Chapter Text
Jax's door slammed and he leaned against it, keeping the doorknob clutched in his hands behind him. 'Oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness'. His simulated heart raced, his ears stayed pressed back against his head, eyes wide and pupils small, mouth open to try and get more air as his breath felt shallow.
Purring for so long left a weird sensation all over his skin because of the abrupt lack of vibration it'd gotten used to. It made him feel wobbly. He glanced down at his legs, knees threatening to give out.
No. He was not going to collapse over something this pathetic. He did not envy Pat the Bunny.
He flopped onto his bed and rolled himself into the blanket, laying face in his pillow, and tugged his blanket around his shoulders, tugged harder, and still wished for it to be tighter. And warmer. And oh, so loving and gentle.
He ripped his arms out of his sheets to pull on his ears. No, no, no, no, he's not going to be like this. He should just go to sleep. Sleep it off and he'd never think of it again.
He thought of it again.
Maybe he wouldn't have if it weren't for everyone having found a new way to disrupt his pranks.
Every time he did something hilarious, instead of snapping at him, they would place a hand or two on his head or back and it felt amazing and he could not maintain his act in these conditions.
Every time someone began petting him, it took everything he had in him to stop his tail from wagging, his eyes from drooping closed, and his body from purring, but at least he managed to prevent it. He did not manage to stop the immediate freezing and blushing that always let it continue for multiple seconds before he could flail them away. Sometimes his ears would twitch and everyone would coo, and he resented that.
It didn't take long for him to understand that this would be their response to his every disruption, and yet he found himself wanting to disrupt things more than ever, even with the knowledge that it would result in getting the best thing in the world pet.
And for some reason, he felt dizzier and itchier after every single time he pushed someone away, and the feeling only eased whenever he had someone's hand in his fur.
And every single time, it became harder to pull away or push them off, his body begging to melt into a purring, contented puddle of Jax.
He'd hoped it would go away when he got back to his room, but it... did not.
His foot tapped the floor rapidly.
No, no, no, no, no! He did not envy Pat the Bunny!
He tugged on his ears.
"You're better than this..." he grumbled under his breath, not really believing it. His foot-tapping sped up. Oh, how he missed the feeling of catnip...
Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap... He tugged on his ears, again and again, tugging, tugging...
"You're better than this..." Tug, tug.
Wait. He couldn't get catnip, but he'd seen Zooble with some of that weird pink stuff Ragatha had at Spudsy's, so maybe...
He'd managed to smuggle the 'Stupid Sauce' from Zooble's room, and now took it out of his pocket, looking into the cap. You put it in your eye, right?
For just a second, his head screamed against this, before immediately knocking nerves out of the way to make room for desperation, and he tipped his head back, holding the bottle above his eyes like a dropper, and squeezed
Everything disappeared. And, sure, he saw some.. ominous.. visions for a few seconds, but that was all fine because everything disappeared.
The desire didn't go away (of course), but the urge to tug on his ears as the response to it did. Instead, he dropped to knees and began rubbing his head on his mattress and pillows to try and satisfy the itch under his fur, and when that didn't work, petting his own head, and when none of this increasingly desperate flopping about didn't work, he lay sprawled in the center of his room's floor. Not sleeping. Just... there.
Oh, how he envied Pat the Bunny...