Chapter Text
"JAX, WHAT THE HECK!?" Ragatha's voice screamed from down the hall. I'd been waiting for hours for her to find those centipedes all day. I snickered to myself as she started pounding on my door.
"Now, Rags, why do you always insist on blaming me? There are plenty of other people here who might think centipedes would be all snuggly and warm in your pillowcase!"
"OPEN THE DOOR AND GET THEM OUT." She yelled. Hmm... Nah.
"No can do, Ragdoll, seems my legs just aren't working right now! Must be crippling bone-itis! Incurable!" I yelled to her. She just grumbled to herself and stomped away towards the main room of the Circus. Win, Jax.
I stood up from the bed - ah, my bone-itis is cured - and walked to the door, listening for a moment. I didn't hear anyone, which meant it was time to make my cool escape before Rags could come back with reinforcements. Step two of the plan was to remove the centipedes before she got back. Gaslight, gatekeep, Jax boss. Or something.
I threw my door open and turned towards her door, before having the heart attack of my [BEEP]ing life and nearly jumping out of my stupid cartoon skin. "Pomni! Christ!"
Pomni had been leaning against the wall near my door. "Oh god, sorry Jax!" She quickly apologized, looking immediately anxious, as she did.
"...What are you even doing? You spying on me? That's pretty weird, Pomni." I smirked.
"Uh... No."
"Then what? Lonely? Just in desperate need of the company of someone as hilarious and interesting as me?"
Her anxiety quickly shifted to mild annoyance. The Jax special! "Hiding." She said quietly.
My curiosity was piqued. "....Froooom?"
She moved to lean against my door. "If I have to hear about how great a poorly written angsty ninja anime boy is for one more second, I might actually tear off my own ears."
I laughed. "What, you more into the plot-armored, overpowered type? Personally, I can't stand either-" I was cut off by the sound of Ragatha, Gangle and Zooble approaching from around the corner. Pomni looked genuinely terrified. I can respect feeling genuinely terrified at the idea of listening to Gangle's objectively bad anime opinions, so I figured I'd do the girl a solid.
I reached for my doorknob and turned it. My door flew open under the weight of Pomni's lean, and she went tumbling to the floor of my bedroom. Before she could yell at me, I smiled at her, and slammed my door closed with her on the other side.
I went back on my original path towards Ragatha's room, knowing that they'd round the corner any second.
"JAX."
See?
I turned on my heels to face them. "How can I help you, ladies and Zooble?"
Zooble looked as pissed off as they normally did. "Centipedes? Really? Again?"
I gestured towards Ragatha's door. "I was just on my way to be a really good friend and play pest control. I've changed!"
They sighed. "You're such an [BEEP]hole."
"Your words are hurtful, Zoobs."
"Go get the [BEEP]ing centipedes."
I dramatically saluted and walked to her door. The three of them stood outside while I grabbed the couple of bugs and made a swift exit. I hated being in Ragatha's room. It icks me out for reasons I can't explain. "See? I'm the hero."
Ragatha sighed and went back into her room. Zooble rolled her weird eyes and turned to go to their room. Gangle just kind of stood and stared at me for a second.
"Hey... Have you seen Pomni around?" She asked quietly.
"Can't say I have. What, did ya bore her to abstraction?" I turned to walk away from her.
"I...uh..." Gangle fumbled. "Never mind." I could hear her scurry over to her door. Sometimes it paid off to be the unlikable one.
I looked at the centipedes, still crawling around in my hand. I walked over to Kinger's door and let them crawl under it. He didn't spend a lot of time in there anyway, and he actually appreciated my buggy surprises. As I strolled back to my door, hands behind my head, I glanced at Pomni's door.
She was still in my room.
I hated letting people even SEE inside my door, not to mention letting them IN. Why the [BEEP] did I do that? She owes me BIG time.
By the time I reached my room, I had gotten so in my own head about Pomni being in there that I hesitated. What if she was pissed?
Why do I even care?
I slowly opened my door, feeling wildly uneasy about it. But there she was. Sat on the floor, basically exactly where I left her. She quickly looked down upon seeing me, wiping one of her eyes. "...So what'd you do with the bugs?" She asked quietly, still not looking up at me.
My heart sank a little. Did I actually manage to hurt her? I've seen her survive WAY worse falls than that.
"Uhh... I always put them under Kinger's door; he likes 'em." I sat down in front of her, feeling weird towering over her. "You good, Pomni? Couldn't handle a little unexpected gravity?" I leaned closer to her, trying to look at her face.
She pulled her knees in closer to her chest and buried her head into them. "I'm fine." She muttered.
"Look, I'll let you help me hide the bugs next time. But I'll warn you, it's an art form that I do take very seriously."
She let out a tiny, pathetic laugh, and looked up at me. Her eyes were red and she'd clearly been crying since I left. Or, maybe she was before that and I'm comically unobservant? "Art form, huh?" She half smiled.
I was going to take that tiny little smile and run a mile with it. "Absolutely, Pomni. Ya see-" I jumped to my feet and picked her up under my arm like a haphazard little football, and walked over to my bed. She put up a little physical protest, but not nearly as much as I expected. "-If ya put them on TOP of the pillow, they're just going to crawl away, and she's going to miss them entirely. That is no fun. So you gotta hide them in dark places that they'll run out of when disturbed-"
"Pillow case..." Pomni said quietly. She looked up at me as if to see if her answer was right. I felt my cheeks getting hot. What the [BEEP]? I mean, I knew I had a soft spot for the girl, she was easily the coolest person in this stupid Circus besides me, but seeing her look up at me when she was still clearly upset made me want to punch whoever upset her straight in the teeth.
"Yeah! You're a quick learner, I, uh..." I looked away from her and set her down on the edge of the bed. "Pomni, I'm going to ask you something, and the question NEVER leaves this room, got it?"
She looked confused. "Uh... okay?"
"What's wrong?"
Pomni turned cartoonishly red almost immediately. [BEEP], I wasn't trying to embarrass her. "Oh! Nothing, I-"
"Don't lie to me." I didn't actually mean to sound that mean, but I was kind of out of practice at the whole being a friend thing.
"It's stupid."
I smirked at her. "I'm sure it is, and that only makes me want to know more."
She rolled her eyes, and clenched her fists a little. "I just- I listen to everyone else talk and talk about themselves, their problems, but I always get shrugged off or treated like a child when I talk about anything!"
I sat on the ground in front of her. "Disappointed it wasn't stupider, but you have the floor, complain away."
"I HATE being treated like a child. I'm 25 [BEEP]ing years old, not some two-year-old who needs to be spoken softly to every time I'm having a bad [BEEP]ing day!" The tears were clearly welling up again. "You knocking me into your room to hide me from unwanted conversation is the coolest thing anyone's done for me in a while that didn't make me feel like some burden of a kid." She crossed her arms and tried to hide her face from me again as the tears started to roll. "God, sorry, you SO didn't sign up for this..."
"Well, what I'm hearing is that you want me to knock you down more often, and that I can absolutely do."
She laughed. "Please don't."
"No, no! If it's what you really want, I insist! I'll keep you on your back all the time if that's what it takes." That came across way more sexually than I intended while she's crying in my bed in my locked room. Maybe she didn't pick up on it.
She laughed. Like, really, really laughed.
[BEEP].
My face was definitely bright red. "That is not what I meant and you know it." I grabbed her ankle and pulled her off the bed and onto the floor in front of me with a thud. Her little gasp of surprise was cute. I guess. "THAT is what I meant."
"What, you like making girls all weak and defenseless in your bedroom by throwing them around?" She smiled at me.
Oh god, she was beating me at my own game.
"I'm a perfect gentleman in the bedroom, thank you very much."
"I beg to differ." She chuckled.
"I'm wounded by your review, Pomni. Now you're going to ruin my perfect five-star rating."
"Well, maybe don't be so rough next time..." She said quietly, looking dead at me.
Does she even know that she's killing me right now? I doubt it.
"Hey, I was just doing what you asked!"
"We're not at bedroom rough-housing yet, Bud." Her face turned red.
Yet. She said yet.
I held out my truce-making hand to her. "I'll pretend you didn't say it if you forget mine, too." She grabbed my hand and shook.
"Deal."
She really lingered on letting go of my hand. I wasn't really itching to get away either. The contact from someone who presumably didn't want to physically assault me in this moment was... nice.
She finally let go, quickly returning her hands to her lap. "Hey, uh... Thanks."
"For saving you from Gangle, or for the mediocre bedroom experience?"
She smiled, and looked annoyed that she thought my joke was funny. Fair. "Well. Yeah. But... I needed that vent. So. Thanks."
I scooted next to her. "Look, Pomni. You can complain to me all ya want. It's a fun change up from Zooble and Ragatha telling me how terrible of a person I am."
"I mean, you did put bugs in her pillow."
"For the ART, Pomni."
She sat silently for a moment. "You're not a terrible person." She said quietly, "Occasionally annoying? Yeah, but terrible? No." I didn't even know how to respond to that. "Now I'M going to tell YOU something that never leaves this room, okay?"
I nodded. "Go on, then."
"I- and it's totally cool if you don't- consider you my closest friend in the [BEEP]ed up place."
I couldn't even look at her. What a cute thing so say, even if she did just call me annoying. "Yeah, well... I hate you the least, too, Pom."
After a few moments of insufferable silence, I looked down at her. It looked like she'd calmed down, almost seeming... Happy? "It's because I have better taste in anime than Gangle, right?" I asked, nudging her pretty aggressively.
"Yep. That's the only reason. [BEEP] off, otherwise."
I laughed. I don't know why the censors sounded so funny when she set them off, but they did.
I stood up, dramatically dusting myself off with my hands. "So, you gonna stay down there all night?"
She hastily stood up, awkwardly. I'm convinced there wasn't an ounce of grace or poise in this woman. "OH. NO. I. Uh. I'll just. Go. To my room. Really tired!" She ran for the door. "So. I. Uh. Goodnight, Jax. Thanks again." She rambled, opening my door.
"Night, Pom." I waved at her as she shut the door. Why did I wave, was that weird?
I'm so weird.
She was so weird.
That whole interaction was so weird.
Why was that so weird?