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The Night A Sinner Kissed an Angel
Jax typically didn’t sleep much at night. Aside from the fact that nightfall was the prime time to concoct new pranks/tricks, it was also a much-needed sigh of relief. The cheek-splitting smile he always sported around the others was finally allowed to slip. Alone in his room, his mouth could close, his ears could droop down his back.
Jax liked to joke that there was no rest for the wicked. But this was honestly the wicked’s only moment of rest. He relished watching the hours of 11-8 tick by through half-lidded eyes. Sometimes he busied himself with hobbies and trivialities. Sometimes he simply sat there in silence. Complete solitude.
Unfortunately for him, tonight’s bliss was rudely interrupted.
The sound was subtle at first. Had it been the only sound of its kind, Jax could have simply shrugged it off and gone back to his drawing boards with a clear conscience.
But it happened again, a little louder this time. Like a… groaning. Or a whine.
His ears twitched up against his will like TV antenna, tuning in and pitching the frequency up. He hated it when they did that. Made it impossible to mind his own business.
It sounded more like muttering now. The voice was decidedly feminine and muffled, as if coming from one of the other rooms.
Jax yanked his TV ears back down and tried to block it out. It was really none of his business. Occasionally, one of the circus members would sit up all night just like him, rearranging furniture, indulging in art projects, pacing the halls out of sheer boredom. Whoever’s voice that was at one in the morning could be doing literally anything. The paper thinness of their walls was not an invitation for him to care about it.
But then a crash and a shout jerked his head up from his desk, spine snapping straight. He swore his eye twitched with irritation.
Ugh.
With a reluctant groan, Jax shoved his chair away from his desk and dragged himself to his feet. If nothing else, he could at least bang on their door and tell them to keep it down.
Grabbing his key ring, Jax stomped across the room and flung his door open. He felt a bit like a grumpy old man marching down the hallway, ready to scream at some deliquient kids for messing up his lawn.
The noise could have been from anyone. But as he passed doors, he realized that it wasn’t Zooble’s loud emo kid music. It wasn’t Gangle cranking the volume on her infantilized animes. It wasn’t Kinger muttering to himself or Pomni having her existential crisis of the week.
Of course it would be Ragatha.
Thankfully, Jax had no misgivings about busting down her door as punishment for inconveniencing him. If anything, he’d prefer to argue with her than some of the others.
Now that he was nearer, he could make out the cries a bit better. For a brief moment, he wondered if he’d caught her doing something… improper, as she might put it. But the longer he listened, he realized that she didn’t seem to be enjoying herself at all. She sounded like she was in genuine pain. Agony, even.
He raised his fist and gave a sharp knock.
“Ragatha,” he hissed out, not wanting to draw too much attention. “What the **** are you doing in there?”
The noises didn’t stop, nor did she answer him. Jax knocked again, a little louder this time.
“Ragatha!”
Nothing.
He pressed one of his ears against the door, straining to listen for context clues. This allowed him to make out a small string of words.
Sorry, she was saying. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Those pitiful gasps and cries crawled their way under Jax’s skin, shoulders and spine stiffening. He’d heard that tone of voice only once before.
Jax’s hand flew to the doorknob, and the resistance he was met with stabbed straight through his chest. It was locked.
It was locked.
His stomach lurched with a wave of panic and before he was consciously aware of it, his hands were frantically flipping through his keys. There were so many keys, too many, why did he have so many? Wouldn’t it make sense to split them between different key rings? He’d never been organized. He strongly opposed organization as a general rule, but that rule suddenly felt so stupid and irresponsible and she sounded like she was being tortured in there and d***it, he couldn’t do anything with these bulky, cartoon gloves—
Finally, his hand closed around a red-tipped key, which he promptly shoved into the lock. A twist and a shove and Jax was busting into Ragatha’s room.
His eyes immediately landed on the figure in her bed, thrashing about, gasping for air. He also saw a broken figurine on the floor by her bedside.
There were no torture machines. No hints that she was about to…
“Hey,” Jax blurted out, irritation pinching his features. “Hey, what are you doing?”
It was a dumb question in hindsight, but he really had no idea what she was doing. But the longer he looked at her squirming, jerking, unresponsive, he began to realize what was happening. She was having a nightmare.
Even with his limited time sleeping, Jax had his fair share of bad dreams. It wasn’t exactly surprising that someone else would experience them, especially with the weird, existential dread that hung over their heads all day. But he’d never seen someone dream so… actively. Violently.
Admittedly, Jax debated leaving for a moment. As he had previously suspected, this was none of his business. Knowing Ragatha, waking her up might mean getting smacked for seeing her in her nightgown or facing interrogation over why he still had a key to her room. Maybe even questions about why he even cared to wake her. With her fantastic, rose-colored imagination, she might begin to assume all sorts of crazy things.
But the longer he stood there, the more tortured she began to sound. The more he wondered what might be going on in her head. He noticed the tightness of her features, the jaggedness in her breathing. How long had she been going on like this? How long would it continue?
Of course, her misery didn’t bother him. In fact, had anyone asked in the future, he would gladly recount how funny she looked, flailing around and babbling nonsense.
But he couldn’t concentrate if his night was spent blocking out her incessant groaning. And she would probably be in a bad mood in the morning—but not the kind that made her easier to mess with. The fake, quiet, detached sort of mood. He hated when she got like that.
He had to wake her up.
“Rags,” Jax said in a stage whisper. “Hey, wake up!”
Her muffled, slurred mutterings were much louder on the other side of the door. Her hands were clawing at her blankets, as if desperately grappling for purchase. She looked like she was drowning.
Irritation pricked under his skin. Jax huffed like a child, shoving his keys in his pocket and marching over to her bedside.
“Hey!” he snapped, struggling to jerk the comforter out of her hands. “Come on, you’re gonna wake up the whole circus!”
His involvement seemed to merely increase her desperation. A whining cry pushed past her lips, her body curling into itself. Jax couldn’t recall seeing such a painful look on anyone’s face before.
“Ugh,” he muttered before getting a good grip on her shoulders and yanking her writhing body upright, giving her a sharp shake. “Ragatha, snap out of it!”
At long last, Ragatha sucked in a violent gasp, eyes popping open. Jax almost flinched back from the force of her wake-up call but kept a firm grasp on her regardless. She was still breathing hard, chest pumping up and down, but she wasn’t thrashing around anymore. Jax supposed that was a good sign.
However, before he could open his mouth and say anything, something flew forward and cracked his nose in two.
Jax’s head flew back with a cry of pain. A string of curses immediately flew out of his mouth, muffled behind the hand now covering his mouth.
“Jax?” Ragatha cried, and it was a miracle he heard her over the blood pounding in his ears.
In one of those strange, out-of-body experiences, Jax realized what had just happened. Ragatha had just punched him. Punched him square in his invisible nose.
“****, Rags!” he hissed out, eyes snapping down to meet hers. “What was that for?!”
“I—” She looked conflicted, confused, like even she was shocked at her actions. “I’m so… sorry? I thought—I just saw someone grabbing me and—”
As she blinked up at Jax, her confusion seemed to diffuse a bit. She looked at his poor nose, then the bed she was in, then the door still wide open, yellow light streaming in from the hallway.
“Actually, maybe I shouldn’t be apologizing,” she said, eyes slitting in suspicion. Her gaze then dropped to look down at her own body, eyes widening as she noticed her flimsy, cotton nightgown. She scrambled to pull the sheets up over her torso, attention snapping back to Jax with much more accusation. “Why are you breaking into my room in the middle of the night?”
Jax was beginning to wonder about the exact same thing. He knew he should’ve stayed in his room.
“Ugh,” he groaned because ow. “I didn’t break in. I carefully unlocked the door and walked in. Even in the real world, that’s not a crime. It’s not like you sleep naked or anything.”
Ragatha was not amused at this, her irritation only mounting further.
“How would you know that?” she snipped.
“Miss Prim-and-Proper sleeping in the nude?” Jax echoed, giving her his most dubious look. “You’d rather die. Then again, I never thought you’d have such a right hook on you, either. D***, wouldn’t a slap have done the job?”
Jax watched a rosy blush spread along her nose and cheeks. She’d always blushed insanely easily. Irritation, anger, bashfulness, embarrassment. Anything taboo or complimentary and she’d flush like a cherry pie.
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t busted in here in the middle of the night!” she retorted.
“I think you broke it,” Jax muttered, still rubbing between his eyes and mouth. “I try to do once nice thing and you break my nose. Am I bleeding? Can you see the bone poking out?”
Ragatha gave his Oscar-worthy theatrics a grand eyeroll.
“You don’t have bones,” she answered, hand raising to her suddenly sore temple. “Or blood. Or a nose—you don’t even have a nose, Jax.”
“Yeah, well, you punched something,” he retorted. “What if I have a concussion?”
“What you have is grounds for a restraining order. Now, can you please explain yourself? Is there a fire? An abstraction? Did someone find an exit?”
At the mention of an abstraction, Jax’s eyes flitted back up to meet hers. She didn’t back down, though. Her grip tightened on the bed sheets, and she waited.
“You were having a nightmare,” Jax finally said.
The words sounded just as pathetic out loud. He wondered what else she heard, what rosy, romantic things she assumed about that statement. You were having a nightmare. I woke you up. Are you okay? Do you need a hug? What were you dreaming about? He might as well have thrown himself at her feet and clung to the hem of her nightgown.
However, if she was assuming any of this, she didn’t quite show it. Instead, he watched a shadow darken the characteristic irritation pinching her features.
“I… was,” she said slowly.
“You’re lucky I’m so altruistic,” Jax said, reaching down to adjust his overalls, which had been knocked askew in the struggle. “You nearly woke the whole circus. Yelling and breaking things like that.”
At those last words, Ragatha’s eyes lifted, brows furrowing.
“Yelling and breaking things?”
She looked around, searching for what she might have broken. She didn’t see the trinket shattered on the ground, and Jax didn’t care enough to clarify. Especially if she treasured it. She might cry. As rare a thing as it was, he couldn’t stand it when she cried.
But her search quickly faded as something new took shape on her face. He looked at her expression, how her gaze fell and her grip tightened on the bedsheets at her chest, and in spite of himself, he wanted to know. What had shaken her so thoroughly that even now, the mere memory nearly dragged her under all over again?
I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
That’s what she’d said.
As much as Ragatha liked to shove and scream at him, seeing this kind of screaming was different. Admittedly, the memory made Jax feel all sorts of uncomfortable.
“Was I really that loud?” she asked with a small wince.
Jax shrugged, trying not to make direct eye contact.
“Only to people with ears, I guess,” he teased, though it wasn’t as seamless as he’d intended.
He caught sight of the grandfather clock stood high and mighty in her corner. The glass was cracked, but it ticked regardless. Presumably with the correct time, but what did any of them have to compare their version of time with?
“Sorry,” she muttered.
Her voice drew his attention back to her. There it was again. And again and again. She apologized like it was going out of fashion. Like it was a filler word, making up for her very existence.
“You said that already,” he replied, taking in the persistent strangeness on her face. Her breathing still wasn’t entirely steady, evidence that the nightmare had affected her far worse than she would care to admit.
She glanced up, allowing him to see how pale she was, even with the warm light from the hallway. One disadvantage to being a cartoon: emotions were much more obvious.
“Was I…” Her lips twisted to the side as she searched for the right words. “Uh… sleep talking?”
He could tell the truth. This was prime taunting material, something to hang over her head and work her up into a bundle of stitches. But she already seemed seconds from crumbling into crumbs.
“Probably,” he said instead. “Though you were slurring your words. You didn’t have too much to drink before bed, did you?”
Ragatha snorted, half jovial, half in offense. She still seemed a bit suspicious, but she was soon drifting off in thought again.
Jax recognized that look. It was guarded and eerily silent, one of the only times he was truly torn over what to do with her. Of course, Jax doubted anything he could say or do would comfort her. Even his teasing didn’t seem to be jerking her back to reality.
After a few more heartbeats of suffocating silence, Jax stretched his arms up over his head, groaning into the strain.
“Welp, you’re welcome for saving your life,” he said, all lighthearted sarcasm and a gleaming grin. “If you insist on having another nightmare, try to do it a little quieter next time.”
Jax got to his feet, more than glad to flee the scene and erase it from his mind. He assumed that Ragatha would find much more solace in waking one of the others or burying her nose in a book till morning. Maybe taking up another sewing project or setting on one of those old person records or—
“Wait.”
The hand that caught his wrist was warm. Familiar. Like an electric shock.
Jax found himself turning around, glancing over his shoulder. Ragatha’s expression was just as tight and irritable as before, though her touch seemed to say otherwise.
“Can you…” She swallowed, looking askance. “Just… sit down? For a second?”
No.
No, why would I sit down? Why would I stay, why would I do anything for such a prudish, stuck-up, fake-faced—
His body sunk back down onto the bed, landing just inches from her hip beneath the covers. His eyes remained locked onto hers, even as he saw surprise flicker across her expression. He was surprised himself.
“Why?” he asked, clearly wary of the request.
Her hand was still closed around his wrist, and it weighed against him, heavier than a band of stone.
He expected an explanation for her switch-up. Mere minutes prior, she’d been frazzled and demanding that he defend his presence. But instead of speaking, her eyes fell to where their skin met.
Her thumb traced invisible lines, the spot where he used to have a bone pushing beneath his wrist. Now, it… well, it was difficult to tell what lay beneath his purple peach fuzz. Sand? Stuffing? Maybe beads or sticks or metallic rods.
This train of thought evaporated almost as quickly as it appeared when Ragatha’s hand began to trace up the inside of his arm. His gaze snapped down at the motion, then back up to her face, a question obvious on his expression.
“Don’t make this weird,” Ragatha muttered. “I just… need to touch someone.”
Jax didn’t quite know what to do with this response. Apparently sensing his confusion, she elaborated.
“It helps with… you know,” she said, her face tinging pink again. “Not going insane. And last I checked, you don’t really like it when people do that.”
She needed to touch someone. Not even him, specifically, just someone breathing and alive and here with her. This had nothing to do with him. But his heart, traitorous thing that it was, stuttered.
His mind suddenly reeled back in time, back to moments where Ragatha’s hand on his arm was as casual a thing as breathing. She never thought twice about it—playing with his ears, looping her arm through his, leaning her body weight into his chest. Of course, she had argued that he was much touchier.
Had this been why? Had those touches kept her sane?
When was the last time she touched someone?
His mouth felt dry all of a sudden. Those memories felt as recent as their bickering earlier that day.
“I thought you said I drove you crazy,” Jax said, referencing one of their more recent tussles.
Even as he spoke, his eyes stayed focused on her hand. Her touch was hesitant, curious, as if she’d never done this before. Maybe it had been so long that she had forgotten.
She let out a small, breathy laugh.
“You do,” she replied. “But I’d rather you drive me crazy than… other things.”
Jax was sure she could feel the tension in his arm. In spite of how hard he tried to relax, to zone out or perhaps find a way to tease her, he couldn’t latch onto a single thought outside of how slowly she was tracing up and down his forearm.
“Is this okay?”
She was asking for permission. People pleaser that she was, she’d rather lock herself away to spiral than slightly inconvenience someone. Even someone she allegedly hated.
“Well,” he said slowly, forcing a façade of indifference. “I guess it’s better than watching yet another character lose their marbles. I can’t stand how mopey everyone gets afterward.”
Ragatha looked at him, looking straight through him and read between the lines. They need you, he was saying. Don’t be stupid.
She didn’t smile. But she seemed tempted to before she ducked her head again, focusing on regulating. He felt her grow a bit more comfortable with the rhythmic motion. Up and down, up and down.
There wasn’t much light in this room, but there was just enough to make out the slight frizz of her cherry-colored curls. The blue dusting across her eyelid, how she chewed on the inside of her mouth.
She’d never liked her button. She always said it resembled a black eye. Jax had joked that it just added to her doormat charm. Maybe when you learn to stick up for yourself it’ll disappear.
She was beginning to apply more pressure, her breathing still a bit unsteady. And call him crazy, but Jax sensed that she needed more than a casual finger tracing.
Jax grabbed her other hand, letting the bed sheets fall into her lap.
“What…”
He answered her half-question by placing both her hands firmly against his chest. In theory, she could feel his heartbeat just beneath her fingers. In theory, maybe reminding her that someone was here, heart beating, lungs pumping, would keep her grounded.
Her eyes widened slightly, but his guess seemed to be right. Within seconds, tension in her shoulders started to unfurl, the alertness in her gaze beginning to soften.
“If you needed more of me,” Jax said, a teasing smile tugging at his lips. “You could have just asked.”
Ragatha’s face immediately flattened into a glare.
“I told you not to make this weird.”
“You’re the one feeling me up.”
Ragatha jerked her hands away in offense. Before he even registered what he was doing, Jax had grabbed them in his, returning her to the same spot.
“Hey, come on!” he said, laughing a little. “I’m just messing with you.”
Her eyes flickered down to his motion in surprise. She seemed surprised at everything that was happening right now. Jax was choosing very deliberately not to overthink that.
“I don’t like being messed with,” she retorted, attempting to pull away again. But the attempt was half-hearted and easily fought against.
“Would you rather swallow your pride,” he offered, “or lose your mind?”
“Is there a third option?”
“No.”
She took in a deep, irritated breath, looking ready to slump back onto her bed and phase through the mattress entirely. However, after a few beats of silence, Jax felt her resistance begin to weaken.
“Fine,” she buckled, voice still tense, on edge. “But just know that this doesn’t have to do with you.”
Jax nodded with fake solemnness. “Of course.”
“You just happened to be here.”
“Uh huh.”
“And if you ever bring this up again, I’ll turn you inside out.”
Jax didn’t notice how genuinely giddy the smile splitting his face in two was. He had no reason to believe that she cared more about him than the dirt beneath her heels, a fact that should have offended him. But there was something so funny about her red-faced insistence on the matter.
“Relax, dolly,” he said. “I have a reputation too, you know. I’d much rather do this for you than handle the blowback of you offing yourself.”
Even as he said it, the words felt a bit too violent out loud. But maybe that was why he said it. In his eyes, throwing the concept of abstraction around like the morning weather stripped it of its weight.
Ragatha didn’t take too well to this phrasing, which he could have predicted with his eyes closed. However, she didn’t respond with a quick insult or scoff of dismissal. She merely lowered her eyes, suddenly looking a little seasick.
Jax’s smile flickered out like a lighter. He recalled how panicked Ragatha had looked when he woke her up. And he wondered if maybe referencing her digital death wasn’t the best course of action to calm her down.
D***, he really wasn’t any good at this. Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t Pomni or Zooble or literally anyone else have woken her up?
Her seasickness lingered, but she seemed determined to shake it off, refocusing on her hands. Her fingers splayed out against his chest, pressing firmly against him like a delicate deadweight.
“You’re kinda the worst,” she muttered.
The phrase had no venom or sarcasm. It was just a statement. Period at the end.
Her hands dragged upward, finding the lines of his collarbone. Jax resisted the urge to swallow.
“It’s in my character coding,” he answered, trying to sound lightweight. “What else would I be?”
She mused over this question for a moment, her red lips twisting to the side. A nervous habit of hers.
“Tolerable is always an option,” she answered. “Anything other than the devil.”
She continued her journey, sliding down the shape of his arms. His arms were one of his least favorite cartoon features. They were so… lanky. Like flimsy noodles. Far different from how his real arms were.
What would Ragatha think of his real body?
“Excuse you,” he said, talking to ignore the ridiculous intrusive thoughts his brain was producing. “I think I’m far better than tolerable. I’m a downright delight.”
She snorted at this, shooting him a dubious glance.
“You’re a downright menace,” she corrected.
“I can be both.”
“Can you?” she challenged, and she gave his arms a squeeze.
His heart stuttered again.
D***it.
Logically speaking, he knew this had to be purely biological. Having a pretty woman (ragdoll or not) frisk him at an agonizingly slow pace was sure to stir up some chemical reactions. Surely anyone doing this would cause some less-than-platonic thoughts to drift through his head. It didn’t have to be Ragatha-specific.
“I’d love to know your definition of a delight,” she continued.
And she wasn’t flirting at all. Ragatha would rather drop dead than pay him the time of day to flirt. But every word out of her mouth tugged on his whole body, like fighting against a current of warm, homey sunlight.
“Well,” he said, miraculously still able to speak. “Being a delight is relative. I’m sure anyone here would call you a delight, and yet, you’re one of the most insufferable people I’ve ever met.”
She didn’t glare this time, opting instead to let out an incredulous laugh.
“You think people call me a delight?”
“Sad, isn’t it? Mislead folks, falling for your angelic Raggedy Ann act.”
He tilted his head, taking in her appearance, before reaching up to flick at the bow atop her head.
“Maybe it’s the blue bow,” he considered. “It’s easy to trust someone with a blue bow in their hair. Kinda looks like a little halo sometimes. I’m sure there’s something to that.”
Ragatha’s hands floated down to the crooks of his elbows, resting there for a moment. Her eyes were unfocused, drifting somewhere across the room. Had she even heard his last statement?
“I don’t think they’re as mislead as you think,” she muttered.
As a general rule, Jax didn’t know what to do with Ragatha. She was an enigma. One minute, she was smiling and satisfying everyone and bickering back and forth with him. The next, she was… like this.
When Ragatha’s cheerfulness slipped, it wasn’t at all like the others. It was easy for Jax to brush off Gangle’s whining over her troubles and Zooble’s grumpy old man act. But Ragatha got this weird look on her face. Seasick, as he’d said. Wistful and aching, like a spirit on the bow of a ship ready to jump overboard. The cotton nightgown and faint lighting did nothing to ease the image.
But if she jumped, Jax had a feeling the others would follow suit.
He stared at Ragatha’s forlorn expression for a long moment, watching her sink down, far away from this moment, from him. Something a little like panic kicked at his chest, similar to how he’d felt fumbling through his keyring earlier. Panic made people do dumb things.
Surely, pulling Ragatha into his arms was the dumbest thing he could have done.
But he did it.
At the sudden motion, Ragatha let out a small noise of surprise, her hands flying to his sides to steady herself.
“Jax—”
“Please shut up,” he said, voice a little rougher than it should have been. “And… don’t make it weird.”
Like before, Ragatha seemed resistant for a moment. But gradually, he began to feel the tension in her body unravel. Her arms draped across his back, forehead dropping down against his shoulder in a movement of subtle defeat. As much as she probably wanted to body slam him across the room, she had to know she needed this just as well as Jax did. She needed to give into this. Let go, at least for right now, and stop worrying so much.
She took in a breath, a deep one that seemed to come from her very toes, and released it through her mouth. Jax felt it against his chest, warm and shaky, causing an invisible shiver to tickle up his spine. Despite every reflex in his body screaming at him to shove her away, he didn’t budge. He merely tightened his hold on her, willing her worries to dissolve.
Out of all the circus members, he knew that Ragatha’s abstraction would rock the boat the most. For all her fakeness and anxious fluttering, surely they all adored her. And if attempting to fuse their bodies together while he fought cardiac arrest prevented all that motion sickness, so be it.
Her hands wound around the fabric of his overalls, clinging to him like a lifeline. It took a lot of humility for someone like Ragatha to allow herself to be held like this. Maybe she was fighting herself too. Maybe she was pretending he was someone else.
He wasn’t sure how long they sat there like that. He didn’t know when his hand had started to trace small, soothing circles into her back, nor when her head turned to press into his neck just a little closer.
Jax hadn’t felt this feeling in so long. Months. Maybe longer. Having her soft, cotton body pulled flushed against his was a lot like strapping a delicate deadweight to his chest. She weighed on his lungs, his heart, made it difficult to breathe properly. At first, it had been almost ironic, telling her to relax when he felt on the verge of a panic attack.
But as the minutes ticked by, his own body began to surrender to the feeling. That deadweight felt less deadly. It changed into a steady, unmoving assurance that only came from merging yourself with another person and forgetting where your body ended and theirs begun.
Jax wasn’t the type to sit around and daydream. And memories of this feeling were precisely why. Why waste time thinking about something that surely would never happen again? Like waiting with a jar for lightning to strike twice.
But it was happening. And, to his dismay, it felt just as he remembered.
“Do you ever sleep at night?”
Jax was startled out of his thoughts by Ragatha’s quiet question. It took him a moment to register what she’d asked him.
“Sleeping’s pointless here,” he answered, keeping his voice as low as Ragatha’s had been. “Why do it if you don’t have to?”
Ragatha didn’t reply right away, her arms shifting a bit against his back. Jax didn’t like how hyper-aware he was of this movement.
“It must be peaceful,” she murmured. “No surprise adventures. Or nightmares, I guess. Maybe I should try it sometime.”
Though she seemed adequately calm now, Jax continued rubbing those slow circles into her back. He supposed she wasn’t entirely wrong. It was peaceful at night. A much-needed reprieve from the chaos of their eclectic lives.
“You’d get a break at least,” he reasoned. “Your face must get tired from smiling all the time.”
She puffed out a soft laugh. Jax felt it tickle his neck.
“Like you can talk.”
Those words hit a very specific place, something that Jax was very uncomfortable acknowledging. The fact that, despite spending most of their time at each other’s throats, worming under one another’s skin, they were still cut from similar cloths. Two sides of a sick, scuffed-up coin, a sinner and a saint, smiling for entirely different reasons and reaping absolutely nothing from it.
He knew this. As violently as he fought against it, they’d discussed their similar differences long ago. In the end, those differences had only grown. Pushed them further apart.
“You always smiled more than me, though,” Ragatha continued, a certain knowingness slipping into her tone. “I think you enjoy it.”
Her hand was fidgeting with a button on his side, tracing it round and round. Jax felt even the smallest nudge against him.
At any other moment, Jax would have tossed out some cute quip about just how much he enjoyed smiling. Especially with how worked up she got over a simple grin. She made it so much fun to smile at her expense, at the red filling her face to the brim, boiling up and up till steam nearly came out of her ears. Smiling was written into him as much as breathing.
But if smiling was such joy, why was nighttime such a relief?
Jax’s eyes had settled somewhere on the edge of her bed’s headboard. It was a soft wooden color, riddled with tiny knicks and scratches, with a single heart carved out of the center. Even that was a bit lopsided.
“I used to enjoy it a little more.”
The admission slipped out faster than he could process it. But it was there. Floating in the air between them, evidence that Jax wasn’t only the funny cartoon body and gleaming yellow grin.
There was a lull between them, the muffled ticking of the grandfather clock filling the silence. Slowly, Ragatha pulled her head away from his chest.
Jax had always tried to downplay Ragatha’s eyes. It was a single eye, objectively half the ammo, drawn on as if by a child’s crayon. But oh, the emotion that little blue eye could hold. The reminiscences it could evoke with a single look.
“I did too,” she said in a near whisper. Low and sweet and sentimental, everything Jax hated about her.
Jax found himself looking at Ragatha in such a strange way. He had never been one for sentimentality. Most of his hours in the circus were spent forcing his eyes to fix on the present, not the past. But Ragatha was a history book he found himself cracking open time and time again. And having her cradled in his lap, her soft arms wrapped around him, her heartbeat inches from his, blurred the past and present tremendously.
And in that blur, somehow, Jax’s mouth had closed the distance to hers.
Neither of them reacted at first. Having her lips pressed to his felt normal, natural, like the only thing to do in the moment. It was a soft, simple kiss, the kind a boy gives a girl on the playground to test out what he’s seen in movies, the kind a man gives a woman merely because he’s a man and she’s a woman.
But as soon as Jax felt a pleasant shiver go through his body and his heart skip a beat, he realized there was nothing natural about this.
A rush of confusion and conflict and something he wouldn’t dare name flooded his entire body. He wanted to jerk away. He wanted to pull her even closer. Something a little like homesickness tugged at his chest.
Eventually, after a mere few seconds of baffled bliss, Jax eased his mouth away from hers.
When his eyes opened, he watched hers open as well. Unsurprisingly, he found the same hazy, vague emotions reflected on Ragatha’s face. Like she was fighting to catch up with the moment but so deeply bewildered that all she could do was stare at him.
“Did you just kiss me?”
The question was another whisper, as if afraid to break the delicate moment and let the panic come flooding in. Because, had they been in their right minds, they would have panicked by now.
Jax’s heart was pounding. But his body didn’t seem to catch on.
“No,” he eventually said.
Ragatha’s gaze ever-so-subtly drifted down to his mouth, then returned to his eyes. She gave him a small nod.
“Okay,” she replied. “Good.”
Jax had never heard her voice like that. Never seen her face so close-up. She felt like some kind of angelic apparition, like maybe he had fallen asleep tonight and would wake up in the next few seconds, flustered and frustrated from such a ridiculous dream. How out of character of him to comfort someone, to kiss someone, to hold someone close. Ragatha, of all people.
Ragatha.
Jax swallowed, his eyes locked onto hers.
“I think… you’re having another nightmare,” he murmured.
Her hand shifted against his back, grazing his spine. Even through his clothes, he felt the movement as a pinprick.
“You’re probably right,” she agreed, voice still sounding so… so… “I’ll probably forget all about it. In the morning.”
Jax nodded in turn. Slowly. Everything was going so slowly.
“You probably should.”
This was the moment Jax should have left. He knew it. He could feel it, as could she, most likely. But he wanted to take just a few more seconds. Just soaking in this moment, this ghost of a feeling, letting a warmth he hadn’t felt in months drag him under. If Ragatha confessed then that she was some sort of witch, capable of luring in only those who she frustrated the most, he would have believed her.
Ghost, witch, angel, whatever. Anything was more believable than him… than them…
His hand reached up to smooth back an auburn curl, tucking it gently behind her ear.
“Go back to sleep, doll,” he murmured. “I’ll be a devil again in the morning.”
There was something so overwhelmingly tender on her face just then. Quite possibly the most open and vulnerable he’d ever seen her. It made something in his chest, something he had previously hoped had already disappeared, crack.
He memorized her. Her arms, her eyes, the silly little bow in her hair, and finally released his hold on her. It was much harder than it should have been, but he forced himself to put on a face and get up.
He felt lightheaded, his legs suddenly weak enough to buckle as he crossed the room. The air seemed to hum around him, body humming similarly with lingering sensation.
“Goodnight, Bunny.”
Just as it reached the doorknob, his hand froze. That old nickname rolled through him like liquid moonlight, unraveling him at the seams, and for one horrifying second, Jax almost spun right back around and dragged her back into his arms.
Jax used her old nicknames as an abrasion. Another way to tug at her pigtails. Ragatha withheld them intentionally for the very same reason. But the nostalgia they had been dancing around all night could be perfectly wrapped up in that name. Bunny.
Jax flinched, as if ready to glance over his shoulder, but he knew he couldn’t face her again. He wasn’t invincible.
“Goodnight,” he said, voice hoarse and ragged, before he slipped out of the room and shut the door.
The hallway was glaringly bright in contrast to the cozy darkness of Ragatha’s room. Jax blinked in the brashness of his bright yellow surroundings, stumbling as he grabbed the nearest wall for support.
His body was still loose and liquid, his heart ready to beat out of his chest. As much as he tried to fight it, Ragatha was still stamped all over him. The subtle dip of her wait, the smoothness of her nightgown, the scent of caramel candies and pie crust and a dusty old attic as tangible as ever.
He could still feel her hair twirling between his fingers. And her mouth. So soft. So unbearably, achingly—
“F***,” Jax hissed, giving himself a violent shake.
The feelings didn’t go away, but he marched down the hallway with newfound stubbornness. It was just biological. That was all. He hadn’t felt a woman in heaven knew how long, of course one lousy kiss would set him spinning.
Jax shoved his bedroom door open and practically slammed it behind him. This was ridiculous. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Especially Ragatha.
Surely she would disappear in the morning. As soon as 8:00 AM hit, they would go back to squabbling like little kids and forget all about their temporary show of… whatever that was.
Unbeknownst to Jax, Ragatha was throwing a similar fit herself. Red-faced and frustrated, she had torn herself out of bed, set on her least romantic record, and thrown herself into at least three different hobbies.
At least she didn’t have any more nightmares that night.