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Jax shuts the door behind them, thoroughly plunging the already black hallway into complete darkness. This leads to a blind gunfight, which Pomni greatly enjoys. Fear of the dark is something deeply primal, something that produces adrenaline; humans cannot extricate this from themselves because of how they’ve evolved, but they can redirect it, substitute it, channel it into something adjacent. What another person may find scary about a blind gunfight Pomni can easily translate into thrill. She likes that. It hurts when Jax accidentally shoots her, but there’s no hard feelings, because it just heightens the experience. It’s a surprise when he taps her ass, but it works exactly the same way. She doesn’t even think about it, it’s just all part of the fun.
Poor Kinger takes himself out with his own ricochet super move. Jax finds the light and the two celebrate victory.
When the high-five has concluded, he says, “Hey, Pomni.”
Pomni replies enthusiastically, “Yes, Jax?”
“Pomni,” he says again, leaning downward, tilting his head playfully. “Hey, Pom.”
She laughs a little, awaiting the punchline. “Yeah? What?”
Like calling for her in a game of hide and seek, except she’s standing right in front of him, “Po–om.”
Pomni could wring his neck with all this build up. It wouldn’t even be hard to pull off, she’d just have to reach out. She responds in the same singsong cadence, “I’m liiistening!”
Looking right in her eyes. “Are ya?”
“Yeah!”
Inches from her face. “Are ya really?”
She shouts, “I said—” before becoming aware of just how close he is and therefore how unnecessary that amount of volume would be. He lowered his voice. So she’s compelled to lower hers. “I said yeah,” she says in a stage whisper. “What is it, already?!”
Jax moves in, going just past her face where her ear would be. If she had ears. Maybe she does, but she wouldn’t know, she hasn’t had access to them. All the same, Pomni feels a simulacrum of breath on her skin. “You know what would be so funny right now?”
She’s having an adrenaline response, heart beating and breaths getting short and shallow in preparation for sudden movement. The classic fight or flight. Freeze is also an option. She doesn’t remember what the fourth one, the new one, the one people only recently started talking about, is called. “What?”
Jax drags a finger below her chin, but doesn’t make contact. “If I…”
Pomni’s jaw clenches, and he strikes her all at once. Sharply jabbing his finger in her cheek, the whole top half of his body rears back as if the force of his hand is powerful enough to throw him, all while he yells, “TAGGED YOU!” and then bolts for the door, throwing it open.
Pomni explodes into roaring peals of laughter and makes chase. Her lungs burn in scampering after his long strides. Yes, that was so funny, in an extremely simple and uncomplicated way. She could laugh all day long.
Then not even fifteen minutes later he has the balls to ask if she’s coming on to him. Now that shit is the real joke.