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Pomni hadn’t planned it. She really hadn’t. And she wasn’t sure if that made it more or less terrifying.
She and Ragatha had been nearing the end of another game of softball. The first time they played, Pomni had only suggested it because she knew Ragatha had been quietly aching for a better game than Caine’s multi-adventure snapshot. These days, even though most everyone was in better spirits now that they had control over the circus, Ragatha kept to herself. Pomni often found her near the mural looking like she might cry in both eyes, button and all. One of those times was when Pomni asked if she wanted to play. That first game, Ragatha beat her by so many points that she might as well have been smacked upside the head with a softball bat. The uniform she had to wear, a gray-striped outfit with a matching cap, had felt stiff when she set foot on the playing field like a bad omen for her defeat.
She hadn’t wanted to play again. She really hadn’t, no matter how much her heart did a funny thing whenever Ragatha scored a point and beamed as brightly as her team name, Sunrays, suggested. In the end, she relented. She agreed to another game, which led them to be in uniform again, shielding their eyes from the bright blue sky.
“Ready?” Ragatha shouted to her. Before they learned how to make the audience disappear, they’d had to yell to be heard over the cheering. Pomni guessed the habit had stuck.
“Yeah!” she yelled back for the fun of it.
She was actually getting pretty good. Not Ragatha level, obviously, but she was miles away from her old, not-into-sports self. As she steadied her stance, anchoring her feet in the soil, she felt her competitive streak returning. Seeing Ragatha’s confident grin only made it course stronger through her.
The game continued like that until it was clear that Ragatha had won. Wiping sweat off their foreheads, they met in the middle to exchange their “good game” handshake, which usually ended up turning into a fit of laughter and a side-hug.
And that was when it happened.
Pomni wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline rush of playing or the look of sheer joy in Ragatha’s face that made her do it. Maybe it was because of the warm feeling she got in her chest whenever Ragatha wore that uniform. Maybe it was the tingly sensation she got in all her limbs when Ragatha looked at her like that and talked in her out-of-breath, I’ve-been-winning-at-softball voice. Whatever it was, it possessed her. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached up with her gloved hands and drew Ragatha’s face closer to her own and kissed her. Right there, in the middle of the field, in plain daylight, she kissed her.
Ragatha gasped in surprise at first, but she leaned into it, closing her eyes. A chord of panic washed over Pomni as she processed it. Everything within her told her to shut down like a broken computer, to run away, to pretend this hadn’t happened. But her brain was too frazzled to do anything except feel Ragatha against her, pressing her lips to hers, and pulling up for air after a moment.
After Pomni broke the kiss, they both practically jumped away from each other.
“Wow,” Ragatha breathed, stuck between chuckling and widening her eyes in shock. “Wow, Pomni, I—”
And that was when Pomni collapsed.
******
“Oh my God, Pomni!”
On instinct, Ragatha rushed forward and caught Pomni’s limp body in her arms.
“Oh my God,” she said again as she sagged against her, out cold. “Oh my God.”
She blinked, still wired from the shock of all that had happened in the past minute. The furious blush on her face was replaced by a draining feeling of dread as Pomni didn’t wake up.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she said, whipping around to see if there was anybody in the stadium to help her.
Excuse her French, but she had no idea what in the hell just happened. One minute she was reveling in her victory, the next minute Pomni was pulling her in and she wasn’t stopping it, and the next Pomni seemed to drop dead.
Ragatha brought a hand to Pomni’s neck, feeling for a pulse. She didn’t fully understand how anatomy worked in the circus, but she’d learned that people still had heartbeats for the most part. She certainly did, and it was an inch away from bursting out of her chest and spilling all her worry onto the dirt and grass.
Pomni didn’t. She didn’t have a pulse. Ragatha was fairly sure that she’d had one at some point. When they hugged after Jax abstracted, she’d held her so close that their heartbeats touched, something Ragatha would never forget.
But for now she forgot everything except the woman in her arms.
Oh, God, she never should have kissed her. Somehow, this was all her fault. She didn’t know how, but it had to be. Gangle and Zooble never went into cardiac arrest when they kissed, and they did it all the time!
“What’s up with Pomni?”
Ragatha whirled around to see Zooble entering the stadium in her bartender getup carrying two iced drinks.
“I figured you two could use refreshments,” they said, shrugging.
“Oh,” Ragatha chuckled nervously. She adjusted her grip on Pomni, holding her bridal-style. “She, uh, she fainted, I think?”
“Fainted?” Zooble came up beside them, raising an eyebrow. “She looks…”
“Dead?” Ragatha asked. Pomni’s face was pale, bordering on a new shade of blue. Ragatha snapped her eyes away from the sight. “I don’t know what happened,” she gushed. “She was fine one second, and the next she collapsed, and I don’t know what to do—”
“Oh!” Zooble said, sounding amused.
“Zooble, what do we do? Should we lay her down? Should we try to wake her?”
“Calm down, calm down. She’ll be fine. This happens the first few times.”
Ragatha blinked. She locked onto Zooble’s easy expression and furrowed her eyebrows.
“The first time?” she asked blankly.
“Some sort of glitch in the program,” Zooble said. “Mixes up mortal peril vs. arousal or some shit.”
Ragatha’s mouth went dry.
“Mortal peril, and… and…” She stammered, trying to coax the right words from her throat, but they wouldn’t come. She made the mistake of looking at Pomni again and her heart felt jittery again and she flushed so strongly she thought she might run out of blood. “Oh, God.”
“You… did do it, right?” Zooble asked.
“No!” Ragatha said instantly. “I didn’t. We didn’t. I—we—we kissed.”
She wanted to bury her face in her hands after admitting it.
“Well, that’ll do it,” Zooble said.
For Ragatha, the kiss had come out of nowhere, just like their first hug. It wasn’t entirely unwelcome, and that was what made her nervous. What would happen when Pomni woke up? Would she pretend nothing happened? Would she avoid her and never play another game of softball? Would she be stuck with drowning herself by looking at the mural day after day because Pomni wouldn’t show up to drag her out of her misery?
In her arms, Pomni stirred and started coughing, making Ragatha jump so bad she almost dropped her. Her eyes blinked open like she’d just woken up from a long night and her gaze fell on Ragatha.
******
Pomni felt like she’d been eaten by the Gloink Queen and spit out before digestion, only without an obscene amount of slobber covering her. It took her a moment to get out of the strange feeling and process the picture in front of her: Ragatha staring down at her with a mildly horrified look, Ragatha’s arms enveloping her off the ground, and the sky spinning like she was a softball that had just been flung at the next player.
“Are you okay?” Ragatha asked.
Pomni tried to sit up in her arms, but only managed to squirm a bit. Ragatha got the message and set her down on her feet. She swayed a second, briefly missing the stability of being held, but steadied herself. Zooble, who had apparently been there the whole time, cleared their throat.
“I’ll leave you to it,” they said, and shoved two ice-cold drinks into Pomni’s hands before leaving the stadium. “Go slow next time!” they shouted over their shoulder.
Beside her, Ragatha’s face went red and she covered it with a hand. Pomni turned to her feeling like she’d just witnessed the ending of a movie she never started.
“What do they mean?” she asked her.
Ragatha shook her head. “Uhm… softball!” she said, sounding too chipper. “We should take it easy with the softball.” She started walking away to the stadium locker rooms, hands fisted at her sides like she was trying not to cover her face with them. “They brought us drinks to… help us… cool off. Ha, wasn’t that nice of her?”
Pomni’s gaze dropped to the drinks in her hand, realizing for the first time how parched she was after… whatever just happened.
“Ragatha!” she called after her. “Ragatha!”
Ragatha only slowed down when Pomni caught up with her. The running had caused one of the drinks to spill a bit on her uniform, which she didn’t notice until Ragatha reached out to clean it off. Pomni froze, watching her hand make contact with her shoulder until it quickly darted back.
“Sorry!” Ragatha blurted.
“No, you’re fine. I just…” She frowned. Where was her earlier confidence? Something had sapped it out of her, and she desperately wished it would come back. “I’m not crazy, am I?”
Ragatha smiled. “What?”
“That did just happen, didn’t it?” she asked. “What I think happened?”
She was sure the only thing worse than fainting after a first kiss would be Ragatha forgetting it ever happened, or pretending like it didn’t.
******
Ragatha bit her lip, bringing a hand to nervously scratch the back of her neck. “What do you, uh… what do you think happened?”
Pomni was looking at her so seriously that she wanted to run off to the locker room again. It didn’t help when Pomni offered her one of the drinks she was holding, and their hands brushed when she hesitantly took it.
“I think we did something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Pomni said. Ragatha’s breath was stolen right out of her lungs. Pomni continued, voice calm and smooth. “I think we did something you’re trying to run away from.”
“And…” Ragatha chuckled shakily. “What would that be?”
“I think we kissed.”
She said it so surely, so matter-of-factly that Ragatha couldn’t do anything but look at her in awe despite her instincts telling her to bolt.
She cleared her throat and clutched her drink to her chest. “Well, I mean… I don’t… I… We just…”
“I think we kissed,” Pomni repeated, taking a step closer to her, setting her drink down on the ground. “Like this.” She stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a quick peck to Ragatha’s cheek, which made her inhale sharply. “Or… maybe more like…” She kissed a trail down to her lips. “This.”
******
Pomni couldn’t believe she was doing it again. Her now-alive heart was pounding against her ribcage. She hoped beyond hope that Ragatha couldn’t hear it as she kissed her lightly and pulled back, lowering her tiptoes back to the sweet ground. Ragatha let out a breath and just stood there for a moment.
“Is that what happened?” Pomni asked quietly. She could feel her voice growing softer as her courage slipped away the longer Ragatha didn’t say or do anything.
Slowly, Ragatha nodded. As Pomni got to know her, she had noticed that Ragatha tended to go quiet in moments like this.
“Was it okay?” Pomni asked.
******
Okay? Ragatha almost laughed. It was the most okay thing on this side of heaven, rendering her almost speechless. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been waiting for it until it happened.
“Ragatha?” Pomni asked.
Seeing her with her hands clasped in front of her, rocking back and forth on her heels the way she did when she was nervous, Ragatha found her voice again.
“It was okay. It was… wow, Pomni. It was more than okay.”
A relieved smile crept onto Pomni’s face. Her gaze dropped to the ground like she was suddenly as shy as Ragatha.
“Would you… want to again?” she asked. “Do that?”
It set a fizzle of butterflies off within Ragatha. Before she even had the chance to lean in and kiss her as an answer, she collapsed where she stood.
“Ragatha! Oh, what the fuck?”
******
“I thought I told you guys to go slow,” Zooble groaned as they tried to revive Ragatha with a splash of ice water to the face.
“I didn’t know what you meant!” Pomni cried.
“Ah,” Gangle sighed wistfully as she watched the exchange. “Young love.”