Chapter Text
At first, she’s expecting the house to spontaneously combust. She wouldn’t even be surprised. Pomni would watch the flames ravage the pretty white porch, lick their way up the painted walls, streak the air with smoke, and think to herself, yep, here we go again.
But one unassuming second bleeds into three, and three into a half a minute of pure, stunned silence, and Pomni realises that it’s probably exactly what it looks like: a house.
To be precise, it’s a white house with navy window shutters and uniform roof tiles. It’s two stories high, wide, and several rooms deep by the look of the exterior, but really, who knows what lies beyond the wine-red door with its golden letterbox. It could be anything. It could be an aquarium and Pomni is moments away from being caught in a barrage of affronted fish and bitter seawater. It could be another boxing glove with a vendetta. The door might not even open, period.
God, she wants to go back to the circus already.
“Homey,” the figure next to her says, and Pomni is curtly made aware that she’s not alone.
“Uh…” Her head snaps towards Jax—because the universe just likes to watch her squirm at this point—but anything she could say tumbles spectacularly back down her throat, forgotten in an instant.
It’s typically a fifty-fifty chance that their usual attire will be swapped out for an adventure, traded in for something flashier or utilitarian while still feeling no less ridiculous than a jester suit. Caine has got it down to an art, really. It’s the kind of skill that makes people think you have too much time on your hands.
Jax is standing beside her, peering up at the house with the same bemused look, but instead of his pink overalls, he’s wearing a forest green sweater and dark slacks. He looks like a young suburban dad who’s fresh out of college and doesn’t know how to work a lawnmower. Pomni almost laughs, but it catches in her chest when he rolls his shoulders out. She makes a half-hearted choked sound instead. Real classy stuff.
“Well, best get this over with,” he says with an air of resignation that Pomni feels, distantly, she should be offended by.
Noticing her silence, or maybe just realising she’s there at all, Jax turns his cool, calculating focus on her. His eyebrow arches as his gaze roams blatantly up and down her.
“Wow. You look stupid.”
Irritation sparks in her, red hot and embarrassed, flaring up her spine and pooling at the nape of her neck, but the flames are quickly snuffed out when her fingers brush something that definitely isn’t the stiff material of her costume. Pomni looks down and finds a green dress, a shade darker than Jax’s sweater, trimmed with black lace along the short hem. God, she can’t remember the last time she wore a dress. At least not one she bought for an office Christmas party she really didn’t want to go to.
“You should check yourself,” Pomni snaps, but Jax is already stalking up the porch steps and reaching for the envelope taped to the door that Pomni hadn’t spotted.
He tears it open and reads aloud, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jax.” Pomni makes another dignified choking noise. “Congratulations on your recent nuptials, it was truly the wedding of the century. Enclosed you will find the keys to this wonderful abode. Happy marriage.”
Jax stares at the letter, then the house. His eyes flit to Pomni, and then return to the offending sheet of paper.
“Who the fu[BEEP] says nuptials?”
“Did that thing say Mrs. Jax?” There’s no way. Pomni stomps up the steps and snatches the letter.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jax…
Forget the house, she’s going to spontaneously combust. Imminently, with any luck. And violently so she might take Jax out with her.
Why in the ever-loving hell—
“Fancy key,” Jax exclaims breezily, then shoves the ornate thing into the lock. The door opens with a click and Jax goes inside, leaving Pomni on the doorstep, aghast, a part of her still waiting for the house to go up in flames, and feeling as though she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s been over a month since the shootout—and the catastrophic fallout—and all the bridges that had burned that day were still nothing but uninspiring piles of ash. Jax had been avoiding her, and Pomni hadn’t approached him either. It was inevitable that their paths would cross at some point, an unavoidable clash given the trapped part of their circumstances, but this? The house? The seclusion? It felt too much like a bad joke and she had little doubt she was going to be the punchline.
Pomni is quiet as she watches Jax wander down the hallway and disappear into the house. She peers around at the front garden and the street full of matching houses beyond, but she doesn’t see anyone else. No Ragatha or Kinger, nor Zooble or Gangle in sight. Not even an NPC. It’s just her and Jax. Alone. In a house. A very large house for two people. With a porch and a picket fence and everything.
Mrs. Jax.
If this is Caine’s idea of a joke—or retaliation for his trust-exercise-turned-digital-bloodbath—then it’s in incredibly poor taste.
To the ringmaster’s credit, however, the house itself isn’t so bad. When Pomni shuts the door after herself and slips out of her shoes—all while marvelling at the fact she can remove them at all, what a novelty—the house’s scent hits her all at once. Sandalwood and vanilla. Warm and welcoming.
She pads down the hall, following the clattering coming from the furthest room, and finds herself in the kitchen. Jax is rifling through the cupboards and drawers, pulling things out and carelessly shoving them back in.
“I haven’t seen some of this stuff in years,” he muses. Pomni can’t tell whether he’s talking to her or himself.
Not even her earliest days in the circus had been as awkward as she feels right now. She doesn’t know what to say. Her eyes follow Jax as he drifts around the room, never once looking at her, and she wonders what the point of this adventure even is.
When Jax pauses, Pomni stands up a little straighter. He’s facing the fridge, hands in his pockets and head dipped.
“Looks like we’ve got a schedule.”
Ah. So he does know she’s there. He’s just ignoring her. Brilliant.
“What’s it say?” Pomni asks, shuffling closer in her socks. The kitchen smells like citrus-scented cleaning products.
“See for yourself,” Jax says bluntly, then turns on his still-shoed heel and leaves the way they came. All the air in Pomni’s chest leaves in one go. Why is she disappointed? Jax ignoring her in a house is no different from him ignoring her in the circus, so why does it matter? It’s just four walls.
Mr. and Mrs. Jax.
She turns her attention to the sheet of paper stuck to the fridge with a Caine-shaped magnet. It reads Monday to Sunday, each day with its own box, some of which are filled with little details.
Monday is moving day.
Wednesday is the barbecue.
Friday is date night.
And on Sunday there’s a party.
The other days have doodles she can’t decipher, but the main part of the week has enough information to make her stomach churn anyway. Date night? With the guy who’s spent the last however many weeks ignoring her? Who told her, in no uncertain terms, that her existence means nothing to him? Who couldn’t share an honest emotion if his life depended on it?
Date night with that guy.
Great.
More noises come from elsewhere in the house, but she ignores them this time. If Jax wants to keep his head buried in the sand for the rest of the adventure, that’s his business. Pomni is certain there’s enough stuff in this house to make the days pass quickly, and if there isn’t…well, she’ll figure something out.
Instead of trailing after him, Pomni heads towards the door in the kitchen that leads onto the back porch. Down the steps is a sprawling garden with a swimming pool that backs onto a field, and beyond that is a forest that casts rambling shadows across the tall grass. They’re like wiry claws tearing through the blanketing sunlight. Pomni shudders and takes an unconscious step back. Forests like that are where horror movies start, and as much as she enjoys a thrill from time to time, she’s not looking to be butchered by a rogue axe murderer in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.
There are limits to such things. Limits like common sense.
The rest of the house is much the same as the kitchen: too perfect, too clean, too quiet. It’s homey as Jax had said, but it’s not homely. She doesn’t see any of herself or Jax in the décor. It’s like living in a showroom, scared to dirty anything in case you’re made to pay for it. As though Caine had flicked through an IKEA catalogue and threw bits of furniture together like it’s an art project he didn’t care about.
Not too long ago, Pomni had lived in a house like this. Back when she was an accountant, before she traded its clean wallpaper and stainless steel appliances for a grungy apartment on the shadier side of town where rent was cheap. The uneven floorboards and flickering lights suited her more, she’d found, in a twisted, despondent kind of way. At least more than a two-bedroom and home office ever had.
She’s reminded of early mornings in her house as she wanders through the tidy hallways, of trudging downstairs for coffee and gazing blearily out the window. Maybe she should have put more effort into making that house her home, rather than expecting it to just happen over time. If she could go back, she would paint over the beige walls in a heartbeat.
Shit. That all feels like a lifetime ago. She’s not even certain she would recognise the house anymore if she drove past it. The thought makes her want to bury herself in blankets and hide.
The house’s downstairs consists of the aforementioned kitchen that leads into an obnoxiously large dining room since it’s intended for only two people. The hall from the entryway splits off into a lounge—with an actual TV, the first she’s seen in the circus—a closet that’s fit to burst with jackets and shoes, and a snug bathroom that also smells like citrus-scented cleaning products, because who doesn’t want a lungful of lemongrass and lime while they’re trying to pee? Delightful.
She eyes the stairs, her thoughts straying to the marvellous Mr. Jax and whatever antics are causing the repeated thuds through the ceiling. She considers going up to investigate, but…
She doesn’t. The mere idea of trying to confront Jax again makes her skin crawl. Not with discomfort, but with something else. Concern, maybe. Like if she pushes too hard, too far, too fast, he might trip over the edge of something and not come back. At least now he’s acting somewhat himself, even if the walls between them have not only returned but come back twice as thick.
Jax is still acting like Jax in the fleeting moments she gets with him, so that must count for something.
But then again, she needs to see the rest of the house, right? Figure out the bedroom situation if they’re really going to be here all week. God, it makes her want to dissolve and die of embarrassment.
Pomni has her foot reluctantly on the first step when the doorbell suddenly rings.
She freezes.
Who could be calling? It’s not like they know—
Oh! The others! They must be in houses further down the street. Thank god. Pomni couldn’t imagine having to spend an entire week with only Jax. It’d be like locking yourself in a room with a cat that hates you on a part-time basis. No one needs that level of unpredictability. It’s bad for your blood pressure.
She prances towards the door, a relieved smile already gracing her lips and a greeting ready to go, but it drops when the door swings open. A pink mannequin stands on the other side, holding a tray of cookies.
“Good morning!” the mannequin chirps. Pomni doesn’t know what to say. “Pardon the intrusion, but I saw the moving van from across the road!” She waves to an entirely pink house. Pink walls, pink fence, pink grass. Pink. Pomni winces. Also: what moving van? “Welcome to the street! We’re so pleased to have fresh faces. I know I speak for everyone when I say how much we enjoy making new friends!”
Maybe it’s the nauseating cheerfulness, or the fact that the mannequin’s painted eyes haven’t blinked once, but Pomni takes a tiny step back into the sandalwood-scented safety of the house.
The mannequin’s toothy smile twitches.
“I made cookies!” she yelps, shoving the tray towards Pomni. Pomni stares at them in all their neon pink glory, then at her. She’s torn between accepting them and feigning a gluten intolerance when a shadow descends upon her like the arc of a wave before it crashes on the shore.
“Can we help you with something?” Jax asks icily, practically on top of her. Pomni’s eyes are fixed on the hand that’s clasping the doorframe above her and the small gold band adorning his very gloveless ring finger.
The band matching, she can now feel, the one on her own bare hand.
“I made cookies!” the mannequin repeats, tone bordering on unhinged, pushing the tray at Jax and almost taking Pomni’s eye out in the process.
Jax takes the tray in one hand and sharply closes the door with the other. Pomni is left staring at the painted wood, entirely too frazzled to reprimand him for not even saying thanks.
Again, wordlessly, Jax moves down the hall to the kitchen. Pomni hears the telltale sound of the trashcan’s lid popping open and closed.
When Jax reappears, dusting off his hands, Pomni finds her resolve hardening in the face of his impassiveness.
“We’re stuck here for a week,” she tells him. “Are you just not going to speak to me?”
When Jax looks up at her, their eyes meet from down the hall like lightning spearing a clear sky. Her mind floods with memories of their argument.
Jax, holding her gun to his head.
Pomni’s hands closing around his neck and squeezing.
She hadn’t slept well that night. Every time she closed her eyes she saw him bearing down over her, half-baked lies firing faster than any gun could handle. It’s not even what he had said that seized her world and violently dragged it off its delicate axis. The words had hurt, sure, and she hadn’t forgiven him for any of it, but she thinks they both know it’s not what had driven the wedge between them.
Jax had fallen apart that day. It was as though Pomni had taken a knife to his seams and cut away all the deception and desperation that was holding him together. His own little web of security and comfort that’s built from nothing but the threads of his own delusion.
There’s nothing more to me, so please, just stop looking.
She hadn’t even meant to. She just wanted to understand.
She hadn’t mentioned their fight to anyone else. Ragatha had asked, that worried look in her eye, but Pomni had pursed her lips and said it was nothing.
It wasn’t nothing. Apparently, it was everything.
“I’m speaking to you now, aren’t I?” Jax says, an edge to his voice. A warning. Pomni can recognise it now.
He’s trying to brush her off, and by God, it would be easier to let him, but she can’t do that. As much as she wants to pretend they’re in their own worlds, there’s too much festering between them.
But more importantly, she doesn’t want to ignore him. She doesn’t want to spend a week alone in this house. She wants to fix this. She wants to fix them.
“Listen,” she begins, trying to gather her thoughts but it’s like catching leaves in a storm; they keep slipping away, “I’m sorry—”
“Save it.” His face twists, then smooths out, the black of his eyes almost engulfing the yellow. “It doesn’t matter, so just let it go.”
“But—”
“I said let it go.”
Pomni’s jaw snaps shut. Don’t push, don’t push, don’t push.
“Okay. Okay, that’s fine,” she says blandly. “I’ll keep to myself and you keep to yours. For the entire week. Because that’s how adults handle—”
“Wow, you just…” Jax is staring at her, a grim awe flattening his grin. “You just have no idea when to quit, do you? Doesn’t matter who you hurt so long as you get what you want.”
Hypocrite. Pomni grits her teeth. “Who says I want anything?”
Jax scoffs, shaking his head. Pomni can feel him slipping through her fingers. “You are a terrible liar. It’s like you don’t even try.”
“You mean like you?” Shit, wait, no, I didn’t mean it—
Jax laughs. It’s a wet yet gravelly sound that makes Pomni’s stomach writhe with misplaced guilt. Why should she be feeling bad for him? Jax runs a hand over his face and his wedding ring catches the light. Pomni’s eyes are glued to it like the golden band is the only thing in the room, in the entire world.
“Sure, if you want,” Jax sounds like he’s aged ten years in the last five minutes. He starts for the stairs, pausing at the bottom. “Dibs on the master bedroom, by the way. You snooze, you lose.”
He’s gone a moment later, but the sickly tension remains. Pomni stares vacantly down the hall, so many different things bubbling away inside her she can’t separate them. Blood is rushing in her ears and drowning out her thoughts. All she can feel is Jax prising her off him, sending her skidding across the floor, anger so hot in her veins it burns her from within. Frustration and confusion and hurt. He reaches out, and the moment she reciprocates he pushes her away. And then he punishes her for reaching out in turn by shutting her out completely.
Sometimes she wonders whether conflict is all he knows. Whether this song and dance of hurt, rinse, repeat is so ingrained into him that it’s become instinct. An automatic response. A defence mechanism, perhaps.
I’m the one who causes pain for fun.
It’s a mess. All of it. Him. Her. Them. The argument.
It’s like walking through a dark room that’s filled with land mines, sharks, and decapitated angels. It’s hell, but there’s also a flickering of light. She can’t tell if the flame is tiny and close or a faraway inferno. But it’s there. It’s hope. It’s a chance. But she doesn’t know how to get there in one piece. Jax might not even want to.
Sighing to herself, Pomni slumps against the door.
It’s all a goddamn mess and she doesn’t even know where to start trying to patch it up.
* * * * * * *
Jax is a fucking idiot. He knows it. Everybody else probably knows it, too. It’s a well-established fact he tries to gloss over when looking himself in the mirror, but it’s the kind of thing that creeps up on you in the dead of night and makes you cringe into your pillow. It’s like an embarrassing moment from years ago that you hope nobody remembers, but you know, deep down in your heart of hearts, that it’s all they can think about when they see you.
Hey, you remember Jax, right? He’s the fucking idiot I told you about.
Ah, there he is! Jax! The fucking idiot who pushes away the people he cares about!
Oh, Jax! I thought it was you. Still a fucking idiot? Or have you grown up yet?
Jax—the fucking idiot in question—fights the urge to ram his head against the wall to see if it knocks his brain cells together and sparks some digital wisdom.
The master bedroom has no business being this imposing. An impressive four-poster bed sits against one wall with its drapes pulled back and tied, and the en-suite is situated opposite. Wide windows looking out over the front garden and street beyond allow midday sunlight to spill into the room, highlighting the absurdly fluffy rug in the centre of the sprawling space. There’s a vanity next to the walk-in closet, and a matching chest of drawers on its other side.
It’s the kind of bedroom you would see in a magazine with a column describing it as modern, stunning and an absolute must-have.
Jax drags himself across to the bed and sinks onto it—good God, this mattress is divine—his head reeling with Pomni’s look of palpable disappointment.
Seriously, though, what does she expect from him? That he can go about his day pretending as though nothing had happened between them? As if that one interaction hadn’t undone so much of everything he’s worked so hard to maintain? Pomni had stripped him right to his core, and he’d rashly bared his soul for her, because why not? She’d already seen too much, so why not let her have everything? Every gritty little detail, every thread of cruelty and selfishness that, woven together, make up the very fabric of his shitty existence.
He’d felt her watching him during the awards show, had noticed the way her eyes tracked him to the bathroom and back. She hadn’t said anything then, and neither had he. They hadn’t spoken afterwards, either. Nor in the long weeks that followed. What was there to say, anyway?
Sorry I told you you’re worthless to me, you’ve just unknowingly become the exact opposite and I have no idea how to process that without imploding.
No. Just…
Just no.
That incident in the award show’s bathroom is scorched into his memory. He can’t escape that tense moment. He’d lost a part of himself in those fragile minutes, watching the water fill the sink and how his hand trembled as it gripped the tap. Nothing of the same magnitude had seized him since, but the weight of it had been there in the back of his mind ever since. Waiting. Lurking. Pressing down on every sore spot he had left to hide. He would push it away before it could become more than just a bad feeling in his stomach, but it always came back. It probably never leaves.
Jax stands and stalks to the en-suite. It’s a practised routine by this point, his body falling into a morbid rhythm. He flicks the water on and lets it run. He grips the rim of the sink and sneers at his reflection in the mirror, observing the way his pupils become uneasy, shapeless things just before his vision turns hazy. The odd smell of popcorn and piss from the theatre bathroom drifts across his senses, simultaneously overwhelming but still not enough to calm him down.
Why does Pomni even care? Jax doesn’t understand no matter how he looks at it. None of the others give a shit about him—whether or not he’s to blame for that, he’s not looking into it too deeply. He knows what he is, and he knows who she is. Someone like her shouldn’t have the time of day for him and his plethora of issues. Jax doesn’t deserve someone who’s annoyingly patient and stupidly nice to him because he doesn’t have that bright energy to give back.
There’s nothing more to me, so please, just stop looking.
He can taste those words. They’re rancid on his tongue, reeking of truth and buried pain.
As his heart rate begins to quicken, Jax’s knees give out. He lowers himself to the tiled floor, holding onto the edge of the countertop. He scrunches his eyes shut and focuses on his unsteady breathing.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Evade, deflect, attack. That’s what Jax should be doing, not dancing around with his heart on his sleeve and hoping it doesn’t get crushed in the fray. He should be protecting himself. He had been, and he’d been doing a pretty damn good job.
And then Pomni happened.
Pomni, with her soft smile and teasing questions and fucking kindness, and it’s going to undo everything. It might have already. Jax feels himself unravelling, his layers falling away under her knowing eyes and inquisitive frown. She’d seen him.
And she hadn’t liked what she saw.
In fact, she was pretty fucking horrified.
So.
Jax doesn’t know what to do with that. He doesn’t know how to fix that.
How do you rebuild something that shattered entirely?
As it always does, the moment comes and it goes. Jax’s breathing eases and his chest stops cramping. His heart calms its violent throbbing and his hands grow steadier by the minute. The tinkling of the water flows into his ears, pattering against the marble bowl. It’s quiet and gentle, huddling around his subconscious like the hush that follows a storm. Peace sweeps through him, unhindered and unhurried. These brief moments afterwards are a thread of peace that keeps finding its way back to him. A small blessing he hasn’t earned while being a dose of something heavy to settle his nerves.
He wonders, embarrassingly, whether Pomni is another one of those threads sent to stitch his wretched mind back together.
Jax breathes in sharply and thrusts the heels of his hands against his eyes.
No. She’s not for him. It’s not her job to fix what he broke. She deserves better than that—she is better than that.
I’d move on, and probably forget about you.
Jax’s ear twitches at the sound of footsteps pausing outside the closed bedroom door. He turns the tap off and strains to listen. They carry on a moment later and Jax groans.
“Don’t be a fu[BEEP]ing idiot,” he mumbles to himself.
An entire week in this house, alone, with Pomni? Caine really has outdone himself this time. Forget abstraction: this is what torture looks like. None of their adventures had ever lasted more than a single day, so why would the madman throw them in at the deep end with seven uninterrupted days of whatever the hell this is?
It’s stupid. It is unequivocally fucking stupid.
“One week,” Jax says to his weary reflection. “You can handle one week. Just be yourself. Nothing is wrong. Nothing. Is. Wrong.”
God, he’s a fucking idiot.
* * * * * * *
Much to Pomni’s dismay, it turns out there really isn’t anything to do in the house. There are bits and pieces scattered about, like a half-finished knitting project, but she doesn’t knit, and the backyard looks like it could use a mow, but there’s no lawnmower. She considers shouting for Caine, but the mere idea of bringing a part of the circus into this respite feels wrong.
Maybe she should just treat this adventure as what it seems to be: a break from the madness. No sharks swimming in the bathtub, no rooms full of spinning carousels, no boxing gloves springing out from behind closed doors. There’s not even a single gloink in sight. It’s just…normal.
This could very well be Caine’s idea of a punishment, but as the hours tick by Pomni feels her shoulders beginning to loosen. Muscles she didn’t know she had were relaxing as the tension bled out of her in reams. It’s like the panicky weight on her chest had lifted and she could breathe a little easier for it. She wasn’t constantly peering over her shoulder or keeping tabs on the others in case they suddenly disappeared, leaving her alone in the unbridled chaos.
It almost makes her tear up, like when pressure is removed and the blood can flow to the limb again. An achey kind of relief. A good hurt because it means the wound is healing.
Pomni spends the day marinating on the couch and staring at the TV. There are only two channels. One has a tour of the circus grounds on a loop, and the other has nothing but cooking shows hosted by Bubble. It’s a little disturbing watching Bubble float around and hurl creative slurs at a gaggle of terrified mannequins just trying to make an acceptable sponge cake, but it’s better than nothing.
Evening rolls around soon enough, casting orange skies and twilight through the window. Pomni blinks in surprise when a soft ding emanates from the kitchen. She stands cautiously and pads down the hall to find the dining room entirely lit by candles and fairy lights. There are two plates of hot food waiting innocuously on the kitchen counter.
She narrows her eyes.
“Jax?” She’s half expecting him to pop out from somewhere, but he hasn’t been downstairs all day. Pomni would know: she’d kept one eye on the staircase the entire time she was expertly merging with the couch cushions.
There are footfalls on the stairs a moment later, then a head pokes over the bannister.
“What?”
“There’s…” She waves her hand dryly in the direction of the kitchen. “Food. Dinner is ready, I guess.”
Jax’s eyebrows rise and he plods down the rest of the stairs. “Aw, did you make me dinner, Pompom?”
“No. The—The house made it, or something.”
Pomni’s stomach lurches. Pompom? He hadn’t called her that in ages. He’s also talking to her, which is progress she wasn’t expecting. She can’t figure out if it’s a step in the right direction or not. Is it good? Or is Jax just drawing her in with a plan to drop kick her feelings across the circus again? It makes her nervous because she’s not certain she won’t fall for it.
I do not care about you, or anyone else in this circus in the slightest. End of story.
“Well, give my compliments to the house!”
If I led you on, it was just to make this part hurt you more.
Jax hesitates when setting both plates on the dining table, his eyes flitting to Pomni before he seats himself. He stands, watching her, a question in his furrowed brow. Pomni stares back. Is she supposed to say something? Jax sighs and rests his hands on the table, smoothing out the tablecloth and frowning.
“You’re right,” he says quietly, not meeting her gaze. “We’re here for a week. Might as well make the most of it.”
It’s not an apology. It’s an evasion, if anything, and a shitty one at that. Skirting around the very prominent issue at hand. Anyone else wouldn’t have bought it—Pomni can think of a few choice words the others would have if they heard him now—and a pretty loud part of Pomni’s brain is telling her to fucking run for it. It sounds a lot like Zooble.
But there’s one other thing this is: a peace offering.
It’s an outstretched hand in the darkness, the glittering speck of light in the distance glowing brighter. It’s a chance she never thought Jax would give without a fight.
What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?
So Pomni meets him halfway.
“This is so weird,” she says, side-eyeing all the tiny lights surrounding them as they sit. And she means it about everything. Jax gives her a look that she can’t decipher.
“What, the house? Or the fact the house can cook?”
She snorts softly, stabbing her fork into the potato mash. “Both. It feels so…normal.”
“Normal? How many sentient kitchens do you know?”
“Like, at least three.”
Jax swallows a laugh and shakes his head amusedly. There’s a lightness to the way his eyes skim over her face as she speaks, lingering occasionally but not for long enough that she can catch and hold their focus.
“To be fair,” he drawls, gesturing with his knife, “the weirdest thing I’ve seen today is Princess Barbie’s castle of horrors across the street. That house is an abomination.”
Pomni cringes at the thought of the neon pink travesty lurking across the way. “Princess Barbie? Is she from a previous adventure?”
“Nah, I made that up,” Jax waves his hand dismissively. “Her name is probably Jennifer or something. Or Stephanie. Who cares? She’s clearly nuts.”
Pomni looks up and catches him intentionally dropping his gaze again. Her face begins to warm. Even when he’s not looking at her directly, she can feel the way his attention is homed in on her, constantly aware. She doesn’t so much feel like prey as she does a predator kept behind glass for observation. He’s watching her with the kind of wariness you have from learning lessons the hard way, of holding your hand in a lion’s jaw to see if it’ll bite and then bearing the scars that loudly state it does.
She would feel bad, but she feels just the same about him.
“Do you think Caine made an entire town?” Pomni asks, thinking about the street and other houses she’d seen. She hadn’t gone out to look how far the road goes in either direction, but it’s a recurring train of thought she’d kept stumbling upon all afternoon. It’s easier to think about the adventure than all the emotional baggage it’s strung along. For all intents and purposes, it’s the only familiar aspect of this entire convoluted enterprise.
“I doubt it. A neighbourhood, maybe. Caine wouldn’t put much effort into an adventure he hates. He can be a little bi[BEEP] like that.” Jax tugs his sleeve up and rests his arm on the table.
With a jolt, Pomni realises just how much she and Jax look like a matching set, sitting here in all their counterfeit, candlelit domestic bliss. He’s still in his sweater and she in the dress, and with the rings and everything it isn’t a tough image to sell. They look like a couple in that post-honeymoon glow. A picture in the back of a wedding magazine advertising the TOP TEN WAYS TO KEEP YOUR PARTNER WANTING IT AFTER THE BIG DAY. Her face goes from warm to oh fuck, am I turning red?
“There’s probably NPCs everywhere, too,” Jax continues, entirely oblivious. “Unless you want to wake up to one standing at the end of your bed, I suggest we lock the doors before going up.”
Pomni clears her throat and asks, “Would they really do that?”
Jax shrugs. “Who knows? Caine’s the boss of them, remember? You ever woken up to him looming over you like some fu[BEEP]ed up fever dream?” She has, actually. She cringes away from the memory. “My point exactly.”
Pushing the thought aside, she asks, “What about the others? Where do you think they are?”
Jax’s cutlery hovers over his plate. For an agonising moment, Pomni thinks she’s fucked it all up again, that this tenuous truce was already falling apart in her hands. Her heart sinks into her stomach like a rock, hard and cold and heavy. She wants to claw the words back so it’s just her and Jax here, so that the phantoms of their friends might dissipate back into the shadows.
“How should I know?” he bites. Pomni chews the inside of her cheek, guilt—for both Jax and the others oppositely—and confusion churning in her gut.
There’s so much history between him and them that she’s not privy to. Entire sides to these people that are kept purposefully out of her field of vision. She wishes they would let her see to help her understand. That’s all she wants.
Jax keeps his head pointedly down, stabbing at his plate and not eating anything.
And that’s the end of that.
Dinners in the circus always felt so inconsequential. It was an easy way to spend time together and establish a vague routine, but Caine never cared about making it feel genuine. The food would always be tasteless and blocky, more about the simulation of eating rather than encouraging authenticity. Even by the circus’s standards it felt overtly fake, like they were children playing make-believe with a plastic tea set surrounded by their stuffed toys. It’s demeaning and pointless.
The degrading make-believe part is even more prominent now, Pomni thinks, sitting in a fake house with a fake husband and wearing a dress she didn’t choose. She feels like a child wrapping herself in a tablecloth and pretending she’s a bride and Jax is the kid next door whose mom told him he had to play with her. It’s embarrassing and Pomni suddenly wishes she were anywhere else with anyone else.
She doesn’t know where these feelings are coming from, especially not this obscure, warped shame, as though she’s the one who trapped them here. She isn’t. And neither did Jax.
At least they can taste this meal. It’s not as vibrant as real-world food, but it’s there. A hint of flavour, like her mind has dredged up the memory of what it used to taste like. It’s the sad definition of better than nothing.
When they’re done, Jax collects their plates and deposits them in the sink while Pomni pretends not to be shocked by his courtesy. What had she expected him to do, lob them across the room? In her defence, that does sound like a very Jax thing to do. Maybe the bar really is just that low for him.
She watches as Jax rinses off the plates and sticks them on the drying rack. It’s not often that she thinks about who the others were before the circus, but there’s something about the house that blurs the line between the game and reality. She tries to picture this otherworldly version of him: a young man in the real world, with a human face and smooth hands and eyes like hers, but she can’t. He feels too distant, too real. A figment of a person who no longer exists as he once did. But more than ever, she finds herself wondering.
Was he tall? Did he have tattoos? What colour were his eyes? Did he have dimples? Has he ever broken a bone? He feels like the kind of guy who would have piercings, and if so, where? She imagines him to have a crooked smile and dark lashes, a stubbly jaw and big hands. His shoulders would undoubtedly be wider than they are now, but did he—
Jax turns around again and dries his hands. He ambles away from the sink, eyes skimming over the kitchen like he’s checking everything is in its place, then leans against the frame of the arched doorway. He looks at her and Pomni is a deer caught in headlights, frozen. Pinned in place by his wary attention.
The weight of their argument descends upon them like a category five hurricane spotted in the distance, and Pomni’s mouth goes dry.
There’s so much between them that’s stayed unspoken. Things that should have been brought to light but weren’t, and now their darkness is all-encompassing. It’s a dark pit splitting the ground between them and setting them on opposite sides. The longer the silence persists, the more insurmountable the distance becomes. Unconquerable. Leaving a wound to fester isn’t the same as letting it heal. It needs to be tended to, cleaned and patched up. Fixed. Talked about. What sense is there in leaving it be?
“Well, this has been a blast.” Jax claps his hands too loudly. Pomni startles. “I’m gonna go to bed.”
Pomni feels like all she’s done today is watch Jax go up and down the stairs.
He pauses at the bottom this time, throwing a quick, “Goodnight,” over his shoulder, then disappears into the depths of the house.
Pomni remains at the table, playing with the frilly hem of her dress and thinking.
She didn’t want to give the aggravating ringmaster too much credit, but why had he paired her and Jax together? Is it possible that he’d picked up on their mutual discomfort, and to get back at them for winning his derailed adventure, stuck them in a house together? Or maybe it was all to get back at Jax for ruining his trust exercise. Then again, who in their right mind thinks a trust exercise is best enacted with a loaded firearm?
Pomni sighs. There was probably no thought in it whatsoever. Caine must have partnered them based on their choice of teams during the gun adventure.
Or he just didn’t care and grouped them randomly.
But why marriage? Unless he’s trying to entice Zooble into joining them, none of the adventures had ever been made personal. Inflicting a relationship upon them feels outside of his scope of interest. He wants intrigue and stakes, not chores and you wanna order takeout for dinner? It didn’t make sense in the wider picture of the circus.
God, why is she even thinking about this? What difference would it make knowing why they’re here when all that matters is that they are? She and Jax are the town’s blushing newlyweds who’ve just bought their first home. No amount of examination is going to shine a different light on it.
This is all there is to it whether they like it or not.
Finally deciding that Jax had the right idea about heading to bed, Pomni does the rounds. She blows out all the candles, ensures the front and back doors are locked, turns off the lights, and makes her way upstairs.
Jax’s door is shut tight and no sliver of light scores the hallway from beneath it. Pomni moves straight past, forcing herself not to pause outside, and returns to the guest bedroom she’d scouted out earlier.
She doesn’t know what the master bedroom looks like—the door being stubbornly closed every time she wandered by—but she reckons it doesn’t have the same stale cleanliness as the guest room. The bedsheets and curtains are blindingly white and none of the surfaces hold any kind of trinkets. It’s a skeleton of a room, starched and crisp.
She washes up in the house’s main bathroom and then ventures to take a peek in the closet, just to see if she has a secret stash of garments hidden anywhere. To her mild surprise, she does find a couple of things. A lacy nightgown hangs front and centre, the dark blue silk making her grimace. Why the hell would she need something like—
Ah. Right. Pomni’s face burns at not only the thought of wearing the damn thing, but being seen in it. Trussed up like a fucking peacock.
She shudders.
Shoving the offending article of clothing—if the skimpy thing can even be called clothing—aside, she reaches for one of the oversized t-shirts shoved in an unassuming pile on a shelf and a pair of clean socks. She changes quickly, depositing her dress on the lone chair by the window, and hops into bed.
Shit, it’s so weird staring at a different ceiling. She’d grown used to the royal blues and bright scarlets of her room in the circus, the glittering chandelier and the odd bits and pieces littering the floor. This room is almost sterile by comparison.
She settles down beneath the covers, curling her hands beneath her face and feeling the warm press of her wedding ring against her cheek. Her thoughts, inevitably, drift to Jax a few rooms away.
Always just down the hall. Always just out of reach.
* * * * * * *
Unsurprisingly, Jax doesn’t sleep well that night.
The bed is too soft and the room too dark. Or maybe it’s the lack of noise coming from just outside his door. The circus never slept, with something in one room or another always churning, always chugging away late into the night. There is a hum of life in its very walls, a kind of sentience that Jax has always suspected is a mere extension of Caine but has never been bothered enough by to examine too closely.
He misses it now, whatever it is. As much as he loathes to admit it. The circus is the centre of this world, the one constant he can rely on. To have it taken away—his bed, his room, his corner of hell—is like having the rug pulled out from under his feet all over again.
Jax sits up in bed, the blankets pooling around his waist. Moonlight doesn’t reach this side of the house, but he doesn’t fumble for a light either. He blindly stands, letting the darkness have him and the pyjama shorts he’d dug out of the closet.
He wanders over to the darkened window and presses his forehead to the cool glass. The street is dark as well, drenched in inky midnight, but he can just about make out the silhouette of the pink house opposite. He’s mildly surprised the thing doesn’t glow.
The day had been a mess from start to finish.
A part of himself is stunned that overnight adventures are even a thing—he hadn’t thought Caine would like them spending a prolonged time outside the circus grounds, but then he supposes that everywhere in here is Caine’s domain. Everything is his, including them. It makes Jax even more tired just thinking about it.
Pomni was another element he wasn’t prepared to handle. The cosy adventure was one thing, but to be cooped up with her of all people? Jax would have chosen even Zooble over her in a heartbeat.
God, it sounds so malicious when he phrases it like that. And it is, in a way. He wouldn’t have gone within a five-mile radius of her if he could help it. Not after the way their shenanigans had ended last time.
I don’t care about you, or anyone else in this circus in the slightest. End of story.
Because, see, Jax is like a nocked arrow ready to be launched at any given moment. He’s a taut bow, a loaded gun with the safety off. He’s a clenched fist and an arm pulled back, ready to hit. He’s been on the precipice of something for a long time now, and it’s only after his implosion, his crumbling, his fury, that he’d realised what it is exactly.
Jax had cracked that day he’d fought Pomni off, spitting venom and watching her break in tandem with him.
Pomni had been right about one thing: there is—was—something between them, something as delicate as crystal and shining like a star. It was bright and new and it was growing. Exponentially. It was writhing and reshaping and becoming something that Jax didn’t know how to deal with.
So he killed it. Quick and painless, he’d thought, but the roots had run deeper than he could have ever imagined. They hurt to pull up, clinging to parts of himself he’d believed were dead. He dragged and cut and burned what he could, plugging the cracks in his walls and curling in on himself to hide the wounds he nursed, both new and old.
He thought it had worked.
And then Pomni had looked at him, all wide eyes and hope and light, and Jax knew he’d fucked it all up.
He was fucked because he couldn’t cut her loose. And he was fucked because he’d tried. And he was fucked because there was something to sever in the first place.
Fuck.
Now here she is, a couple of doors down just as she always is, but impossibly far away at the same time. All of Jax’s making, of course.
Jax’s relationship with himself is complicated on a good day, but in this moment, with his heart torn in places he didn’t know it could be, he hates himself. Well and truly.
He’d hurt her. But isn’t that what he intended to do? Isn’t that what every push, every word, every half-truth was for? To remove her from within his walls, where she’d unknowingly found herself?
Jax doesn’t even know anymore.
He lifts his head and lets it thud against the window once more.
“Stupid fu[BEEP]ing idiot,” he mumbles. “Don’t know what your own damn priorities are.” It would save him a lot of trouble if he did. His sigh fogs the glass.
The bed is cool when he returns to it. An ounce of comfort in a sea of despondency. He lies down and stares at the canopy overhead.
For a second, he thinks he can hear her. Turning over, perhaps. Or opening a window to let a breeze inside. He doesn’t know. He wants to know. He wonders what she would do if he knocked on her door. Their dinner was…amiable at best, awkward at worst. He wasn’t sure whether she would accept his offer of a truce, whether he was even deserving of one, but she had, and then he hadn’t known what to do with it.
How does one coexist with the world’s largest elephant in the world’s tiniest room?
Typically, one doesn’t. Either the elephant or the person has to go.
Jax sighs again.
It’s all a game in the end, isn’t it? And he has a feeling there’s no winning this one.