Chapter Text
『…
Spudy's. Breakfast shift.
A cheery yet blandly corporate jingle sang from tinny speakers across the customer area, just quiet enough to be unobtrusive and just loud enough to counteract the monotonous humming and whirring of the kitchen machinery. If she'd put any thought into it at all, Pomni might’ve thought it impossible for the air to feel greasy in a digital landscape. However, as it was, she was mostly trying to think of a way to properly reach the register.
“Excuse me!” An already needlessly annoying mannequin NPC marched to the counter on a warpath, breaking Pomni from her mental deliberation as they tapped on the counter, “Yeah, little Jester. I'd like to order the Stupid Burger. Last time I ordered it here, they forgot to add the sauce that makes you stupid. DON'T FORGET THE SAUCE.”
There wasn't even the smallest hint of a customer service smile on her face, she spoke more with the kind of demeanor expected from another customer in line, “Is that a thing we have..?”
“Yes, I order it all the time..” The gap between their sentences was filled with a rattle as they twitched concerningly, “I'm addicted.”
“Okayy.. one stupid burger..” She hardly let her eyes leave the customer while reaching up to type in the order, more from a mild fear than any kind of politeness.
“Heard ya loud and clear!” Ragatha gave a chipper salute, clearly already just as into this adventure as any other.
Shaking the bottle over the open burger, she began to frown, squeezing it only let out three pathetic flecks of pink onto the burger, along with a large dose of straight up air.
She continued to jounce it in the air, “Come on…” though the growl was aimed more at the bottle than anyone around her, Jax rounded the corner of the station, drawn to her frustration like a shark to blood.
“Having trouble?” He sneered, leaning onto the counter.
“No, I've got it. Thanks.” his presence was hardly greeted with eye contact, so she had no way to see what what happening before he roughly shoved her aside, catching the bottle in the air.
“You gotta do it like this, Rag.” The pure, unfiltered condescention dripped from his voice, chasing a reaction from her, but she only scowled.
Karma more instant or explosive had not been seen by either of the two women watching until Jax slammed the bottle down onto the counter spout first. Had he not been trying to make an obnoxiously loud bang noise, the method might’ve worked out for him, but…
It was difficult to tell exactly what part of the bottle gave way without a slow motion replay, but it just… popped. Splitting fully open and blasting the bright pink sauce all the way up his front, splattering his face and getting in both of his eyes.
“AH WHAT THE..-” Stumbling back a step, he swiped down his now pink shirt with a hand also drenched in sauce, only causing a gross slip n’ slide effect. But the movement slowed as his pupils greatly dilated, the previously enraged brow softened and his ears flopped over halfway.
Ragatha's partially hidden snicker of vindication was completely overlooked, Jax even laughed too… not with her, or at anything either, just a lazy chuckle into the blank space he stared a thousand yards ahead.
“What's this???” Gangle, their shift manager, stood firmly at the other end of the kitchen, glaring daggers at Jax and the mess, “This is the kind of stuff we do before closing to leave for whoever is opening tomorrow!! NOT when we've only just opened!! Clean it up, Jax! Now!”
She didn't wait to watch him leap into action, leaving again in favour of whatever mysterious manager duties she was up to before the loud bang had grabbed her attention.
Jax did no such thing, unfortunately. Rather, he just stood there, swaying and blinking one eye at a time.
Finally giving in to the pull of the drama, Zooble poked their head through a gap inbetween the aisles, their eyes following the golden ratio of destruction from his sauce-pink face to the absolutely un-servable burger to the faces of Ragatha and Pomni. They laughed, an uproarious cackle, “WHAT THE F[%$#!] HAPPENED???”
“Haah?” Jax drawled, turning his head slowly to face them.
The irregular behaviour immediately caught their attention, “What, are you high or something?”
Pomni cautiously approached the scene, craning her neck to get a better look at him, “Did the stupid sauce make him stupid..?”
“He was already f[%$#!]ing stupid, so who knows what the hell he is now…” They took another look around the destruction, now far less amused by it, “I'm guessing he's not gonna be helping with this… typical. So, who wants to clean Jax? Because I claim not it, unless someone finds a high pressure hose.”
Ragatha was just about to ask why Jax couldn't do that himself, when he started to smear the sauce to places it wasn't even staining before. This might’ve been in some way an attempt to display he was capable, but that would mean he was paying attention to the conversation in some way, which didn't seem likely.
The grimace on Ragatha's face continued to strech while Jax just made the situation worse, “Not it also. Sorry, Pomni.”
“It's fine, I’ll do it..” Pomni sighed, defeated by short string rules. Better to just get it over with…
Grabbing a fist full of Jax’s apron, she tugged to lead him through to the back of Spudsy's with a shocking lack of resistance. Though not entirely sure what she was looking for, she had faith she would find it.
“Alright, uh, I'm okay to start wiping this up if you wanna go find wherever we keep the spare sauces..?” Ragatha suggested, already going to grab a cloth.
“I mean, sure, but.. you do know it's on the ceiling too, right?” They pointed.
“… Well, s[%$#!].”
…』
『…
“Oh my God, can you stop making this more difficult that it has to be..” water ran over her glove and down her arm as she clutched the wet cloth with rage.
Finding the employee bathroom was easy enough, locking herself in there with him was also pretty easy despite the less than ideal amount of spare space, but… getting him to keep still enough was… proving to be a challenge.
In response to her, Jax only made a little mocking mumble noise while continuing to further the mess of himself.
“And stop touching yourself! Please!”
“I can touching myself all I want.” He drunkenly slurred, defiantly proving his point by planting both hands firmly onto his backside.
Oh God it's on his butt now…
“Alright, that's it,” She growled, expression steeling, “We’re doing this the hard way. You had your chance.”
“Hard way?–”
With the state he was in, it was really no surprise that he went down easy when his legs were kicked out from under him. He fell to the tile with no time to recover, even if he was capable of that, before Pomni was pinning him to the floor and scrubbing aggressively at his face, perhaps with some pent up frustration in the mix.
As she stood again to refresh her cloth, he made a leisurely move to sit up, which she quickly corrected by digging a heel into his chest and he practically pinned himself to the floor, wide eyed like a switch had flipped in his head.
It was only when she was throwing water from the sink onto him on the floor that she began to really hope he wouldn't remember all of this when he came down…
“Give me your hands.” Though she demanded it confidently, there was some surprise with the speed of his compliance when his two sticky yellow gloves shot into the air for her. The palms and fingers were all soiled with a pink that inconsistently splattered all down both arms.
There was definitely something about cleaning someone else's hands that was a little too intimate for how little she knew him, but it couldn't be helped. So, she just made as quick and compensatingly aggressive a job of it as she could and tried not to think about it too hard.
Unfortunately, there was nothing else she had to think about in time before she was left wondering how he was feeling about this situation. His expression was hard to read but… was she weird for thinking his lazy smile seemed genuine, while his large, blown out eyes lay constantly on her reddening face?
Nevermind the hands, this whole thing was… incredibly intimate. She really wished he'd stop looking at her like that while every moment she got closer down his arms towards his torso. His big, soft eyes on her wasn't something she thought she could handle emotionally while touching his chest, no matter how much angry energy she put into it… angry energy that she was already losing at a scary rate.
Looking back and forth to his face finally caused a break, “Shut your eyes. Go to sleep or something.” She waved him off.
Not even questioning it for a second, his eyes shut tight and his head fell back flat to the floor at her very command.
Well… okay, “…Thank you.” what was it that made him go from being difficult to downright obedient? Was he scared of her? It really didn't seem that way with that face he was making.
But, just as she'd thought, it was definitely far easier to get her job done without his eyes pleading at her like a big, stupid dog. The cloth made easy work of the mess all down his front, though, he still hadn't put his arms down yet… did she need to tell him to do that..?
“Arms down.” And just like he was under her spell, they fell back to the floor.
Once the worst of it was gone, she found herself fussing over the smaller details before she'd realised it. His face was still a mess, admittedly, she hadn't done a great job the first time around and really could've done with using a softer touch. And touch softer she did.
Somewhere between it all, the good behavior and lack of annoying quips, she'd somewhat forgotten who was underneath her.
Underneath her?
It seemed, without thinking, the best place she'd found to sit as she worked was on his now clean chest, her knees either side of his head. That's… not weird at all, right?
Her cloth smoothed across the short, damp fur on the top of his head, a contact that for some reason meant to him that he was allowed to look at her again. Pomni froze, the intimacy of it all hitting her again and far harder.
“I said eyes closed!” She snapped, and, of course, he quickly complied.
There was a strange enjoyment she found in the way his face scrunched and teeth bared when she scrubbed around the edges of his face and she couldn't help a small laugh. He's fun to play with…
Swiftly ignoring that stray thought, she moved on from his face to his ears, where there was just one lone splatter of sauce that'd been neglected until now. In what seemed like the most optimal method, Pomni wrapped the cloth in her fist, closed around the base of his ear and slid her tight grip all the way up it's length until-
He made a sound.
She wasn't sure what it was, a groan of discomfort? Or a moan of- she didn't want to know what it was, but it made her jump up to her feet, removing any part of her from touching him as fast as she could and holding her hands up in surrender as she backed herself into a corner.
“ALRIGHT!” Her face was fully beet red, “You're all clean, g-get out.”
She held a prayer that her magic power over him wouldn't have suddenly stopped working. Thankfully, he began the crawl to his feet, sliding his face up the door like an odd snake. Jax tugged at the handle in a way that wouldn't have opened the door even if it was unlocked, forcing Pomni from her safe corner to reach around him, yanking it open and throwing him out.
It was only as the door was slowly shutting again between them that she saw the big, pink handprints on his a[%$#!].
That's… not her problem.
…』
『…
There was absolutely nothing that Pomni wanted less than to have to look Jax in the eyes ever again. The more she told herself it wasn't a moan, the more it replayed in her head, like it was trying to prove itself to her. The box she'd found to stand on at the register left her at the perfect height to sink her face onto the counter as she willed her mind onto any other topic of thought, unsuccessfully.
There was the sound of a Zooble yelling from the grill, “HEY! GET YOUR FACE OUT OF THERE! THAT'S NOT FOR YOU!” Their tone was scolding in a way that if Pomni didn't know better, she would think they were yelling at an unruly dog scrounging for food, but, she knew it was most likely actually an unruly Jax, possibly scrounging for food.
Unfortunately, the confrontation was responded to with an unhelpful reminder of what Jax sounds like when he's actually groaning, and it was completely incomparable, much to Pomni's dismay.
So that was it then. It was a moan. She'd made him moan. And, if she was being completely honest with herself, she had no clue how she felt about that.
Taking a deep breath to reset, she lifted her head from the counter. Maybe if a customer decided to show up, she could use it to distract herself? Was what she thought the split second before she opened her eyes to find there was already a customer there. Not just any customer, but Gummigoo. The NPC she'd bonded with on her first adventure, with his two… brothers? Behind him… how long had he been standing there, waiting for her to come back to earth?
“Holy s[%$#!]…” She could only whisper, just blinking at him, wide eyed.
His face was washed with a mild concern, “Are you alright, miss?”
“O-oh… yeah… I'm finee…” in an attempt to act cool, her tone definitely came across as flirty, a detail she tried not to dwell on.
The gators attention was drawn away from her by a low, rumbling growl, “And uh… is he alright?”
Following the direction of his gaze to the counter beside her, she nearly jumped right out of her skin at seeing Jax, slung across the side, giving Gummigoo the most animalistic death glare she'd ever seen. And… was he the one making the growling sound?
“You know… I'm really not sure. But uhh, what can I get you?- For you..?”
“Well.. I uh, I’ll have the sausage bacon jaffle combo and-” The moment he started talking again, the growling grew louder and louder until he had to cut himself off to readdress the strange employee, “I'm sorry, did I… do something?”
To Pomni's absolute horror to watch, Jax crawled up onto the counter on all fours, arching his back like a cat, giving her only barely enough time to react before he attempted a lunge at the disturbed customer. With his grasping hands only mere inches from Gummigoo’s face, Pomni caught his legs, yanking him back over the counter and into a pile on the floor.
“I–m sorry-” She called as she attempted to pin him down through his angry, writhing protests. Emerging victorious, once he'd stopped his struggling for whatever reason, she poked back over the counter, using Jax as her stepping stool, “You were saying?”
By the time her eyes had landed back onto Gummigoo, he was already awkwardly stepping away, “I… uh… you know what, I think me and the lads are just gonna go somewhere else… good luck with that one..”
“W-wait, Gummigoo..” She pleaded, all too quietly for the NPC to hear, as he was already most of the way to the door. Sighing in defeat, she dropped her face back to the counter.
A pleased giggle emerged from the floor, drawing her attention back to him, which was apparently the only place it was allowed to be. He gazed up at her with his big, thoughtless eyes, and, as much as she wanted to kick even more senses out of him, she resisted.
“What was that for, huh?”
…』