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This headache was such an unnecessary thing to deal with.
Bright, blinking lights and swirly colors and the cacophony of noise in the circus made everything seem too much, almost to the point of suffocation Pomni wasn’t sure how long she could hold onto her sanity—or whatever was left of it. Thankfully, Gangle had told her that the spot where they had cake and tea before was a cozy space tucked away from the main area that Pomni took the chance to hightail it out of there and rest, which was what she was doing, taking deep breaths and relishing in the momentary darkness.
But her temples were still aching.
Wasn’t there something she could take for the pain?
Just when she thought of that, she heard a faint popping sound from above then a comical gust of wind sound effect. Something hard and round landed on her head, causing her to bounce to the floor at the impact, seeing stars and lines circling her head in her dizziness.
When Pomni came to and grasped at whatever the thing was, she saw it was a bottle of painkillers which might have fallen from the sky. She frowned. How omnipresent was Caine, actually?
“Sheesh, couldn’t he have given it like a normal person? Why all this drama?”
From behind her, the curtains rustled, a pair of footsteps following.
“Oh hey PomPom, wasn’t expecting to see you here. Thought I’d have some hot chocolate again.”
Pomni turned around to see Jax, in all his lanky glory and try-hard façade. His usual smirk was on his face, one hand casually resting on his hip. As she turned back toward the pill bottle, she returned unenthusiastically, “Heeeeyy Jax.”
She heard him come closer, and soon enough she could see him from her peripheral, all mischievous grins and just giddy to be a nuisance. Unfortunately, it seemed she was his target today. Her eyes drifted to the pill bottle, small hands trying to twist it open.
“What, cat got your tongue? You can’t seem to form words today. Such a shame.”
“And you can’t seem to shut up,” she found herself retorting, a spark of annoyance making itself known on her temple. “Alas, we both can’t get what we want.”
If he had eyebrows, they would have jumped at how snappy she was being today. Pomni couldn’t care less; her headache was returning twofold and she still couldn’t get the stupid thing to open!
“Ooh, someone’s feisty today.”
She missed the way his eyes had turned into those large rectangles when he was emotionally distancing himself from any and all vulnerabilities. Jerk.
After the gun adventure, it was clear something between them shifted. Meaningless words and conversations filled the silence in such a way that bantering with him didn’t seem all that fun anymore since he’d pull away and clam up. Attempts to reach out were met with snark and scorn, Jax’s (emotional) walls up and solid more than ever that Pomni defaulted to skirting around what she really wanted to talk about, but holding back because she knew Jax wouldn’t say crap. It was like they went back to being strangers, like she was new in the circus all over again. It wasn’t exactly a good feeling in her stomach, but oh well it was pointless to try to reason with someone so adamant in putting a front and so averse to anything genuine and required softness.
Jax, the nosy piece of crap he was, became a busybody once he spotted the painkillers. He grinned. Pomni wished he’d back off.
“Having oh so terrible aches and pains, eh? What’s the point of takin’ ‘em when we’re not real?”
Her gloved fingers slipped on the lid, prompting her to mutter a curse and have it censored out by that annoying black block. She shut her eyes to compose herself, her lips pursed and figure tense before she deemed herself calm enough to face Jax, who was staring at her with such huge eyes and smile it started to become uncanny.
“Jax, I’m real tired of your bull$%!t and I am not in the mood so please, kindly f@c& off.”
Jax snickered at her outburst. Oh, so it was nothing for him. What’d she expect?
“You can’t even open the painkillers without shaking.”
“So get your a$$ over here and open them for me.”
Call it a slip of the tongue, a bluff, a mistake, a miscalculation. She was about to take her words back when he sighed dramatically and plucked the bottle from her hands, giving it a good shake and twisting the cap off neatly like it was nothing, like it didn’t give Pomni a run for her money in opening that little thing. It irked her, the twitch in her eye being the only physical reaction that gave it away.
As Jax offered it back to her he sighed, “Sheesh, you’re so dramatic.”
Pomni didn’t grace him with a verbal reply; merely narrowed her eyes at him and swiped at the offending objects to finally rid herself of the rhythmic pounding in her temples and back of the head.
She poured three into her palm, considered for a moment, and added three more. As she was counting, Jax made a show of swiping two and popping it into his mouth, smirk curling the sides of his cartoonishly big mouth. He faced her and grinned again. Pomni, taken by the overwhelming urge to smack him to kingdom come, forced herself to calm down and gulp down the remaining four with a tiredness that didn’t seem possible in her plastic, unrealistic jester body. She’d float any moment now, she could feel it.
“I’m so tired.”
“So am I.”
The blunt admission made Pomni turn to him, Jax for a moment looking real and tangible and raw, the grin absent from his face and his posture almost relaxing. It was almost jarring, how human he looked without the pretense of keeping up appearances. She wondered if sometimes she looked like that too: a mishmash of something real and absurd, tethering on both sides she wasn't fully either. She wondered if Jax stayed up all night thinking about the then and if there really was some way to leave all this behind. She did, at least.
But then that infuriating grin plastered itself back onto his face, a grin that masked his true emotion, which he wore like impenetrable armor. It was sickening in a way, because he was trying so visibly to stick to his “funny one” persona and it was clearly unraveling fast.
“But we can’t always get what we want so I’m going down to meddle with the losers who are in need of my charming company.”
This made a laugh bubble out of Pomni’s mouth, reminded of that time under the stars where he said he was the pinnacle of masculinity, exuding charm and ease like his life depended on it. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Who was Pomni to say otherwise?
Seemed he too remembered the same thing, judging by the knowing grin which he frantically turned into a half-smirk, blinking rapidly as he turned away. His gait was rushed, but he was still able to throw a lazy wave at her.
For a second, Pomni considered calling after him, but didn’t know what she’d say once their eyes met and said a thousand unspoken things their mouths couldn’t. So she watched him go, silently tracking him and holding her breath she didn’t noticed she changed hues.
And when he left, Pomni was left with a bone-deep exhaustion even the painkillers couldn’t remedy.