Chapter Text
It was about nine pm and Pomni was on facetime with Robin and Becca.
“So Becs are you excited for tomorrow?”
“Well… I’m a bit nervous but I'm excited to get paid”, the girl said giggling a little. The college had an on campus coffee shop. Not only had Becca been lucky enough to get a job there last year but she had newly become the student manager and officially started in that position tomorrow.
A feeling of warmth for Becca blossomed inside of her chest. Her friend had grown so much. She was definitely still on the shy side and introverted but she had really gotten out of her shell and grown into her own since their first year.
The conversation continued for about two more hours. Robin complimented Becca on the promotion which led Becca and Pomni to make fun of them for the sentimentality- something they weren’t prone to. The conversation then diverged to how each of their classes were going so far, Robin complained about their hectic workload which made Pomni feel much better about what she had previously thought was a lot of work for herself. The call ended when Becca let out a soft yawn and Robin suggested that maybe it was best if they all go to sleep.
Though Pomni knew that she should go to sleep, she had a 9am class afterall, she was not tired in the slightest. She decided instead to look online for old buildings for sale. It was one of the easiest ways to find abandoned places to explore. It had been a while since the three of them had gone urbexing and though they might not have a lot of time to go in the near future but it was better than doomscrolling.
She has only been looking for about twenty minutes finding one or two places when there's a loud thud at her door followed by rapping on her door.
Before she could consider that this is how people get killed, she opens the door.
Standing in the door is a figure, tall but so is everyone to her. Their head is hung low and their leaning heavily on the door frame. That is until they-he lifts his head, the light coming from her apartment illuminating his face.
Jax
Before she could think all the rational thoughts that someone would probably go through when a near stranger that you have mixed feelings about shows up at your door late at night he speaks.
His breathing is labored and as she looks at him longer she can see that there is a tinge of sweat along his brows, and- is that a cut on his face? Along the side of his jaw there is a line of red about three inches across. The cut is bleeding and surrounded by purple bruises which hopefully makes it look worse than it really is.
“Your- your friend is a doctor or something right?”, he says the words coming out slightly slurred before promptly collapsing in her doorway.
For eight beats of her heart she simply just stands and stares at his form, nearly touching her socks before her brain clocks in and remembers that she should be doing something.
She grabs him by the arms and manages to drag him into his apartment and lean his back against the wall with only slight difficulty. In no way shape or form was she breathing heavily or covered in sweat. Maybe she should start to lift weights…
You need to call Robin, she reminds herself.
She pulls up Robin’s contact praying that they hopefully weren’t asleep at this hour. Thankfully after only two rings Robin picks up.
“Hey, is- uh everything okay? You don’t usually call this late?” Pomni cringes at how their voice sounds -groggy; she was really hoping that she wouldn’t wake them.
“Well…”, Pomni starts and spills the whole story, or at least what happened. She wasn’t exactly sure what to call it when you have a ten second interaction with someone who promptly collapses right in front of you.
“Okay, Pomni, I am on my way and I should be there in about five minutes”, they say and Pomni can hear a jingle of keys in the background of the call, “But stay on the phone with me I need you to do a couple things for me.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“First, can you check his pulse?”
“It's strong, and I think at a normal rate? I’m honestly not quite sure”, she thinks she hears Robin mutter some type of confirmation before replying.
“Can you tell me any other visible injuries you can see? It's always a possibility that there is something internal but it'd be good to have an idea of what I can do before I get there.”
Pomni’s eyes were immediately drawn to the large gash on the side of his face surrounded by bruises, slowly though they go over the rest of his face, specifically his nose. There was bruising around it and was it just her or did it look crooke- The realization hit her like a truck, his nose was broken. She swallows down the nausea rising up and continues to look for any other injuries. His body is mostly hidden as he is currently dressed in a dark purple hoodie and jeans. She notices that his lip is busted, and was about to say that was all when she gets a look at his neck.
Small blue and purple bruises seem to be blooming- and, maybe it was just her imagination but she thought that they might look like finger marks.
She relays all this information to Robin and not long after there is thankfully a knock on the door.
Pomni doesn’t think that she has ever been more relieved to see her friend in her life. She hadn’t fully realized how much she was freaking out until her pulse slowly started to calm.
Just a bit.
Robin walks in and immediately heads to where Jax is slumped against the wall. They sling what Pomi can only assume is some type of medical bag off their shoulder. Out of the bag they grab a flashlight and open his eyes, flashing light in them but somehow he doesn’t show any signs of consciousness. They continue to survey the rest of his injuries, moving his face slightly to get all the angles.
Finally they turn and face her.
“Well he isn’t concussed, surprisingly seeing as whoever hurt him gave him quite a beating. I can reset his nose, and clean over the gash on his cheek but I'd like to assess his other wounds first and we’d need him awake for that.”
“Uh-”, Pomni starts unsure how to ask, “Should we call the police? Those bruises on his neck look a lot like fingers…”
“Yeah I noticed that too-”
“No-no police”
They both turn in sync to the man leaned against the wall. His eyes are only half open and his teeth are gritted in what she can only assume is pain. He tries to adjust his position on the wall but immediately stops and hisses in pain putting a hand on his ribs.
Robin is immediately over him holding a hand to halt him.
“Can I touch your ribs? I think that your ribs might be broken.”
Pomni watches as Jax angles his blurry vision on Robin giving them a slight nod moving his hand away slowly.
She watches as Zooble slowly presses their hands to each of his ribs watching as Jax winces in pain or hisses as a few.
“Well”, they say, “ I don’t think any of them are broken but they are most likely cracked. I’d feel better if you got them checked at a hospital though.”
“No”, he says firmer this time, “No hospitals”
“Why”
“Well”, Pomni watches as a glimmer of his signature smile slips through, though his eyes retain a tired and slightly irritated glint, “Not all of us have health insurance, but seeing as I’m not dying I'm good to go.”
She watches as he slowly tries to stand up and right as he gets his footing he sways. Thankfully he is stopped from falling by Robin who places him on the couch.
“For starters you're clearly not going anywhere at least until you can stand properly and I can attend to your wounds.”
To Pomni’s and Robin’s surprise he doesn’t try to resist them at sits still while Robin attends to his wounds. He only makes a sound when Robin has to reset his nose- just a slight gasp.
When they are finished Robin straightens up and looks at Jax pointedly.
“We should call the police. Whoever did this to you shouldn’t be able to do it again.”
His eyes narrow, not quite angry but different from his usual look. She couldn’t quite place what his face was saying and it bothered her.
“No. No police. I-I just got into a stupid fight, don’t worry they won’t come after me again or anything- and see I’m fine and I probably didn’t even need to come here or anything just freaked out a bit afterward. I’m fine. ” He says all of this in quick succession as though saying it faster will make it more believable, but his jaw is clenched and he can’t look at either of them. For a man that said he was fine, he couldn’t look farther from it.
Pomni makes eye contact with Robin, neither of them believing whatever he was trying to sell, but seeing as he clearly would bolt at any sign of a push they didn’t want to make him leave and potentially get hurt further.
She gave a simple look to Robin. I can take care of this, go home.
You sure? They said looking back.
Pomni gave a simple nod and Robin instructed Jax on how to take care of his wounds before leaving the apartment, giving Pomni a pointed look that she should call them if she needed anything.
Pomni goes to the kitchenette which was only ten feet from the couch- this apartment was not big by any means- grabbing aspirin and water and walking over to Jax.
His eyes were firmly planted on the ground and he seemed to be spaced out totally unaware of her presence mere inches from him.
She clears her throat and hands him the aspirin and water which he takes, his eyes still distant.
She should’ve expected this to be more awkward but clearly she hadn’t thought this through. She wasn’t particularly a fan of it but someone had clearly hurt him and he didn’t feel safe enough to talk about it. That took preferential treatment to whatever negative feelings she had towards him.
“Look, why don’t you lie on my couch for a little bit. You should rest for a bit, "she said, handing him a blanket.
He looks at her for a second looking like he might protest but then he blinks and she can see the clear exhaustion from whatever happened that night take over him. He nods and lays down wrapping the blanket around himself and falls asleep two seconds later.
Pomni sighs in relief. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was gonna do about him in the morning but at least he was resting. He clearly needed it.
She walks to her room grabbing a post it note. On it she writes:
Feel free to take anything from the kitchen breakfast ingredients are in the left drawer along with the cups. If you need more aspirin look in the right drawer.
Just in case he woke up before her. Hopefully though tomorrow when he is better rested she could try to get him to call the police or at least make sure he was safe.
For now though, she stuck the sticky note to his forehead (just like she suspected he was exhausted enough not to notice though she suspected he was normally a light sleeper) hoping that on the off chance he woke up sometime before her that he would be able to get what he needed.
Her mind raced with all the possibilities of what could have happened. Was she doing enough? Is there more she could do to help him? What if got hurt worse because she hadn’t done enough?
After that train of thought spiraled long enough and she realized that it was decidedly creepy to be staring at someone for that long while they were sleeping she decided that nothing could be done right now especially because he was asleep.
She went to her room and fell asleep-a while later- because apparently she couldn’t just turn the thoughts off immediately even if she wanted to.
------------------------------------------------------
She wakes up to the buzzing of her phone.
“Yes” she says groggily, glancing at the clock seeing that it was currently 8:17am the events of last night hitting her all at once.
“Pomni? I-i I'm sorry if I woke you!”
“No-no it’s okay Becca I needed to get up soon for class anyways. What’s up?”
“Uh well you know how today is my first day as student manager?! Well there’s a new student team member which I already knew about but I hadn’t been told who yet! It's Jax and-and he showed up today and he looks like messed up. And look- I know he was horrible to me and I’m not entirely excited to be his manager or anything but I’m also kind concerned and-”
Rebecca continues to ramble on but Pomni isn’t listening, as she steps out of her room to see a blanket folded neatly on her couch as though no one was there.