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Toss, turn, readjust, grumble. Toss, turn, flip pillow, kick off blanket. Toss, turn, try sleeping on back. Toss, turn, no, that didn't work at all. Toss, turn, toss, turn—
Sit up, completely lose shit.
Which real-world tactile features and sensations got translated into a digital equivalent seemed to have been decided with a dartboard and a shotgun, Pomni thinks. Some things are sensationless and hollow, others are basically just like normal, with little rhyme or reason. But of all the things she can still feel, of all the human experiences she could still be subject to, right now, nothing pisses her off more than the fact that in this sterile digital hell, the pillows can still be clammy and warm, the blankets can still itch, and her bed can still betray her with discomfort and irritation and that awful groggy one-third-asleep feeling for hours and hours into the night.
'We don't actually need to sleep'— fat lot of comfort that is, because she wants to. She'd even argue that, yes, actually, she does need to sleep; she tried skipping out on it for a few nights during her second week here and by day three her mind was shooting off sparks from the cognitive strain and blurring time. So, lesson learned, get some sleep, embrace the routine, like Ragatha had warned her.
Her head hurts. Her thoughts hurt. She needs more than anything to savor the small comfort that at the very least, she gets eight hours a 'night' where she can switch it all off and rest. But this stupid pillow is fighting her. Just like back home. She's grateful, at least, that there isn't an alarm clock burning eight-segment orange into her eyes, flashing '4:57 AM' to taunt her.
As she takes one of the muggy pillows to her face and screams into it, a sense of deja-vu washes over her. She hadn't been a full-time insomniac, back in the real world; it was a seasonal job for her, though she was not privy to whatever calendar its schedule followed. For about three weeks at a time she'd doze off within minutes and wake up a quarter-to her alarm, having managed a perfect eight hours, just as she's supposed to. And then for the other ten weeks in every fiscal quarter, it was waking up once an hour, tossing and turning the whole night, going to bed at 1 and falling asleep at 5, watching the dawn's deep blue creep towards her from the windows like bitter cold floodwaters.
Most of her sick days at work— what few she got— went towards incidents of, 'I sat in bed all night but didn't sleep and I'm out of caffeine pills, fuck this'. They should've run a scientific study on her, she thinks, to ascertain the benefits and drawbacks of switching from being a carbon-based to a caffeine-based life form. Oh well. Too late now. It's also too late to bite the bullet and finally ask to switch to night shift, like she'd been toying with for a while, before she got trapped here.
Caine doesn't do schedule adjustments. She'll be a morning person in the circus whether she likes it or not, and boy howdy, does she not fucking like it.
Even after smothering herself dizzy screaming into the pillow, Pomni finds that none of her rage has dissipated. So, she opens wide and bites down onto the pillow, feeling her teeth slant razor-sharp and she tears into it like a misbehaving dog. Digital feathers and fluff scatter about the bed and her room as she eviscerates the warm-on-both-sides traitor in her jaws. She growls in rage all the while.
The pillow now in tatters, the jester's late-hour berserker fury seeks out a new target. She stands from the bed, throwing the blanket off to the floor where it lands softly in a heap. That was nothing, she thinks. A small part of her notices with a quiet pang of relief that pretty much all the pillow-debris went to the floor with it, so at least her awful, evil bed wouldn't need to be cleaned off.
She pounds her fists into the mattress, bouncing back up with each blow. She takes her other pillow— she had swapped it out hours ago, since it was also warm on both sides— and slams it into the wall repeatedly like it owes her money, in search of catharsis that doesn't seem to come no matter how hard she freaks out.
Pomni throws the pillow across the room like a sack of rotten potatoes. It impacts the pile of blocks in the corner and clips through the top 'F' and the ‘O’ beneath it. After a moment of slamjanking in place, the blocks spit the pillow out and it impacts Pomni at mach-speeds with a loud thwoumph, knocking her to the floor.
She groans as she rolls onto her side, holding the clammy, warm, nasty pillow close to her chest as she sobs defeatedly into it. "I hate this f[#!$]ing pla-a-ace..."
She would've been content to just lie on the floor in misery for a while, but even it is warm, stuffy, and uncomfortable, to say nothing of the still-problematic pillow in her arms. She sits up cross-legged and hunched over and tosses the pillow aside, trying to think of any possible remedy for the already agonizingly long night she's been having.
Tea and a book, maybe? Chamomile and honey goes a long way, but she doesn't really know where the tea or the books are, and some foolish part of her wants to preserve her half-sleepy state, afraid to wait around for a kettle and lose the meager progress she'd allegedly made on not being conscious anymore. When she was younger and dumber, she'd step outside to the balcony to have a smoke, but that'd be thoroughly ruled out even if she was still out in the real world. Still, a part of her craves at least the cool nighttime air, to wash some of the dryly-sticky itch off of her rubbery skin. Maybe outside the tent would suffice? But no, that's too far, and she might just get lost trying to find the front door.
She should really ask someone to give her a full tour, she thinks. 'Someone'— she almost laughs. She should ask Ragatha. Her very best kind-of-weird, kind-of-too-much, please-stop-babying-me 'met on the first day' friend. Thank god, she thinks, at least she has a first-day friend, at least someone here reached out first and was kind from the jump. She can't imagine trying to settle into this damn place having to just cold-open every request or question with one of her fellow prisoners. She remembers starting at her accounting job, not knowing anybody and feeling isolated and awkward for weeks until she had finally established herself in the sort-of chilly office dynamic. Here, she'd already gotten to know most of her fellow prisoners well enough, now that it's been a few weeks... months... however long. She's had some bonding moments in strange places, her recent talk with Kinger down in the deepest pits of hell, most prominently. She likes to think she's good at reading people and skilled at building rapport, and it's been so far so good, on that front. It's just so much simpler to ask for help from someone who's itching to give it out. It's so much easier knowing she has a 'default' to fall back on, when Kinger’s incoherent, when Gangle’s isolating herself, when Zooble’s too grumpy to approach, and when Jax can’t behave himself, which is usually. Ragatha not only wouldn’t throw her out of a moving truck, but had disapproved quite strongly of the idea, and she gets a lot of points for that.
The doll had eagerly made herself Pomni’s default— insisted on it— without hesitation. The jester smiles in the dark of her room, remembering the heartwarmed look on the doll's face when she'd thanked her for always being so concerned, back at Mildenhall Manor. It's hard to portion out her energy, here, trying to find the right balance of attention to allocate to establishing herself, to getting to know everyone, to herself and her own need for respites of solitude. Too often, she thinks, she's 'robbing Peter to pay Paul', when it comes to her— one day, she'll have her energy-budget all neat in its spreadsheet, but until then, she's been leaving Ragatha on the backburner, banking on her default status. She feels guilty for it, but that money has to come out of somewhere. She just hopes Ragatha can forgive some late payments.
Pomni sighs, rubbing at her face. That's the other problem— she's thinking too much, her harried brain running circles around her. In the time she's been here, the circus had already piled in her head an endless backlog of traumas to process, social webs to untangle, and priorities to rearrange. She could make do with the lack of comfort if her mind was calm, and she could make do with a busy mind if her bed was comfortable. But both are failing her, and that equals up all night, as she's learned the hard way a thousand times over.
Her mind will probably never be 'calm' again, not here. There's too much to agitate her. But maybe she could be more comfortable, at least. Clumsily, she stands up and heads for her door, stepping out into the hall. She's already shuffled halfway there before she realizes she's going for Ragatha's room. Maybe, she realizes she's intending to ask, the doll has some spare pillows. Maybe she has a body pillow, something long that can offer some support for side-sleeping. Pomni never did like sleeping on her back, but her back didn't like sleeping on her side, nor on her front. Thus the predicament. Back home, she had a well-stocked arsenal of neck-support pillows, foam and feather head pillows, knee pillows, spares of all sorts, and even a body pillow and her many oversized plushies— the big guns— that she could bring out when needed. Now, here in the circus, she’s back down to just the two… well, just the one, now.
As she stares at the portrait on Ragatha's door and opens her mouth to ask it for a spare pillow, she realizes that she's a lot loopier than she first thought. Whatever. This'll be a simple enough interaction, she assumes incorrectly. She knocks.
It's not nearly as long as she'd have expected before the door creaks gently open, Ragatha peeking her head out. "O-Oh, hey, Pomni... are you okay? It's awful late…" she asks gently, opening her door the rest of the way and wringing her hands together, doting concern spelled out all over her face, lit by the half-dimmed hallway lights.
"Can't sleep. Hell. Suffering. Death," Pomni grumbles, bleary eyes glancing up to notice the blue-and-white striped nightcap on Ragatha's head, with a fluffy pom-pom adorning its floppy end. "Oh... cute hat," she coos.
"Ah— thanks! Um, I made it myself... if only we could have pyjamas to match, right?" Ragatha laughs awkwardly.
"Mmm. Right? Or at least take this stupid thing off..." she tugs at the collar of her jester's outfit and her stupid hat. "Ugh. I yearn to be naked."
"Uh... ha-ha, that's fair!"
Pomni rubs at her eye. "I'm so f[#!$]ing—" she jumps at the sound of the censor-box. "—groggy. Sorry."
"I can tell... I'm sorry you're having trouble getting to sleep, Pomni. That's always rough. Is there… any reason why? If you need to talk, I'm here for you, y'know."
She should get like, a t-shirt with that on the front in big letters, save herself from having to say it all the time, Pomni thinks with a faint smirk. "Yeah. Uh. Do you, um, I need some better pillows. Do you have any spares? Pretty please?"
"Oh, yeah, I should! I guess maybe not so many pillows, but, I got plenty of blankets and quilts to spare at least. Lemme go take a look..." the doll says, half-closing her door and trotting off to search.
"A long one—" Pomni calls after her, pausing to yawn. "Long one would be good. If you got it."
"I-I don't think I do, sorry... er... maybe... let's see..." Ragatha calls back.
Pomni stands in the hall, blinking one eye at a time and swaying in place as she waits. Eventually, the doll returns, with a giant armfull of quilts, blankets, throw pillows, normal pillows— the works, but no long pillow. Curses.
"Here, these are all I got! Oh, geez, you look exhausted... I can carry these over to your room, if you'd like?"
Pomni squints, surveying the heap. Some of the quilts look temptingly nice, she silently admits, but the pillows seem like traitors, same as her own. She needs a long one, or it'll all be for nothing. She looks from the heap to Ragatha, looming tall, staring down at her with a soft, pensive expression. Her exhausted mind comes up with a great idea.
"Hmm... hold on..." she mumbles, stepping forward, taking the pile of blankets and nearly toppling over as her center of gravity shifts. She dumps them unceremoniously on the floor. Ragatha's eye widens, confused, as Pomni steps around the pile, closes the gap, and squeezes her tight, pressing her cheek into the doll's chest. "Okay... okay... I can work with this."
The fabric of her dress and skin are a little coarse, not ideal for the long-haul of the night, but she's perfectly sized and perfectly soft, Pomni thinks. Like one of her plushies.
"A-Ah…! Pomni, do you, need a hug?" Ragatha asks, unoffended but uncertain as her arms hover awkwardly over the jester's back.
No, I need a long pillow, try to keep up, the jesters mind answers, the same part of it responsible for the resourceful solution she's about to propose. The rest of Pomni— her good sense, social tact, and all the other rational centers of her drowsy brain— catches on to the scheme, rolling out the red tape.
Hold on. Is this weird? This might be weird. She's reacting all surprised. This is weird.
Pomni blinks a few times, as if expecting her heavy eyelids to weigh in on the matter. Despite her addled state, she attempts the social calculus of using a circumstantial-but-fairly-good-friend as a pillow.
Really intimate plus personal space violation plus normally what you'd do with a date minus did this with my roomies in college minus what's a little cuddling between pals divided by it for a good cause to the power of I'm so tired, she calculates, swaying her weight from foot to foot and rocking Ragatha with her.
It's fine, she concludes. A disclaimer will suffice.
"Feel free to say no, cause, uh, this is… a really weird thing to ask. But I'm too tired to care. Can I just, like, use you?"
"Wh... use... me?"
"As a pillow. You're comfy"
"Y-Y-Yeah!?” her voice cracks as she squeaks like a field mouse. The dim light, mercifully, conceals the fact that her whole face is simmering molten red. "Khm. Sure, Pomni, i-if, that'd help?"
"Sweet," the jester answers, hefting Ragatha up, resting the doll over the top of her head as she carries her off to bed. "Thanks."
Ragatha's too shocked to reply, starting to doubt if she's even awake. She glances behind her pensively to see her door still slightly ajar and her nightcap laying abandoned on the floor, but can't unscramble her brain fast enough to say anything about it before Pomni's already taken her into her room and kicked the door closed behind them.
Stepping into the dim room, strewn with toys and scraps of pillow, Pomni immediately makes for the bed, eager to try out her new pillow and finally get some sleep. Ragatha " X _ O " 's in shock, slowly coming to terms with the seeming fact that this is actually happening and wondering how she's gonna manage to be normal about it. She curses her apparently automatic response. No hesitation, no followup questions, no resistance, just, ‘yeah!’, stammered like she was glitching out.
"Don't mind the mess," the jester yawns. "I had to kill my last pillow."
"T-That's fine! Uh, doesn't, ha, doesn't bode too well for me, though, if that's the fate of my, um, predecessor," Ragatha laughs, catastrophically nervous, though the risk of being torn to shreds comes last on the list of reasons why.
"Don't be clammy warm nasty on my face and you'll make it through the night intact."
"I'll do my best!" she promises, unsure of how she'd have any control over that.
Pomni tosses her onto the bed and reaches down to retrieve the wayward blanket. Ragatha lies stiff as a board right where she landed, unable to even begin imagining what she's supposed to actually be doing, here. Should she just lie there? Does Pomni want her to cuddle back? Is she taking up too much room? Should she ball up and lay at the top of the mattress— she didn't want her to be the standard kind of pillow, right? She wanted a 'long one'. Is Ragatha long?
...Has something gotten into Pomni? Is this weird? Is Ragatha in the wrong for having accepted? Pomni's clearly tired, but does that mean she's not in her right mind? What if it's like being drunk? Is Ragatha taking advantage of her? Wait— no— how does that even make sense, taking advantage HOW, I'm not— we're not— this is just, she needed a long pillow and she asked me if I could be that! I'm long, that's all, she pleads with herself. Her heart hammers out of control in her chest as she starts to worry about that too, since if Pomni's going to be laying on her then she'll surely hear it and wonder what's going on in her sorry and spiraling cotton head.
Pomni sits on the bed as the hour of Ragatha's reckoning fast approaches. She quietly says her prayers as the jester throws the blanket over them both and situates herself. She scoots in close, slipping one arm under the small of the doll's back and resting her other on her far shoulder as she pulls the doll's body in tight beneath the crook of her neck, resting her head on Ragatha's chest. Ragatha bends and squishes in ways a bone-having human body would generally disapprove of— even still, it's a lot more comfortable than she would've guessed. Her whole body tingles with a white-hot yet still pleasant warmth, waves of pins and needles like heavy beanbags rolling over her as Pomni snuggles her. She suddenly understands why all the teddy bears, plushies, and other ragdolls of the world put up with all they do as, despite herself, a warbly, blissful smile grows across her face like creeping vines.
After a few moments, Pomni grumbles, sits up, grabs her 'pillow' with both hands, and fluffs her, kneading Ragatha's middle and chest and sides with a utilitarian vigor.
"Wublh-huhh-fhu-hubn-uhnnm-wug!?" is the doll's only comment on perhaps the strangest thing she's ever felt, not dissimilar to when a masseuse finally straightens out a particularly nasty muscle knot. It isn't quite painful, but it's certainly intense.
"Oh—! Sorry!" Pomni says guiltily, laying Ragatha back down and withdrawing her hands. "Oh my god. Are you okay?"
"Y-Yup! Ha... oh, man... that felt… that was sure something!"
"Did it hurt?"
"N… no, I guess not. It was... kinda nice?" she cringes at herself. Don't admit that, you fool...
"Huh..." the jester huhs. She pokes at Ragatha's decompressed tummy, fluffier than it was before, paying no mind to the doll's little pillsbury-esque squeak. "Oh, that actually worked. Cool."
The shock of the moment does little to calm Ragatha's heart as Pomni lays back down and resumes her place snuggled into her chest, arms wrapped tight and one leg straddled over her hips. A slow, gentle sigh of relief bleeds out of Pomni as she sinks in deeper to her new, freshly-fluffed pillow, her weary face smoothing out into a look of great contentment; Ragatha can just barely feel the growing smile on the jester's face against her chest.
"Mmh... you good? Heart's racing." Pomni asks softly.
Shit shit shit shit "O-Oh, me? Yep! I'm... peachy keen!"
"Uh-huh. You got up really fast, when I knocked, too... were you having nightmares or something?"
"...Yeah. Real bad ones."
"Aw... that sucks, Ragsy," Pomni coos, squeezing her a little tighter. "I've had a lotta them too since I came here. As if getting a good night's sleep isn't hard enough."
Her heart skips a beat, taking a pause to melt instead of hammer. 'Ragsy'? "Uh... thanks, Pomni. And... I'm sorry. That you've had nightmares. That's hard."
"Yeah, I just said that," she flatly replies.
"...Sorry."
"You're fine."
Ragatha lays limp, filling whatever shape Pomni's arms pull her into like water as her brain rattles violently in her head like a failing engine. The jester's gradually slowing, peaceful breathing serves as Ragatha's only positive feedback. Without it, she would assume she's badly, badly messing this up, though she assumes that anyway. She's nervous, self-conscious, out of her depth, more than a little confused, and squirming with dozens of other feelings she isn't really ready to let surface just yet. She remembers what Pomni said about her old pillow; hopefully, all the heat in her face doesn't make her uncomfortably warm.
One of the feelings she wanted to stay buried rises up to the surface, breaching the thick layer of anxiety like a muck bubble, hissing as it steams out into the air of her conscious mind: Ragatha hasn't been completely touched-starved, since arriving here. She's shared hugs with Kinger. One or two with Zooble, as well. Gangle, also, though not for a while, not since... everything. In the near-decade she's spent in the circus, there've been plenty she's offered her arms and softness to. She's held many, and lost most of them, in the end. But it's rare, she reflects, that she's the one being held. Certainly never like this, never this closely, this unabashedly, this, for desperate want of a better word, intimately. She's practically drowning in Pomni's touch, hyper-aware of each little squeeze and tug and nuzzle, of every little bit of Pomni's weight, of her warm breath in pulses of both sound and damp heat soaking into her dress. Each bit of stimuli pangs in her head, irresolvable as either fear or delight, existing within her as experience beyond her capacity to judge it; in Pomni's arms, she simply is. If it weren't for the rest of her brain, burning like a sinking warship, she's certain that she would find such peace in the heavenly moment as to quell her harried heart for years to come.
Then, another feeling bubbles up, popping loudly in her head: she doesn't deserve this. She can placate the guilt somewhat by pointing out that this is technically a service she's providing, rather than something she's receiving— but she is receiving, is the problem, even if Pomni might not realize it (which only makes it worse). Her throat tightens as she melts in the jester's arms, the weight of her head on her chest offering so much more relief than she ever could've imagined from the weight normally on her shoulders. Being held so closely, simply put, makes her feel nice. It makes her feel cherished. It makes her feel...
Useful. Most of all, she feels useful— and that's the number one thing she's been failing to be for Pomni ever since she arrived. None of her efforts ever land how she intends. None of her placations ever soothe the pain of the circus. None of her advice is actually helpful. She's taken nine years of hard lessons, during her indefinite sentence in the circus, and yet she'd been too dull and too useless to pull from that time served a single transferable sliver of wisdom to help Pomni at all. She hadn't ever helped any of the other players, really, though she's failed plenty of them. If she'd been better at this, maybe more of them would still be here, instead of buried in the cellar.
But now, out of nowhere, by no initiative of her own, she's finally useful to Pomni. She's being held and cuddled close and called Ragsy as the jester keeps giving soft sighs and little hums of cozy bliss into her butterfly-filled tummy. She doesn't deserve this. She did nothing to earn it. And it probably wouldn't be happening if Pomni were in a clearer headspace. Pomni hates unprompted touch, this she's learned, and keeps relearning, the hard way. It baffles her that Pomni could be so carefree and comfortable like this, especially with her, after she's tripped over the jester's boundaries so many times. Where did this kind of trust come from? What did she do right, for this to happen? And how's she supposed to do right by that trust, when she doesn't know why it's been granted to her?
Some cruel part of her mind posing as an optimist while acting as the devil on her shoulder suggests that maybe it's just different now, maybe this is Pomni granting clearance for her affections, surely, at least, for right now. She blinks a tear out of her eye. Even if she doesn't deserve this, and doesn't deserve to hold her back, she's only human. The carrot can only dangle so close to her starving mouth before she tries to take a bite. Frightfully, she lifts her shaking arms from the bed and places them featherlight on Pomni's back, letting herself indulge in the closeness, knowing full well that she'll probably never experience anything like this again.
Pomni stiffens. She withdraws her arms from around Ragatha and sweeps them down her shoulders, pulling the doll's arms off her back and pinning them snugly to Ragatha's sides. "Pillows don't hug back," she grumbles.
Ragatha's heart starts hammering again. She feels almost immediately sick, crawling in her own vile skin. "I-I'm sorry! I'm really sorry, I... sorry," she whispers desperately.
"You're fine. Not like you got anything better to do with your arms. I just..." Pomni yawns. "I gotta be in the mood to be touched. But it's different if I'm doing it. Or something. I dunno."
"O-Okay. I'm sorry I..." She can't even bring herself to say what she did, the words pooling in her gut like swallowed poison. A vague apology is worthless, she knows that, but she's too ashamed to do any better. "I'm sorry I did that without asking. I really am.”
“It’s like, nothing. Heh. One time, I was cuddling with one of my friends, back in college. Both of us were drunk, of course. We fell asleep on the couch… later that night, she mistook me for her boyfriend and gave my butt a good squeeze.”
“O-Oh…” Ragatha sinks at the anecdote, taking it for more of a comparison. She can’t imagine how Pomni is so forgiving, if that’s how invasive her touch had been.
Pomni giggles. “I, heh, eheh, I told her, ‘either finish what you started or keep your hands to yourself!’ Oh my god, she was so red.”
“Um… ha… ha?” Ragatha laughs frailly, unsure of what the moral of the story is. “I’m… really sorry, Pomni, i-it won’t happen again,” she lies, of course it’s a lie, she’s trod over this line of hers a dozen times and certainly will again like the creep she is—
"Shhh. It's fiiine. You're so weird, sometimes..."
The words pierce her pounding heart like a dagger. She remains silent.
Pomni rolls her eyes, able to hear her heart-rate spike even higher. "In an endearing way. Chill."
Ragatha tries her best to obey, with little luck. She curses herself, for being so skittish, for being so clumsy with her words, so misguided with her actions, and so off-base in her understanding of others. She curses herself for being so inept at so many things and yet so endlessly talented at finding the perfect way to turn something lovely into a twisting knife in her chest.
Pomni's cuddled up to her, holding her close without a care in the world, telling her little stories and trying to reassure her. She's treating Ragatha like a teddy bear and it's working. Even Ragatha can't deny the positive effect she's having: the gentle, falling pace of the jester's breath, her quiet little hums of contentment, her soft nuzzles deeper into the doll's middle, the tight, almost possessive way her arms wrap around her waist. Ragatha is finally able to offer something of use to Pomni, finally was the perfect answer to one of her questions, finally made her life here a little easier. And in return, Ragatha had received the most intimate, warm, and soothing moment she's known in a decade, maybe her whole life.
So why does she feel so guilty? Why does her mind so eagerly load each wonderful bulletpoint into a pistol with which to perforate her?
...No, she knows why. She knows why she's guilty. She knows why she's so weird, and only getting weirder with each passing day. The feelings betray her dishonesty.
It's so embarrassing to admit that all it'd taken to become obsessed with Pomni was a single thank-you. One sincere smile up at her, one unprompted declaration of appreciation for her efforts, the faintest bit of reciprocation, and she was hooked. She'll remember Mildenhall Manor for the rest of her life— her favorite adventure, easy. She found a rope to tie Jax up and free herself of him for one beautiful, peaceful hour. She got to have tea with Ms. Mildenhall. She got to explore a spooky haunted house and ramble away with Gangle about vintage architecture and interior decor. Her only qualm with the day had been what happened to Pomni and Kinger.
But then they had been fine after all! And Pomni had walked up to her, looked her in the eyes, and on her own volition, said thank you. To her, and only her.
Her chest glows like a roaring hearth cutting through winter cold at the memory, her face glowing red with embarrassment to match. What a small, meaningless thing to fall in love over. Pomni probably didn't even remember saying it. She'd probably regret it, if she knew how deeply to heart Ragatha had taken it. She might regret it anyway, since the doll just can't leave her alone, now.
Ragatha knows Pomni doesn't feel the same way— if she did, there's no chance she'd be so casual about using her as a pillow. Probably. But she knows Pomni feels... some way. She's too afraid of overestimation to even hazard a guess as to what, as if venturing that they're so much as acquaintances would rewrite reality and turn them to enemies, just to prove her wrong. Pomni has some measure of fondness for her, this is fact. Pomni usually turns to her first, when she has questions about her new home or doesn't know what to do with herself. She thinks her weirdness is 'endearing', for whatever that's worth. And she's willing to be this incredibly, preposterously, absurdly close to her, even if only as a matter of comfort.
The more she thinks about it, the more her doubts and fears and guilt all drown in a far, far more vast emotion, filling her head to the top: confusion. She can't make heads or tails of the jester, how she feels, how she thinks, or what possesses her to hold someone she thinks of as strange and (presumably) annoying so fondly and so tightly. It’d be one thing if she were tossing Ragatha around, bending her out of shape, squeezing overly-tight; she’s taking full advantage of Ragatha’s flexible physiology, yes, but she isn’t treating her like an object. In Pomni’s tight embrace there is clear concession for the doll’s own comfort and warmth to welcome her presence. No matter Ragatha’s uncertainty about what her standing with Pomni truly is, she’s forced to confront that nobody does this with someone they care nothing for.
Her eye starts to scribble. Is she doing something wrong? Is it all her fault? Pomni's exasperated 'chill' lingers in her mind, like deep winter’s cold in her fingers. Is she going to ruin this? How much does it cost Pomni to look past how 'weird' she is? Should she do something else? Give more? Try harder? Or just... lay still and comply, do nothing and hope everything falls into place?
She just doesn't know. Her head spins, metaphorically and then soon after literally as Pomni grumbles again, lifts up off her chest, and then flips her over, spinning her round and round and wrapping her up like a spider might do with a snared fly in the excess fabric of her blanket.
"Whu-huh-hey! Wha—" she protests as she's rolled up tight, arms close to her sides, fully at the jester's mercy as she retakes her prior place nestled into Ragatha's middle.
"I like the blanket texture more," she informs. "It's smooth and you're soft. Win-win for my face."
"U-Uh, alright... I can't, um, move anymore, though, ha-ha..."
"I know," Pomni says, cutesy and soft and with an impish little grin that Ragatha feels more than sees. "You're my Ragarito, now."
She strains against her silken tortilla, holding her snug. "...Awe, beans," she ventures with a shy smile. "G-Guess you got me!"
Pomni snorts at the pun; it's perhaps the most rewarding sound Ragatha has ever heard. "Didn't know I ordered you with extra cheese."
Ragatha tee-hees as her blush worsens, both in response to the— it's not flirting it's BANTER —banter, and also her own girlish laugh. If her arms were free, she might as well be twirling her hair around her finger.
"Mmm... you're so toasty. How d'ya do that? You're always, like, dryer fresh." Pomni asks, her voice starting to droop, words half-slurred as she sinks deeper and deeper into Ragatha, everything finally lined up goldilocks-perfect.
"W-Well, if I wasn't warm, I'd be a wrap, not a burrito."
"Lettuce," Pomni mumbles bitterly. "I hate lettuce. Nuh-uh. You're like... hot guac. Mm..."
Ragatha stares perplexedly up at the canopy of Pomni's bed, hoping to divine some sort of solid answer as to whether or not that counts as banter as well. She doesn't bother to interrogate Pomni's guacamole temperature preferences.
Pomni's foot swishes along the sheets, back and forth like a cat's tail. Ragatha marvels at how squirmy she is— she's clearly comfortable, and yet, she can't resist nuzzling in just a little closer every few seconds, as if betting again and again that she somehow still hasn't maxed-out the possible comfort potential of her new favorite pillow. "...I get silly when I'm sleepy. And kinda sassy. 'M sorry..." Pomni groans, barely still conscious.
"Don't worry about it, Pomni. You're all good.” She tries to give finger guns, but they’re stuck in her holsters at the present. She opens her mouth to offer some sort of alternative gesture of reassurance. Don't say it, she tries to warn herself, but she's too late. “I-I think it's cute when you're silly!"
"Mm. It's weird that I pillowed you. You're not a pillow you're a—" she yawns, ignoring her cuteness. "mmndolly..."
"There's, ah, a lot of overlap, to be fair."
"Heh... heheh... so true, bestie."
Her heart flutters. Bestie? "O-Oh! Are... um… gosh, do you… mean that?"
"Ssssure, why not. You're basically my bestie here. We never leave eachother the hell alone! Except me. I do. I should leave you alone less. I like bugging you. I got other stuff goin' on, I gotta, prioritize..! But I hope you'll still be here when I'm done with all’a that."
Ragatha's heart twists like a washcloth being wrung out, all the feeling in her chest splattering to the bottom of her stomach in messy drops. They're friends, but Ragatha needs to leave her alone. They're 'besties', but only in a 'sure, why not' way. She likes bugging her, but she has to prioritize. Tears well up in the doll's eye, lingering at the threshold as they try to decide before they spill out whether they're tears of joy or sadness or fear or what.
"...This is nice," Pomni hums, obliviously interrupting her spiral yet again. "You're nice. It's kinda weird I asked you for this, but 'm glad you said yeah. It's nice being close to someone."
Why do you toy with me like this, some part of her mind cries out. She doesn't know what to do. Part of her is glad she's been spun up and held down, or she’d be pulling at her hair right now. Instead, her only course of action is to just be a good pillow. That she can do very well, evidently.
Her lip trembles as all of her self-assurances and recognitions of Pomni’s gratitude to have her here are washed away in a flood of doubt that she mislabels as hard fact, mistaking its severity for the weight of truth. She finally found something she's good for, and it's being an inanimate object. None of her words matter. None of who she is matters. She's just a soft body to hold, to pin her arms down, to wrap up and fluff and toss around as seen fit. She's a worthless person, but a great doll. So at least she has that. She wonders how the morning is going to go, when Pomni wakes up with a clear head to find there's some freak living in her otherwise perfectly good pillow. She's sure the jester will regret how tonight's gone. She's sure Pomni will take it all back— that is, if she remembers.
Ragatha vows to never bring this all up, to never remind Pomni of her mistake. It's the only kind or selfless thing she can actually do at this point, so it's what she'll commit to.
...But if it's all going to be washed away with the dawn, if it'll all be swept under the rug, then, she supposes, what's the harm in pretending for now? She can pretend she deserves this. She can wallow in the fantasy of being held for who, not what, she is. It'll be her little secret, her guilty indulgence, if only for tonight.
"...Duh... don't let... the sunflowers see us, ‘kay?" Pomni 'says', groaning her words more than pronouncing them.
"Huh?"
"I want it to be our secret... don't let ‘em see... I don't like dancing in public..." she clarifies.
Ah, off she goes, Ragatha thinks as Pomni starts to snore between her breaths. It almost sounds like purring, reverberating pleasantly through her chest.
"I won't, darling," she says, trying out the pet-name, feeling a pleasant albeit nervous buzz on her lips as she says it. She won't remember it anyway. It doesn't matter. "Your secret's safe with me."
"Thanks, Ragsy... if... mm... if'm too short, can you carry me in your pocket?"
"...Yeah. I'll keep you close."
"Yay!" Pomni squeaks. "Thinns whuh... why... I should keep you..." The jester says nothing else, her voice sinking down into her slowly rising chest for the night, sheltering like a snail in its shell.
Ragatha tilts her head to rest her cheek against the top of Pomni's hat, stealing the faintest little embrace back, letting herself savor the moment. As she tries to drift off with her, she imagines running through a sunflower field beneath a wide-open sky, dancing with the jester around towering flower stems like maypoles, playing hide-and-seek from the rest of the world until the golden sun casts down past the horizon, concealing them together in the long shadows of the tall flowers.
Tomorrow, she'll try to be a good friend. She'll try harder. She'll do better. She’ll scrub these undeserved feelings out of her heart. She promises herself and Pomni that she will. But for now, she gets to just be here, for however long they have until morning, fooling herself into imagining being loved instead of recognizing it wrapped around her, clinging tight.
As she drifts off, her mind locking up and shutting down for the night, she forgets her own illusion, forgets her assumptions, forgets her fears. All her heart knows as it takes over the night-shift is that she's being held and cherished, and what a welcome change of pace that is.