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Most days in the Circus were difficult ones.
Difficult, in itself, is admittedly an understatement. Today’s adventure had been brutal for everyone involved, and Pomni had been no exception—Caine had gone with some brutal amalgamation of trivia and ‘The Floor is Lava!’ except every wrong answer landed them all of his eternal guests back at the start of the game. All of them.
Sure, Caine was a master of his craft, but it certainly wasn’t the art of bringing joy so much as portraiture of torture, perfected.
The shock of repeated respawning was only the second worst thing behind being dunked unceremoniously into the lava, which always lasted three incredibly painful seconds. Pomni had stopped counting how many times she’d emptied the digital contents of her stomach (why Caine had engineered such an awful thing, she still has no clue, though that’s with most things here) after the first six times.
Upon their return to the Circus the sun had already set, and exhaustion is quick to split apart the group. Ragatha, sweet as she is, offers a comforting arm to Pomni; however, the jester politely refuses, expressing the need for space. Pomni instead offers Ragatha a rain check as a compromise, which restores light to her fallen face. Gangle has already run off to find Zooble, and Kinger to his fort, where no doubt he can decompress in full lucidity.
The only one missing is—
“Jax?” Pomni calls out. No answer. She turns sharp on her heel, looking all around for him, yet he’s already somehow evaded her attention—so concerningly good at slipping away unnoticed.
With everyone dispersed, the weight of the day sinks upon Pomni like an anchor at sea: stranded in darkness, unable to haul herself elsewhere. All her worry for Jax is kept soft in the small center of her folded hands, tucked in her chest where she’s balled herself up on one of the couches. She will nurture it there, between exhaustion and her own animated dreamscape.
The last thing she sees before falling asleep are the fleeting faces of the other members of the Circus, hopes of their collective wellbeing in mind.
Somewhere beyond the hazy veil of digital dreams, there is a presence. Maybe more aptly put, a looming, like the faint awareness of something large and predatory, pacified by the simple delight of lying in wait.
Pomni stirs. Sleep is still preferable to confronting whatever bizarre hell Caine is currently cooking up—his signature Adventure Alarm! hasn’t gone off yet, which means there is still rest to be had.
The observer shifts, ever shaded by night and the fuzzy fringes of consciousness. As Pomni starts to grasp clarity, she realizes she should probably face whatever is most likely standing above her.
She blinks half awake to the sight of Jax, bug-eyed and mouth drawn small and thin, leaning over her far too close.
“Ack—! You have got to stop doing that,” Pomni sputters, doing her best to keep her voice level.
“Sorry, Pompom. You were sayin’ my name in your sleep.” He crouches down to her level, never breaking his stare.
“I-I was? No I wasn’t!”
A traitorous flush works across her face, and Pomni is thankful for the dark to obscure it.
“Nah, you weren’t.” He smirks, thoroughly pleased with himself. “Woulda been funny if ya were though.”
She squints, still blinking away the after effects of digital sleep. It certainly has its merits as far as the personal pleasure of being unconscious goes, but still lacks a human touch of restfulness. Though, she supposes it’s much like hunger: another thing deprived of that they don’t necessarily need, but most assuredly taken for granted. Just as sleep might come to her again, Jax edges closer to her, and Pomni isn’t quite sure that his proximity is as intentional as he would believe it to be.
“Yeeees, Jax…?”
“Huh? What?”
“You’re staring.”
“…Tryin’ to figure out why you’re out here and not in your room.”
His answer fails to provide a reasonable explanation, but Pomni’s too tired to banter. Maybe another time, where perhaps cleverness did not have to be traded for effort.
A beat of silence. “Sleeping.” She states, face down into the couch.
Pomni doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s rolling his eyes; the sound of him sucking his teeth is enough. Faintly, almost enough that she doesn’t feel it, he brushes hair away from where it’s tickling her eyes. The gesture is unusually affectionate.
“…You weren’t there,” Jax mumbles.
“…Huh?”
“In your room. I always hear the little—you know,” he shakes his hands up and down, gesturing to the bells on her hat, “right before you close the door. But it wasn’t—I didn’t—you weren’t… there.”
A genuine slip of vulnerability. It is a rare gift; she knows just by his drooping ears that he must have thought the worst for her because of the day’s adventure, then cooled off when he’d found her here.
Pomni softens. She grabs his fingers where he’d just reached for her, smiling knowingly up at him.
“Whatever,” he continues. “You’re here, you’re fine, I guess. So. Whatever.” It’s meant to be a dismissal, and yet he’s still towering over her, arms crossed and mouth pulled into a tight frown.
“Truth is, I’m too tired to get up.” Pomni admits this with defeat, her free hand gesturing for her while she’s still face down on the couch. The hand holding his turns his palm over, using him as leverage to pull herself up to a sitting position. “Today was… a lot.”
Jax rubs the back of his neck. Her fingers are still lightly wound in his other hand. He is an old friend to comfort, and the effort it takes to remember how it moves through his heart is the same as a rustbound wheel: loud, slow, unchoreographed. The newness of this with Pomni unnerves him.
“Yeah, it’s like that here sometimes. Get with the program, little jester.”
He winces at how callous it sounds.
Before he can turn away, she tugs him closer. Perhaps emboldened by the shroud of dark and quiet around them, Pomni presses her face into his palm, leveraging her playful sweetness where she knows it’ll make him cave.
“You came to find me,” she says, matter-of-fact.
“Don’t do that.”
“And you found me.”
He sneers. “So?”
“So here I am, Jax. Aren’t you a man?”
He nearly falls over. How dare she use his masculinity against him? Then, there’s a noticeable shift in energy—a dissipating of something static that, truth be told, was already well on its way out. Like the smoothening of sea-glass, broken upon its arrival and rounded out by patience, companionship is extended to where Jax’s walls have all but melted from Pomni’s warmth.
His expression is one of frustrated satisfaction. Her ability to return his banter back to him without hesitation makes his heart squeeze. It’s so heavy and so real, and absurdly easy to loathe and long for it all at once.
“You little… yeah, I am a man,” Jax says, flatly, poking her forehead.
With a start, he gathers her up into his arms, alleviating their shared predicament: if she will not bring herself to bed, he will take her there himself. She’s light as a feather, with all the will of one to fight back, though she wears her apprehension plainly on her face.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Where good little jesters’re supposed to go after dark,” he asserts, tongue-in-cheek.
Every pixellated fragment of Pomni’s brain hones onto the places they are touching: one arm hooked under her legs, the other around her back, cradled to his chest. The only way to combat her nerves is by craning her neck up to lazily peck him on the cheek, outranking his boldness by far tonight—waiting with bated breath on his reaction. She likes that about him, most of the time—his vast unpredictability, spurning her further into whatever this is.
She blushes. There’s a ‘this’ to be acknowledged, isn’t there?
“My hero,” she murmurs, eyelids growing heavy again.
Jax’s heart flies into his throat. The urge to drop her is strong, but Pomni’s duped him, petrified him, even. It takes everything in him to simply will his legs to move, and yet he does, allowing himself to dawdle a bit in their shared quiet. And anyway, to articulate his feelings more, he’d have to want her far less. For now, this is enough: relenting, deliberately slow as to delay their inevitable separation.
“Hey, Jax?” Pomni whispers, eyes bleary.
He only hums in response.
She yawns. Cute. “Why would it have been funny if I said your name?”
For a moment Jax keeps walking in silence, allowing her question to hang delicately in the balance. He inhales, ears twitching, then says, “Mn… ‘cause.”
“Because…?”
“It’s… cute, Pompom. You’re—you’re… cute.” His voice drops, biting down on his flustered tongue.
“That’s nice…”
Jax snickers. “You’re not going to remember this, are you?”
“Mmm, no,” Pomni mumbles.
With that Jax takes a daring foray into uncharted territory: reciprocating her earlier act of affection by pressing a kiss to her forehead, then her temple, and finally, a lingering beat of hesitation before pressing one more to the apple of her cheek, round and smooth and so warm to the touch. How hard that is to describe—indulging every one of his violent, impulsive whims for so long, to fill that hungry void inside himself, only to find that he is so unintentionally fulfilled by these small, tender acts. A kiss here, an embrace there. A completely-totally-platonic trip back to her room, not unlike a swooned princess, every now and then.
Right. Her room.
He stands there, Pomni gathered in his arms, gripping her just a little harder. She’s asleep against his chest, her eyes worn, mouth drawn up in that trademark little pout of hers. No part of him has any desire to disturb her, and that rattles him to the core; he should want to mess with her, shake her back to consciousness or drop her on the floor, but instead he finds himself meandering over to her bed. One leg stretches out, carefully flicking back the blanket, before setting her down with all the care he can manage—which is apparently much more than he’d previously assumed.
It isn’t until he’s tucked her warmly into her sheets that Jax finally releases the reverent breath he’d been holding. Her breathing is soft, and level; surely she’s sound asleep once more.
Before he detaches himself from her side, fully intent on sleeping next to her from the floor, he chances a finger across one of the bells on her hat, its sweet chime drawing her mouth into a delicate smile; and, from his place next to her, forlorn and choking down his longing, Jax bitterly accepts that he is absolutely screwed.