sure if he's joking or being patronizing, so she mumbles, “Thank you. That gives me a lot of data to work with.”

The smile returns to his face and his eyes sparkle in the way she had grown accustomed to as he throws his hands up in the air dramatically. “Whatttt, so you're not gonna tell me the results?” He chuckles, and it's light and breaks the cloudy tension of the room slightly. “What's the point in participating in your little experiment if I'm not gonna get to know the results?”

Pomni also smiles, relief flowing through her despite the jitters still trembling beneath the surface. “What's that saying? Science takes time or something?” She turns away from him and shifts her legs off the bed, her eyes landing on the corkboard. It's only now she realizes just how many of the pictures are of her. “You'll get an answer just… Later.”

“Later,” Jax echoes, scooting up next to her and letting his feet touch the ground as well. Once again, he purposefully moves his left knee so it touches the jester's right one. “Can't believe you'd put your bestest friend ever in a place of such suspense.”

“There it is,” she muses, the smile on her face growing bigger as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “The proof he's not mad at me. The proof that he still, for some reason, likes me.” Her eyes flittered over the sunset-coated room, drinking in the details of it like she'll be quizzed on it later. Knowing Jax, that's definitely something he'd do. She practically sings as she speaks. “What can I say? I live for the thrill of things.”

The rabbit slings an arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer. The flutters in her stomach are drowned out by her own giggling and he gives her a noogie on top of her fool's cap, the bells jingling violently as he does. “That you do, Pom-Pom,” he sighs. “That you do.”

The two continue to joke and chat with each other well into the night, a light feeling in their chests and internal screams of joy echoing in their own heads.

Chapter Text

Jabs and quips seemed to flow out of Jax's mouth easier the next few days. He wasn't sure how that was possible, considering the constant state of disarray his brain was in. It was like looking into one of those plastic tubs of random LEGO bricks, trying to piece together anything coherent to make and failing miserably. It didn't help that most of the rabbit's metaphorical bricks were red and blue, either. He couldn't even look at Pomni without feeling his ears twitch and shoot straight up in the air, or occasionally curl into themselves.

“Her little smooch request should have been the nail in the coffin to this stupid ‘I'm falling in love with her’ pipedream,” he grumbles internally, arms crossed and right foot tapping as he watches Caine zips around overhead in the main tent, rambling on about some fantastic, twelve-hour long adventure he had cooked up for them. His eyes flicker over unconsciously to Pomni, who's standing on the far left side of the room and looking very, very lost. The jester notices him and smiles, giving him a small wave, which he returns as his face grows hot and eyes dart around for a second before locking back onto the flying ringmaster. “So why do I feel… fuzzy inside when she looks at me?”

He doesn't move when the portal to the adventure opens up under him and sucks the whole group downwards. He spawns in the middle of a forest holding the same pose, dressed in the same outfit from his poacher’s paradise adventure, but instead of the hat and gun he has two objects strapped to his back: A fishing rod, and a camping backpack with a rolled up sleeping bag on top of it. 

Besides him, Gangle whines and stands up unceremoniously, her comedy mask nowhere to be seen and tears already forming on the tragedy mask she was wearing. She's wearing a blue denim jacket with matching jorts, and he notices she's also holding a fishing rod weakly in her ribbon arms. 

“Hey, my old duo partner is back!” the bunny coos, picking her up by her arm ribbons like she's Simba from The Lion King and walking towards a river he spotted on the edge of the woodline. “C'mon, we're clearly on fishing duty.”

“Wh– Wait a minute!” the masked woman squeals, but Jax ignores her and keeps up his pace. He hardly spares a glance as he passes by the other four circus members, who are standing around a bunch of unassembled camping supplies in a grassless clearing. “You guys figure out how to put all that together, I guess,” he calls over his shoulder, his eyes mainly bouncing between Pomni's confused expression and Zooble's narrowed eyes. “Crybaby and I are gonna go catch dinner.”

Ragatha's voice is tight and full of stutters. “But– It's only 5 p.m! There's still a few hours before it gets dark…”

“All the more reason to start early,” he says, unbothered, and he carries the bundle of ribbons through the brush and to the water. She squeaks in surprise as the bunny plops her down on the muddy riverbank next to some cattails and switchgrass, before making his way over to a small rock and sitting on it. He stares out at the water for a moment, noticing it stretches across about ten feet wide and seems to perfectly cut through the trees in a straight line, not winding in the slightest. Looking in the center of the clear water, he can see fish that fade in and out of existence in front of his eyes, giving the illusion of ‘living’ in the water and being ‘catchable’. He also notes it's not that deep – He could stand in the deepest part of the water and it would only come up to his chest midway. The only reason he wasn't doing that was because of how fast the water was flowing, and how he knew one stray branch could knock him flat on his [CATS FIGHTING] and send him downstream in a matter of seconds.

Jax shudders a little at the thought, frowning, and casts his line out into the water. He watches as the red and white bobber floats to the surface. Caine didn't give them any bait or anything, so he was hoping some miraculous video-game logic would kick in and let them catch stuff. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gangle shakily do the same, and then she props her rod up on a smaller rock before sitting back down and pulling out her sketchbook. She's still trembling as she pulls out a pencil and starts to doodle, and it makes the rabbit roll his eyes.

“C'monnnn, lighten up, I'm not gonna drown you or anything,” he huffs, turning to look at her. The ribbon-made girl jumps at his voice and clutches her book to her chest, before relaxing slightly and resuming her sketching. He gives her a once over with his eyes and loosens his grip on his rod, lowering it slightly onto one of his legs. With his right hand, he gestures vaguely at her propped up rod. “Seems like you've done this before or something.”

Gangle hums flatly, and it's barely heard over the sounds of running water and croaking frogs. “My dad used to take me fishing a lot when I was younger,” she mumbles, pulling her sketchbook to her chest again for a moment as more teardrops well up in her black eyes. “I never really caught anything when we did, but… it was nice, being in nature and all.”

The bunny internally curses himself for not bringing his sticky notes on this adventure. He then curses himself for having that as his first thought. Had he really gone that soft? Regardless, he files the information away for later and turns back to the river, watching it trickle and the fish phase in and out. The silence between them thickens like a fog, and the sounds of her pen scribbling on the page seem to grow louder than the nature sounds around them. It drives Jax crazy for a moment.

“What are you working on?” he asks, his voice coming out more genuine than he intended it to. When the masked woman looks up at him in surprise, he quickly clears his throat and throws a blanket of sarcasm over his next words. “Lemme guess, some weird romantic art between the circus members?” A dry laugh escapes his throat as he sees her instinctively trying to cover the pages with her ribbon hands. “I bet it's some yuri [AMBER ALERT NOISE] between rags and clownfish, no?”

Gangle's voice is meek when she speaks. “Pomni… actually asked me not to draw them together like that.” The rabbit's purple ears swivel towards her and he almost drops his rod as she continues speaking. “She said she doesn't like Ragatha like that at all, but she gave me free reign to draw her with… other people or NPCs.”

Both joy and disgust rush through him in one fell swoop, cheering because she admitted to not liking Ragatha but fuming at the thought of her being drawn with that gummy lizard NPC guy he never bothered learning the name of. He decides to only verbal his first thought. “Waitwaitwait, she said not dollface but anybody else is fine? Why?”

The ribbon lady shrugs, wiping one of her tears away. “I dunno.. something about a confession gone wrong?” she sniffles, looking back down at her sketchbook permanently. “She just said that seeing art of her and Ragatha makes her uncomfortable, because she only sees her as a friend.”

At that moment, Jax felt his rod tug a little in his hands. He quickly snaps his eyes to the water and starts winding up the line. It's not a very strong fish, he can tell, but what comes soaring out of the river dramatically and skids on the dirt towards his feet still surprises him.

It's a clownfish.

He feels his right eye twitch. Here he was, talking about and thinking about and being reminded of the girl he oh-so-definitely-did-NOT have a crush on. For a moment, he's back in his own room, pressing a kiss to her cheek, feeling her breathing hitch as he does and her skin grow hot under his mouth. He's back to desperately cracking lame, poorly disguised jokes in an attempt to get her to tell him what the everloving [BOING] that ask of hers was even about while he's sweating bullets internally.

Before he can ask Gangle another question, he watches as her rod starts getting dragged off the rock, skidding and scuffing its way towards the water. She whines in surprise and scrambles over, wrapping her ribbon arms around it and trying to pull her catch up as the end of the rod is bent down into almost an upside down “U” shape. Jax's eyes widen and pupils shrink and she starts to lose her balance and slowly gets dragged into the river as well, the water soaking into her ribbon feet and absorbing upward through the rest of her body.

His body reacts faster than his mind does as he tosses his own rod to the side and sprints over to Gangle. His palms wrap around the same ribbon strand on her upper back as he pulls her back up and away from the water. She cries out in surprise for a moment, then starts desperately winding the string up. The rabbit watches it anxiously, worried that the string – or she – might snap into pieces and get lost downstream.

“Keep pulling, I've got you!” Jax shouts over the rushing water, slowly taking steps backwards and pulling the masked woman with him. She's still groaning and whining as she hauls the rod above her head, struggling to pull whatever insanely large fish she had gotten out of the water. Suddenly, the pressure is relieved as a massive catfish, triple their size, comes flying out of the water and hurling towards them on the shore. The bunny doesn't hesitate as he tackles Gangle, and they land with a hard thud on the muddy ground a few feet away as the catfish crashes down right where they were just standing.

Panting, Jax instantly stands up and stumbles away from her, staring at the fish that's flopping around in place with wide eyes. He starts to laugh through heavy breaths, hoping it will calm the fear that had briefly flared up within him. 

“Atta girl, Gangle! We're feasting tonight for sure,” he jokes, trying to ignore the way he's trembling as she looks between the catfish and him with large, not-tearful eyes. He tears his gaze away from the masked lady and mentally starts building his emotional wall back up, annoyed that it had crumbled for just a moment. “Welp, looks like we're done fishing so I'm gonna go see whatever the rest of them are up to. I'm sure you can carry that by yourself.”

The rabbit spins on his heels and starts walking back towards the woods, ignoring Gangle's protesting from the mud. He whistles as he goes, trying to shake off the remainder of his nerves. Unfortunately, he isn't able to get very far physically or emotionally, because as soon as he passes the first tree, Zooble steps out from seemingly nowhere and causes him to jump backwards with a very-manly yell.

“Jesus! When did you start sneaking up on people, huh?” He snaps, straightening his posture and dusting off his collared shirt. His eyes lock onto the zolo block’s legs, one which looks like a bird's talon and another that's an umbrella handle. “What're you even doing out here?”

“Getting firewood,” they deadpan, their bird foot tapping on the ground impatiently. He feels another wave of embarrassment wash over him as they ask, “Do you have a wild hair up your [DOG BARK] or something?”

He blinks up at them, seeing their eyes narrowed in an angry way but not positive if that's what they're feeling. The birds chirping loudly above him also convince him he misheard what was said. “What are you talking about?”

“You just saved Gangle from being washed away in a river,” they say matter of factly, their regular hand going on their hip and their lobster claw hand pointing at him. “Usually, you would have pushed her in and turned a blind eye as she floated away.”

“[PIG SQUEALING], someone did see that,” he curses mentally, hoping his anxiety isn't obvious on his face. In the event that it is, he looks straight up in the air, seeing the sky turning orange through the tree canopy. “Call it a survival mindset,” he sighs sarcastically. Without looking away from the sky, he thumbs over his shoulder in the ribbon girl's general direction. “Besidesss, if she fell in, we wouldn't have that gorgeous dinner flopping around right now. If anything, I did it for the food over her.”

“Does that hair happen to be named ‘Pomni’?”

Jax freezes in place, his ears being overwhelmed with the sound of birds and the insects that are stirring to life now that it is growing darker out. Maybe he had misheard them say that, too. But in case he didn't, the bunny decides to reply carefully.

“That,” he says neutrally, his smile and eyes equally wide as he tilts his head back down to stare at the zolo block. Their pink, triangle head stands out against the green landscape surrounding them all. “Is a ridiculous name for a hair.”

Zooble rolls their eyes at him and crosses their arms. A strange, hostile tone has bled into their voice as they speak. “Yeah, well, you’ve been acting way too nice lately and being far more… chatty, since getting back on her good side.” His smile widens a little as they scoff and shoot him a disgusted look. “She's clearly infested your brain.”

He purposefully ignores the second sentence, but his narrowing pupils give him away. “Awww, you think I’m being swayed by the opinion of a literal clown?” he coos overdramatically, both hands resting on his chest and one eye closing as he leans forward towards the zolo block. “How sweet.”

“I do,” they bite back, taking a wobbly step towards the rabbit that makes him stand back up straight. “I’ve seen the way you look at her when you think nobody’s watching. She told me about the look you gave her in the closet, too.”

A small, fiery pit of rage starts to grow in Jax's stomach as they keep talking. “At first, I was terrified you were purposefully toying with her feelings for fun.” Zooble's next words come out a little softer, quickly extinguishing the fire that was growing within the rabbit. “But after seeing what just happened… Maybe you have had a weird change of heart recently cause of Pomni.”

“I have not,” he lies straight through his teeth, feeling the hackles on the back of his neck raise. His arms flail dramatically as he sputters, “You just can't see the greater motive here.”

“Maybe there is one,” they interrupt, uncrossing their arms and hobbling past Jax towards the river. He turns to watch them as they go. “You know I'm not gonna trust you for [DOLPHIN CRY] anyway. I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt for now…” They stop for a second and glance over their shoulder at him, and he tries not to squirm as they glare daggers at him. “But between you and me – which probably isn’t going to stay between us, knowing you – she definitely wants your underbaked, raisin-filled cookie for some godforsaken reason. Just don't poison her, I guess.”

The reference completely flies over his head, but he doesn't want to admit that to the zolo block that just read him to filth. Instead, he just dramatically lifts one leg and spins around to follow the trail they were on originally. “Alright, alright, jeez. Go help your little girlfriend with carrying that fish or something, I'll take over firewood duty.” As he walks away leisurely, he can't help but reflect on what they told him about the jester that was still plaguing his thoughts.

“She doesn't like Ragatha like that… and Zooble thinks she likes me instead?” The rabbit chews on his bottom lip as he stares down and watches every step he takes on the gravel path. “She can't like me though, that's crazy. Just like how I don't like her like that. Yep. Nope. Nada.”

He stops in his tracks as the usually-cruel voice in his head hisses, at full volume, but with a hint of a teasing tone, “Liar.”

Out of all the people Pomni was hoping to get stuck with on this adventure, Ragatha was the last person she had wanted at the moment. They hadn’t really spoken since the peck in the park, mainly because the jester was trying to figure out the right way to word it. She still wanted to be friends with the woman, and she didn’t want to hurt her feelings in the process of letting her down. Currently, she was wordlessly helping her pitch a third tent on the campsite while Kinger bunkered down in the one he had already assembled. The ginger was hammering down the corner stakes with a rubber mallet, muttering under her breath and fighting with the strange Girl Scout uniform that Caine had her wearing on this adventure, skirt, sash, hat and all. Pomni kept glancing between her and the front tent pole she was snapping together on the dirt floor. She wasn’t very happy with her outfit, either – the khaki shorts she was in felt like they rode up a little too much on her thighs, the white t-shirt kept exposing her midsection every time she raised her arms, and the red flannel button-up she had now wrapped out her waist felt scratchy on her skin. It didn’t help that Caine had generated some fake, swampy heat for the adventure, because even if they couldn’t physically sweat, she felt like the clothing was sticking to her skin.

The brunette had been listening to the sound of buzzing and chirping insects before Ragatha’s voice cut through the air. “Um, Pomni? Can I have that tent pole so we can start putting it up?”

“Huh?” Her head shoots up to look at the ragdoll. She tries to ignore the way her friend’s yarny lip quivered as she held the pole out to her. “Oh yeah. Sorry.”

The jester starts fidgeting with the loosely hanging sleeves and cuffs on her flannel as she watches the doll slip the tent pole in the front of the tent and grabs the string on top of it. Her fingers clench in the rough material as she watches her slowly walk backwards, stretching the string as far as it’ll go, and kneels down to stake it into the ground. She swallows thickly before speaking, her voice quivering as she does. “Can we… talk about what happened?’

Ragatha misses where she was aiming with the hammer, smacking down on one of her cotton hands. The redhead yelps in surprise and stands up, shaking her hand aggressively as the tent immediately collapses backwards flat on the ground. Pomni winces as the events unfold, muttering a quiet yet sincere, “I’m sorry.” 

The doll spins around, a wobbly smile and wild eye looking at the other. “Oh, yeah! Yeah. Please, go ahead.” She drops the mallet on the ground and looks down, tucking a strand of yarn hair behind her ear and clearing her throat. “I… think I know what you’re going to say, but… I want you to be able to say it yourself, too.”

The brunette feels something uneasy swim in her stomach, her gaze flicking between her friend and the other, unassembled tent pole on the ground. Needing to do something with her hands, she picks up the pieces and starts trying to click them together as she stumbles over her own, poorly rehearsed speech. “Well… I had no idea you felt that way about me until that night in the park, and I didn’t have a lot of time to process what was happening and what I was feeling.” She almost pinches herself with one of the metal ferrules and flinches before continuing. “Or, I guess… What I thought I was supposed to be feeling.”

Pomni doesn’t look up as the ragdoll asks shakily, “What do you mean?” Instead, she sighs and stands up, using the tent pole as a walking stick as she walks to the back side of the tent and slips it in through its narrow fabric opening. The sounds of insects and frogs have reached her non-existent ears again as she explains. “I… never had time for romance or crushes in the real world. But now I have all the time in the world to process them and feel those feelings, and it’s been… Weird. Trying to figure that out.”

Ragatha’s back is towards the jester, and she can see the ginger is looking up at the sky. The sun had started to set, and the orange hues were bouncing off the left side of her fabric body, and the brunette feels wrong for associating the same orange reflection with that of a purple rabbit in his own outdoorsy bedroom. She feels even dirtier thinking about how the orange glows on him made her heart flutter while with the ragdoll it just made her feel solemn. Her friend’s voice is gentle, but firm and thick with sorrow as she speaks, not moving from her spot.

“But you don’t feel those feelings towards me, do you?”

Pomni feels the nervous swimming in her stomach grow and the equivalent of a heavy boulder falls down and splashes in the middle of her internal pond. She thinks the boulder has a negative name, but she can't think of it to save the life of her at the moment. Sighing deeply, she grabs the back tent string and stretches it down to the ground. She slips a small metal stake around the string’s loop and sticks it into the sandy ground, before standing up and stepping on it to drive it in the ground and secure it. When she’s back upright, she sees her friend has turned slightly to look at her, a sad, tired look in her one eye. It makes the boulder in her grow heavier as she answers.

“No… I’m sorry,” her voice breaks as she speaks. “I mean, you're a great friend, and I still want to hang out in the circus or for adventures. There’s just… someone else, I feel that way towards.”

“It’s Jax, isn’t it?”

A small wave of cold dread washes over the brunette as she stares at the ginger, who looks like she’s on the verge of crying. The chill is quickly replaced by the humid air around them, and not waiting to stand there like a child who got caught sneaking cookies at midnight, she starts walking around the right side of the tent, pulling strings taut and driving stakes into the ground haphazardly with her shoes and body weight. “... Maybe.”

Ragatha scoffs, finally moving from her spot to pick up her mallet and properly fix the tent entrance that had toppled over. The air is quiet and tense for a minute as the women work, pulling the strings as tightly as they could and making the tent as secure and rigid as possible. When the doll finishes hammering her last stake on the left side, she stands up, hands on her hips and a sigh escaping her lips. Pomni grows antsy as she turns to face her, smiling weakly and laughing even weaker.

“I don’t know what you see in him,” the redhead sighs, her tone walking a tightrope between disappointed and teasing. It fully tips to one side when she adds in a much warmer tone, “But he seems to be really good at making you laugh, and making you come out of your shell. Gosh, you were so shy and panicky when you got here!”

The jester drops shoulders she didn’t even know were tense. “Well, can you blame me?” she chuckles, walking around the tent side to stand relatively in front of her friend, but keeping a respectable distance. “But… yeah. I don’t know why he looks out for me, but he does.”

“You’re not the only one,” a gruff voice calls from the woodline. The two girls turn to see Zooble, dragging something slimy and scaling behind them. Pomni blinks at it, confused, and her nose scrunches up as the stench of the object hits her. “Is that… a gigantic fish?” 

Gangle’s whines of effort echo from slightly further back in the woods, and soon the ribbon girl comes into view, hoisting the head of what Pomni now sees is a catfish. She stares at it in visible confusion as Ragatha pipes up from beside her.

“Wow, that’s an incredible catch, great job!” the ragdoll purrs, quickly moving the pile of firewood in the middle of the campsite so that they can set the fish down. The two do, dropping it unceremoniously with a horrible squishing sound that makes everyone cringe a little. The redhead claps a few times, bouncing up and down in excitement, before suddenly stopping both and whipping around with a wide eye towards Zooble. “Wait, wasn’t Jax fishing with her? Where is he?”

“He actually saved Gangle from drowning while catching this thing,” the zolo block hums, leaning against the catfish that was almost as tall as them and thumbing back towards the direction of the woods. “But he got embarrassed when his heroic deed was seen and went off to finish getting firewood.” They turn their triangle head towards the brunette, eyes as soft as their voice. “He’s been getting nicer, surprisingly… And I think we, in a way, owe it to you.” 

Pomni feels the heat of embarrassment rush to her face, and her eyes dart left and right nervously before her posture slumps and she points at herself. “Me? What, why?”

Zooble shrugs, limping over towards the firewood with their different sized legs. Their voice carries on the wind as they start gathering the larger sticks and logs with their regular hand. “He tries to mask it, but he looks at you… Differently, than us.”

The jester laughs nervously, looking between the other two women who just give her weak smiles. She sputters as she speaks. “I mean, he clearly cares a little bit about what I want, but he still drags me around or barges in just because…”

“He wants to do things with you just because?” Gangle gasps, black eyes narrow and her mouth curving up like a cat’s. “He dragged me along usually to toy with me. With you it looks… different.”

The brunette rolls her eyes, turning her gaze back to Zooble, who has put the logs into a circle of rocks and has started lighting a match. “‘Different’ doesn’t really answer anything,” she mutters. “So we’re friendly with each other, so what?”

Ragatha snickers from beside her, then mutters quietly, “Well you did just admit to me you see him as more than a friend…”

“What!” The ribbon lady squeaks in surprise, for some reason clamoring over the fish to join them instead of walking around normally. Pomni watches in surprise as her ribbons, strangely, seem to not pick up any of the scales or slime. “You have a crush on Jax? Why didn’t you say anything!”

The jester laughs nervously, trying to shuffle backwards from the two girls looking at her a little too expectantly. The sky had started growing darker, and what was once a hot summer's day had turned into a chilly autumn night in a matter of minutes. She tore her gaze away from them and started fumbling with the flannel around her waist, untying the sleeves.”Well, I didn’t really know until recently…”

“Well then,” the zolo block calls out from the fireplace. They had managed to get a small fire started, just barely crackling underneath the lowest logs. They were fanning at it desperately with their lobster claw. “Do I have some news for you… I’m pretty sure he fancies you, too.”

Pomni swears she feels her heart rise to her throat and she flushes, suddenly not cold anymore despite not yet putting the flannel on. She drapes it over her shoulders lazily as she squeaks, “He what now?”

The three other characters just laugh, walking over towards the fire to help fan it. The brunette finishes slipping her flannel over both arms as she watches Ragatha hand Gangle her sash to fan with. The ginger takes off her beret and waves it at the flames lazily. The campfire starts crackling and sizzling as the flames gradually grow larger, taking over the top, untouched logs like vines to a tree. She slowly walks over to join them as the three sit on the logs that surround the fire.

“So you guys aren’t mad at me for liking him?” she asks warily as she slides next to the ragdoll, sharing the log. Her eyes dart around to all of them as they all long between each other, their faces cascading between nervousness, honesty, concern and general disdain but still clearly trying to be nice about it. Ragatha is the only one to speak, her mouth twisted into a strange squiggle as she puts a comforting hand on the jester’s shoulder. “Of course not. You can't really control who you fall for.” Pomni watches a pained smile cross her friend’s face as she feels her shoulder get squeezed. “I would know... But just… be careful, since it's him of all people.” 

Zooble chimes in from across the fire, somehow already roasting pieces of catfish meat. “And if he breaks your heart, we’ll break him. No questions asked.” 

To this, the brunette just rolls her eyes and leans back on both hands, all boulders and fish of anxiety in her stomach long gone, replaced by warm kindling not dissimilar to what was keeping the campfire in front of them going. Her voice takes on a sing-songy quality as she tilts her head up to the sky, watching the first star appear. “Not if I break him first~!”

Everyone laughs at that as they all begin to roast their fish and make small talk on the chilly, quiet night, only joined by the sounds of bugs and frogs.

Chapter Text

Jax’s mind continues to run as he, on the contrary, leisurely strolled through the forest, the gravelly trail starting to get on his last nerves. The rabbit kept mindlessly picking up twigs and branches whenever they spawned in front of him, fighting the overwhelming urge to drop all the wood and just [GONG RINGING] off into the depths of nature. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was a little shaken up by the look of amazement Gangle had given him after he saved her, as well as the way Zooble called him out for caring about the other circus members, including a specific jester whose fools cap bells and sweet little giggle seemed to ring in his mind on loop.

“I didn’t think anybody noticed my change in attitude, let alone appreciated it,” he thinks as he snaps a twig between two fingers. The sky had grown from orange to a deep purple, and he noticed fireflies flickering on the trail, seemingly trying to point him back towards the campsite. “Am I going too soft? Do I need to maybe drown Gangle in the river now to get my brownie points taken back?”

“Perhaps,” a familiar voice mutters in the back of his mind. “It’s because you don’t need me anymore.”

He snickers aloud after thinking the thought, shaking his head. His self-deprecating thoughts existed before he entered the circus – they just got louder after he entered. “I've never ‘needed’ you, you've just kinda stuck around,” he thinks bitterly in response as he shifts his collection of limbs and sticks to one arm. “Both to torment and isolate me, I guess.”

“But I’m less frequent,” the voice hisses back. “And your mask is failing you more often nowadays. It's breaking more easily, and everybody is starting to see through you.”

“Then maybe I just need to sharpen my skills again!” The bunny growls as he ponders how to sharpen said skills, before tripping over a random root on the path. He stumbles forward, quickly recovering to prevent himself from falling flat on his face, but a few sticks still clatter to the ground. With an annoyed roll of his eyes, he crouches down to sweep them back up in his arms. A few feet ahead, he can see the fireflies floating around two specific bushes, and he can see yellowish-orange light flickering on the other side of them. The faint sound of laughter and chatter reaches his ears, and he flattens them to the back of his head in response, mouth twisting into a deeper frown.

“No,” it replies, raspy but anything but harsh. “Because no matter what, she will see through you. And you care about her too much to put the mask back on when she gets hurt by you.”

He grumbles under his breath as he stumbles back to his feet with all the firewood and stomps towards the bushes, scaring the fireflies away. He breaks through the edge of the treeline, spotting a small, roaring campfire surrounded by a few logs to sit on. Additionally, the catfish has been reduced to a skeleton, but laid out on a nearby picnic table are skewers of meat just waiting to be grilled. He only sees three of the circus members surrounding the fire – Kinger, who’s rambling on about some strange cooking story involving couscous, Ragatha, who is quietly roasting a marshmallow, and Pomni, who is staring up at the stars twinkling into view overhead. The rabbit almost drops the sticks in his hands at the sight of her – he never took the time earlier to process the flannel shirt and shorts she was donning.

“See?” the voice in his head purrs, bordering mockery and praise. “You care too much… Good. I missed that about you.”

Jax tunes out the voice and plasters his usual smile on his face, but it feels fragile, like one wrong sentence would cause his entire persona to burn to a crisp in the campfire before them. He struts up to the three and drops the wood on the ground carelessly, not caring as they bounced and rolled about. His voice drips with sarcasm as he announces himself, despite the fact the three of them had turned to look at him.

“I'm backkk, did ya miss me?” The rabbit immediately flops down onto the sandy ground, ignoring the open, available logs he could rest on instead. He sticks his hands straight out towards the fire, wiggling his fingers at it and hoping his body saps up the heat sooner rather than later. “Truly, I know you all were lost without me, but I'm sure Zoobs ran the place like a military base while I was gone.”

On his left, Pomni speaks up, her voice both light and sarcastic as it blends with the crackling fire. “You were dearly missed, Jax, don't you worry about that.”

Just like that, he hears his mask crack slightly. “Why did she say it like that? So… endearingly?” He desperately holds it together as he turns to look at the jester, knowing there was a fifty-fifty chance his mask would entirely break when he does. She's smiling sweetly at him, eyes glimmering playfully but also with a hint of… hope? The bunny isn't sure. He sees embers from the fire float up in front of her and reflect in her eyes before burning out, complimenting the glow that was obvious on her face.

The mask shatters and falls away, and it doesn't scare the rabbit. He feels his smile spread further across his face, but it's softer around the edges and reaches his eyes in a way that doesn't feel forced. His voice feels foreign coming out of his throat, taking on an affectionate tone. “You were gonna miss me regardless, that doesn't count.”

The brunette's eyes flicker with something as she leans forward, resting her chin in her hand and her elbow on her knee. “That's a bold assumption.”

He shrugs, then mimics her exact pose himself, hoping the flames mask the way his lilac face was darkening to an eggplant shade. “Well, you're a pretty bold woman, aren't you?”

“I wouldn't say that–”

“Well I do, which makes it true.”

“Thaaaat's not how that works.”

“It is now. You're bold and confident. I like that about you, gives you bite.”

“Oh, I'll show you bite if you don't shut up.”

“See? Bold!”

Ragatha clears her throat loudly and their heads swivel towards her. Jax had forgotten the doll was there for a moment, but he felt anything but embarrassed about the interaction. “That sounded like my normal bickering to her, not flirting,” he reassures himself as she stands up, orange shadows dancing over her cotton face.

“Well, Caine mentioned we can sleep in this adventure and he'd send us back to our own beds shortly after every turns in, so I think I'm gonna go ahead and do that,” the redhead sidesteps the log she was sitting on and starts slowly walking backwards towards her tent, laughing nervously as she goes. “You two don't stay up too long now!”

Kinger also stands up and shuffles away from the fire, a giant butterfly net in his hands that the rabbit swears wasn't there before. “Well, I think it’s bug snatching time for me,” the chess piece chirps, his voice echoey and not quite all-there, but he’s clearly trying his best. “You two have fun catching birds! Loving birds? Oh, tell me if you catch a lovebird! Ta-ta bird lovers!”

Jax and Pomni exchange a confused look as the other two characters scamp off, and soon they are left alone by the fire. The bunny let his eyes drift to the fire as he zones out for a moment, the orange light reminding him of his bedroom and the kiss on the cheek he had given her. “Why did she ask for it? And why did I give it to her? And why has she still not brought it up–”

His train of thought is cut off by the sound of shuffling sand, and a presence suddenly appearing beside him. His eyes flick to the left to see Pomni had left her seat on the log and was now sitting beside him on the ground a few inches away, her legs tucked under her neatly and the campfire illuminating her face in the cold, dark night. He felt his ears slowly perk up as she settled beside him, but otherwise made no movements as she turned to look at him softly. Openly. Domestically. 

The rabbit can’t help but crack a joke, hoping it will also break the building bubble of romantic tension in his own chest. “Did my name change to velcro lately and nobody told me? Cause you’re sticking to my side just because an awful lot lately.” He reaches over and ruffles the jester’s hair for a few seconds before she gently swats his hand away, rolling her multicolored eyes at him and shaking her head, a faint smile painted on her face the entire time.

“I want to kiss her stupid little mouth and see that smile grow,” he thinks, feeling his ears twitch on top of his head as he rests his hand back on the ground. “No I don’t. Stop that. She’d probably frown instead… Unless…?”

He's hardly listening as she takes a jab back at him. “Oh I’m sorry, who’s the one who just touched me for no reason?”

The bunny scoffs, acting playfully offended. “There was a reason! The reason was to piss you off, and it seems to have worked like a charm, so that’s a point for me. You’re losing, Pom-Pom, keep up.”

The brunette shakes her head playfully again before looking down at her rolled up flannel sleeves. He watches her start to fidget with the fabric and actively fights the urge to take both of her hands in his own as she speaks. “Whatever… So, I heard you saved a damsel in distress earlier today.”

Jax snickered, rolling his eyes and tilting his head up to the sky. Multiple stars had made themselves visible, and there weren't any digital clouds to block the view, just the edges of tree canopies in just the right places depending on where he looked. “Yeah, yeah, give it up for the hero of the hour,” he says sarcastically, pulling his knees to his chest for a moment, arms loosely crossed over top of them. “Hey, if I hadn't grabbed her, that dinner ya had would have been as good as gone.”

Pomni giggles beside him, and he fights the urge to look at her. “Well, thank you kindly,” she teases before they both go quiet for a bit. It's a comfortable silence, giving the crickets, cicadas and frogs time in the spotlight as they all harmonize outside of the campgrounds. After a minute, the jester is the one to break the silence again.

“Did you bring your camera on this adventure?” she asks, and the question drags the rabbit's gaze back down from the sky. He swings the backpack he's been carrying the entire time off his shoulders and rummages through it – It was in his overalls pocket before they got sent through the portal, so he assumed it had to be there. Triumphantly, he flashes a grin at the brunette as he pulls it out of his bag. “Course I did, who do you take me for?” he purrs, pushing the bag to the side and booting the device up. “Someone that doesn't care about people?”

She hums next to him contently, shifting her body so that she's facing him more than the fire. “Take any good pictures of people yet?”

He shakes his head, not looking at her directly but eyeing her shadow at the edge of his vision. “Not really had time to, y'know, with playing hero and everything…”

Her next words linger in his ears for a moment longer than they should, and his breath catches in his throat. “Would you like to get one of me, then? By the fire, I mean.”

The bunny forces himself to look up at her. “It's not the same if they're not candid moments,” he answers, his voice more raw and honest than he's expecting. He continues to ramble, feeling his pupils shrink and watching her facial expressions curve in real time as she listens to him. It makes his stomach twist into knots that aren't unpleasant, but still frustratingly noticeable and make him self-conscious. “It's less about catching nice pictures of the crew, and more about catching them existing and being in the moment. Sure, sometimes they figure out the camera's there… but there's a moment that happened just before it was snapped that really sell the memory and paints them as who they are, y'know?”

“Huh,” she sighs, tilting her head a little to the left and glancing at the stars for a moment. “Makes sense…” When she looks down, her eyes seem to sparkle with the power of the stars above and an unplaced emotion. “Never took you as the artist type, though.”

“Can it, clownfish, or I'll be grilling you over this fire.”

She laughs at that, and it rings out in the night air and makes Jax's eyes widen as he takes the image in. Now that was a picture-perfect moment, but she had put him in some freaky, lovey-dovey trance like some kind of witch. He didn't know why she found him or his threats funny, but God did he think it was worth it if it made her laugh like that. He immediately shakes the thought away as she looks at him, eyes crinkled and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He wants to reach over and push it back for her. Or ruffle it into a complete mess again. Either is good.

“What about selfies?” the jester asks, cutting through his mini daydream. “Are those held to the same artistic standards?”

The rabbit chuckles before wrapping his left arm around her shoulders and pulling her close to him. She squeaks in surprise and one of her hands lands on his chest, which he tries to ignore as he tilts the camera up in the air and points it at them. “They do not. Now say cheese, and if you're lactose intolerant pretend you're not as you say it.”

Pomni laughs again, small, hiccuppy, and he snaps the photo, watching it print out and develop quickly due to the magic of the Digital Circus. He can't help but beam at it as he analyzes both of their smiles, and the way they're both touching each other in the photo. He's so enraptured in it he hasn't realized he's still holding onto the brunette in the photo, and that she's still somewhat curled up his chest, until she speaks in a quiet voice.

“Jax?”

He pockets the photo into one of his short pockets and looks down at her. “What's up, Pom-Pom?”

He feels her grip tighten on his shirt for a moment, and it makes him dizzy with glee for a millisecond. “I think… I need to be honest with you about something.”

“Well. This could go one of two ways,” the rabbit thinks begrudgingly. Hoping to extend the moment as long as he can in case it goes south (or to distract her from getting to her sad point), he immediately falls backwards so that he's laying flat on the sandy ground. He drags her with her, and he's surprised when she doesn't make any noises of protest. Instead, he swears he feels one of her legs purposefully brush his own. “Go for it, Pomni. Never made a fool of yourself before with honesty, unlike me.”

The jester huffs from his chest, and he refuses to look at her as she grumbles, “Oh, shut it…” She then clears her throat, and he feels his own heart thundering in his chest with every word she speaks, her head vibrating against him with every word.

“About that kiss in your room… I asked you to do it because I was trying to figure out what crushes are suppose to feel like.”

His ears perk up as his eyes search the sky, trying to make random constellations out of nothing in a desperate attempt to distract himself. “A-ha, finally getting that verdict I was promised. So, did the court find me guilty or not?”

The serious tone leaves Pomni's voice for a second, replaced with a joking one. “Depends. What crimes have you committed?”

He shrugs, hoping it doesn't jostle her around too much. Or maybe hoping it jostles her enough she forgets whatever she was gonna say. Again, either works. “Oh, you know… Unwanted physical contact, theft of a heart, toying with feelings, or the worst one…” He pauses his lightheartedly monologue, unsure if she'll take the next line as a joke or if she'll see right through it. He decides to bite the bullet, anyway, mask and negative thoughts be damned. “... Falling for a woman older than me. Not the way I thought things would pan out for me, but you live and learn.”

Pomni immediately sits up, and the lack of warmth on his chest makes him panic for a second. He hopes the anxiety isn't showing on his face as his gaze flicks over to her, and he sees she's staring at him with wide, red-and-blue eyes and a parted mouth.

“Did,” she stumbles over her own words, “Sorry, did you just say what I think you said?”

Jax smiles, weak and terrified of what she might say next. “Are you gonna lock me up if I confess my crimes a second time?”

“No, you weren't supposed to be guilty of anything,” she says frantically, waving her own hands in front of her. “The verdict was that I was guilty. Guilty of having a crush on you, of all people.”

Now it's his turn to sit up in surprise, almost knocking the jester down into the fire in the process. “Wait. You like me?” he yells, pupils shrinking and hands flailing in front of him. “Like, like-like me?” He shoves her, lightly, so lightly she doesn’t even lose her balance. “What's wrong with you?”

“You just said you fell for me first!”

“Yeah, well, you don't make it hard to do!” His tone is exasperated as he smacks himself in the forehead with his palm and immediately puts his head between his knees. He stares at the ground, vision staring to blur and heartbeat pounding in his ears. This is literally the best possible outcome for him, and yet now that he’s staring it in the face, he can feel panic rising up in him like a tsunami, and unfortunately it was going to crash down on the jester. “I've been insufferable to get to know. Hell, you still don't know me that well. Why do you want this?”

The rabbit feels a hand on his cheek and jaw, and it gently pulls his head back up. He doesn't quite register it's Pomni holding his face until he's staring her in the eyes again. “Because I have seen you changing, when nobody asked you to,” she responds, her voice quivering a little but full of honesty. “And I think that in itself is a sign of who you are beneath that bunny exterior. And, if you'd let me, I'd love to get to know the guy.”

Jax's pupils seem to be permanently stuck in their dot form. He puts a hand on top of Pomni's, holding it in place of his cheek, as the tsunami wave finally crashes on shore and the remnants of his mask shatter like Gangle’s would when stepped on. “... What if I lose you?”

She blinks at him twice, seemingly knocked out of whatever lovey-dovey trance she was in. Jax feels his heart sink as she asks, “What?”

“You're going to push her away again, like you always do,” the voice growls at him, but this time it wasn’t encouraging him to continue. It was pleading with him to stop. “After you finally had a chance with her… Congratulations.”

“What if I lose you?” he repeats, his voice shrill and unlike himself, but he can't stop the words tumbling out no matter how much his negative voice screams at him. “Like I scare you off, or I say the wrong thing and hurt you again, or God forbid you abstract. I don't know if I can go through that pain again.”

He seems to be choking on the words as he watches the brunette's eyes widen and flickered back and forth between his own, searching, considering. The light from the dying fire reflects off her backside, casting part of her face and shadow, and it's both beautiful and drives him mad.

“She just thinks you're pathetic now. Like I said, how could anyone love you? You deserve nothing but–”

“I can't promise we won't lose each other,” she says carefully, her voice cutting through a thick, impossible, dark fog in his mind. His eyes are glued to hers as she speaks, gentle yet unshakable. “But that's not a guaranteed future, either. The circus gave all of us a second chance at living, even if we didn't think we needed it or didn't want it.” Her free hand reaches down to Jax’s, and her fingers interlock with his. “Because of that, I think what matters more is that I have the chance to make memories with you, and everyone here, before they go and if they even go.” Her tone slightly shifts to a playful one for just a moment, and she looks up at an angle as she makes her jab. “I mean, you’ve seen the state of Kinger, and he’s still around after everything…” Her eyelids lower and pupils land on the bunny’s again. “Why would I let myself live in fear of what will happen, when I could just live in the now and enjoy every second?” 

It's quiet for a moment, with only the small remaining crackles of the fire happening behind him. The rabbit's breaths are quick and shallow, but the jester's red and blue eyes keep him grounded in the moment. The voices in his head seemed to have hushed in an instant, and all the fears and doubts he had, both immediate and in the distant future, seem to turn to ash like the logs in the campfire. He isn't sure what to say to her, or how to tell her he wants to live in the moment with her, too…

… So he doesn't tell her. He shows her.

Jax lets go of her hand on the ground and takes her by the back of the neck, pulling her into him. The mouths crash together messily, uneven, both his lips on her bottom one, but he doesn't even care. They're soft and cold under his own, and incredibly thin, but he thinks they couldn't be more perfect as she kisses him back less messy, slower, deliberate, her free hand sliding up his chest again and balling into a fist in the khaki material of his shirt.

Jax pulls away only to give her another kiss, this one more proper than the last, being able to feel her mouth curve up into a smile and the heat rise underneath his palms. He lets the hand on her neck travel up to her hair, running through it, as she strokes his cheek with the one still on his face. When they break away again, the jester is still smiling, and the bunny can tell he is too, a small, tender, real one that doesn't make his cheeks ache. Regardless, his voice is gruff when he speaks. 

“Not a word about this to the others,” he snaps, feeling the heat of embarrassment climb the back of his own neck. “Well… not now, at least.”

Pomni mimes zipping her mouth up with one hand, the other still resting on his cheek. “Not a peep,” she swears, leaning back onto his chest in a lazy hug. The hand that was in her hair wraps around her torso to hug her and hold her in place, and the rabbit swears for a second he can feel his tail wagging. “Can it do that?” he wonders, not bothering to check since he’s too busy holding a beautiful brunette in his arms like she might turn to dust any second now.

It immediately stops wagging as she whispers, “If I do tell anyone, it’ll be Gangle, because she said she'd draw a bunch of fanart of us.”

The rabbit feels his eye twitch, but his smile doesn't fade as he sighs loudly. “I'm going to rip them out of her sketchbook one by one.”

The brunette quips back without hesitation. “So you can pin them to your corkboard?”

“Oh, [BEEP] off.”

She laughs again softly and moves her hand off Jax’s cheek to wrap around his torso and give him a proper hug. He returns the hug and pulls the jester fully to his chest, squeezing her like a stuffed animal a child had lost for a week and just now found again. He only loosens his grip when she whispers “Can’t… breathe…”

He pulls away to look her in the eyes again, both of his hands sliding to her waist. She opens her mouth to say something, but he doesn’t give her the chance to as he stands up, holding her similar to the way he did when they were ‘dancing’ in the ballroom. His smile is back to being overly wide and silly, but his pupils are still small as he talks. “Welppp, I think it’s time to retire to our tent.”

Pomni starts to verbally protest in his arms, but her body language betrays her as she wraps her arms around his neck and leans in dangerously close to his face. He can hardly see where he’s walking as he spins away from the fire and towards an empty, tan tent that definitely wasn’t big enough for two. “I wasn’t planning to sleep anytime soon, rascal.”

He cocks an eyebrow at her, grin stretching across his face even more. “Who said anything about sleeping?”

“Jax!” she sputters, now physically protesting as she pushed her upper half away from him. He chuckles in response, before purring in a sultry tone, “Relaxxx, Pom-Pom, I’m a gentleman. That’s not what I was referring to anyway, you have such a dirty mind…”

Pomni stops squirming in his arms after he says that, and she ducks down with him as he enters the tent. “Gentleman,” she deadpans as he sets her down on the cold, nylon floor. “Sure. If that’s what you’d call it.”

“Did I not take off your shoes that one time?” the rabbit asks sarcastically as he looks back over his shoulder at her. He doesn’t give the brunette a chance to answer as he slips out to retrieve his backpack from the fireplace. He feels his body buzzing with every single step, and while he thinks he’s moving nonchalantly, he’s practically sprinting to swipe the bag, camera and sleeping bag off the ground so he can get back the woman’s embrace faster. When he pulls back the tent flap and looks at her, she’s giving him an unamused look from her spot on the floor. He just gives her a goofy smile as he unrolls his sleeping bag.

“Well, if we’re not sleeping, what are we doing?” the jester asks curiously. “Our options are pretty limited from in here, y’know.”

“Thank you for the update, Captain Obvious,” the bunny mumbles as he smooths out the wrinkles on the sleeping bag. A small wave of nervousness has come over him, and he finds he can’t look her in the eyes for a moment. He knows so much as a glance will make him want to completely ravage her with kisses, and he wasn’t sure if that was her style.

His question is soon answered as Pomni crawls forward and flops down on the bag, with her legs where the head would go and her head sliding directly underneath him. Despite being upside down, her tiny smile and massive gleaming eyes are unmistakable, and he can’t decide which of the two to focus on. He doesn’t get much time to decide as she reaches up with her right hand and grabs the collar of his shirt, yanking him straight down to give him a Spiderman kiss. The rabbit melts into it and touches the side of her face with the back of his hand, his ears folding backwards and his tail swishing from side to side (this time, it’s unmistakable, as every wag brushes against one of his legs with the strange, on his knees but hunched over position he was in).

Jax is completely dazed when Pomni breaks the kiss, the sound of her giggling completely fuzzy in his ears. He almost misses the next question she asks.

“How long have you been waiting to kiss me for?”

His mouth moves faster than his brain does. “Tonight or in general?”

She smiles smugly as she lets go of his shirt, her arm falling across her chest instead. “Both is good.”

The rabbit has barely left the trance the jester has left him in as he answers in a breathy whisper, “Probably since I first saw you by the fireplace. Overall… I’m not sure.”

She hums in response as she sits back up, and he watches as she slowly unzips the sleeping bag and folds it open. “Make your best guess, then. Mine was maybe… In your room that night. But it felt like a bad time.”

He laughs at this, mouth splitting open in a two-dimensional fashion. “A bad time? After you asked me to kiss your cheek? That would have been a great time to do or say something!”

“Well hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Pomni bickers back as she lays down properly. She pats the open spot next to her, and Jax doesn’t hesitate to lay down next to her, both of them staring at the tent ceiling. ‘Answer the question, though.”

He sighs loudly and dramatically, clicking his tongue repeatedly. “If you want an honest answer…” He rolls over on his side to face her, but his eyes look anywhere but her face. “Probably in the bar. But I was not sober there, and I was convinced for a while I did not like you like that.”

The brunette tries to hold in a laugh and fails as she also rolls over to face him. “That must have been a losing battle,” she yawns, scooching closer to him to rest her forehead against his sternum. Her next words come out in tired, almost incoherent mumbles. “Zooble told me earlier to them, it’s been obvious you liked me since the gun adventure, when they caught you flirting with me at the start.”

“That was not flirting,” he scoffs under his breath, trying to ignore how he feels his heart flutter as the jester cuddles into his chest. He hears her hum sarcastically in response, and the sound vibrates through his ribcage as he wraps his arms around her and tries to pull her even closer if possible (it’s not, but a guy can dream). He stays uncharacteristically still, ears pinned to the back of his head and eyes almost entirely black as he feels her breathing slow and hears quiet snores fill the tent. Slowly, he presses a wordless kiss to her forehead before letting his own eyes close.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve her kindness, or to get here with her,” he thinks sleepily, starting to drift off into unconsciousness. “But I’m not going to [COWBELL] it up.”

Jax was the first to stir when the morning came, but instead of seeing a tan tent roof, he opens his eyes to a red and blue silky canopy overhead instead of his usual, false-sky ceiling. The sight made his heart metaphorically plummet into his stomach while he physically plummeted off the side of the bed in alarm. The sound of his body thudding on the carpeted ground and the loss of heat in the bed made the jester whine slightly as she somewhat opened her crusted-over eyes.

The bunny stood up quickly, pupils shrunk and smile wobbly and nervous as he stretches his arms over his head and sighs loudly. He tries to ignore the way his own heart is pounding in his chest as he speaks with false confidence. “Morning, Pom-Pom. Did we do something we'd regret last night or is there some other unrelated reason I woke up in your room today?”

The jester's face is half-planted into her pillow, only the right side visible. She keeps her eyes closed as she mumbles a half-hearted response. “Camping… Cuddling… Teleport back… Sleepy.”

The rabbit rolled his eyes with a faint smile on his face, knowing she wasn't awake enough to pick up on any humor. He yawns now, ears folding flat on his head in the process, and leans back against the brunette's way-too-tall-for-her dresser, both elbows sliding backwards onto the wood. He notices his left elbow brushes against something that feels glossy, and he sluggishly reaches over with his right hand to grab it and look at it - I mean, if he's already in here, he might as well snoop a little. He picked it up with one hand and rubbed at his eyes with the other, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. When he realized what it was, he froze.

“You kept this?” he asked, disbelief creeping into his voice as he spun around and shoved the Team Bad Guys photograph into a sleepy Pomni's face. He turns it around for half a second to confirm he wasn't see things, then pushed it even further into her face. “Where did– How did you even find this?”

She cracks one eye open, a low, rumbling noise coming out as she squints at it and for a few seconds to process it. She stops making the noise to dramatically roll over to her left side to face the wall, the bells on her hat jingling as she does. “Mhm... Kept it… Trashcan…. Got it back… safe.”

Still a bit confused, Jax pulled the photo away from her and looked down at it in his gloved yellow hand, replaying the argument that occurred just minutes after the photo was taken in his head. How he had been so, so horrible to her, but she didn’t believe a word he said and still wanted to be friends with him, despite his horribleness. And now here he was, waking up in her bed, unsure what their label was or if they needed one right now, and questioning how she was being such an absolute angel towards one of the biggest demons in the circus.

Before he could ask her any other questions about the photo or that day or what they were now, she mumbled into her pillow, a little more awake now, “Keep it. Add it to your board. I think it's still important and counts for something now.”

He stares at her for a moment, drinking in the slivers of bedhead peeking out from under her fool's cap and how her lanky cartoon limbs seem to get completely lost under the bedsheets. Without thinking it through too much, he leans back down and presses a kiss to her cheek. “I'll be right back.”

The bunny crosses the hall in seconds, two polaroids in his left hand - one being the fireside selfie from the night before, and the other being the Team Bad Guys selfie. The moment he's in his room, he uses his right hand to pick up two push pins and he immediately sticks the photos in the heart of the board, one on each side of Pomni's iconic dress photo. His eyes flicker between all three of them, thinking the pure joy on Pomni’s face in all three makes the corkboard glow.

He takes a couple steps backwards, feet dragging on the shag carpet, to look at her section. He can't ignore the heart shaoe it had taken, and how she had double if not triple as many sticky notes of information as her peers did. A faint smile crosses his face and he isn't sure why, but he then lets his eyes trace the entire board at large, full of some of the cast members best and worst moments. His gaze flicked back to the selfie of him and Pomni by the fire, and then down to his half-burned photograph of Ribbit with himself cropped out of it. 

A gear seems to click in place in his head. “This board is missing… Some purple. Some more shots of a handsome, heroic, lucky son of a [AIR HORN] for pulling a fine piece of—”

“Jax?” Pomni's voice calls from the hall, breaking the rabbit’s train of thought and causing his ears, then head, to swivel to his open bedroom door. His right ear flicks as she speaks again, her voice groggy and squeaky and something he could get used to hearing every morning he woke up if she’d let him. “I think breakfast is ready, and I don't feel like getting teleported to the table today.”

“Yeah yeah, I’m coming,” he shouts back, already striding to the door. His hand wraps around the gold door handle, and pauses for a moment to take one more good look back at the corkboard covered in photographs. Another small, genuine smile creeps across his face as he steps out into the hall, shutting the door behind him to join the girl that, in a way, inspired it all.