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The call comes in the small hours of the morning.
It's been a long night full of uneasy technicolor dreams. When Christine's phone rings, it jolts her so bad that she flings herself away from it. It clatters to the floor. She stares at her sparse, darkened living room and tries to calm her hammering heart.
"Shit," she says. There is no bleep. She drags an unsteady hand through her messy hair and feels no jester cap. When she stares down at her hand, she finds no gloves. Only her own naked fingers. Ragged, bitten nails. Imperfect. Real.
They got out.
Her phone is still trilling. Groggily, she retrieves it. The screen is painfully bright in the darkness, and she squints against it until she can make out the number on the screen. She doesn’t recognize it, but it’s a new phone without all her old contacts. Her old phone got thrown out while she was missing for eight months. Somebody she used to know might need her.
So she picks up and croaks out, “Hello?”
“Heyyy, Pomni,” comes an aggravatingly familiar voice.
“Don’t call me that,” she says automatically. It’s a mistake; it’ll only encourage Felix to get even more annoying. “Why are you calling me from a strange number at 3:30?”
“It’s 3:35, technically,” Felix says. He’s got that particular insincere conman tone that makes her feel like she’s chewing on tinfoil, the one he uses when he thinks he’s being slick.
“I will hang up on you,” Christine informs him. “I was sleeping.”
“Fiiiine,” Felix says, like it’s a huge imposition not to be a jerk. “I need a ride.”
Huh. It’s a little late for closing time and he doesn’t sound drunk. Something’s off. Christine sits up. “Is there some reason you’re not calling a taxi?”
“Nobody uses taxis anymore,” Felix says. “Damn, you’re old.”
“Felix,” Christine says.
There’s a sound like Felix starts to do a huge, dramatic sigh only for his breath to catch halfway through. He makes a disgruntled noise. “Look, they said they’d only let me out if somebody picks me up.”
“Oh my god,” Christine groans. She covers her face with a hand. “You’re in jail.”
“Oh please, like the cops could ever catch me,” Felix says.
That’s something, at least. As always, Felix can’t just give her a straight answer. Holding onto the last of her patience by her fingernails, she says, “Where are you?”
“Uh,” Felix says. “Listen, don’t freak out, but did you know muggers really don’t like it when you say ‘what’re you gonna do, stab me?’”
Christine’s voice hits a new pitch. “You’re in the hospital?”
“Well, not if you come pick me up,” Felix says brightly.
“You got stabbed?!”
“Relax!” Felix says. “It was just a flesh wound. Hey, have you ever seen Monty Python?”
“Everyone’s seen Monty Python,” Christine says. “Hold on, I’m coming to get you.”
“It’s about time,” Felix says, which is probably his closest approximation to saying thank you. “Seeya.”
He hangs up on her before she can ask anything else. She sits on the couch staring at her phone for a few seconds, bemused. Then she goes to get her car keys, pajamas and all.
***
Thankfully, Felix is in a different hospital than the one that they ended up in after… well, after a lot of things. That was a long two weeks of recovery, trying to explain things to skeptical cops and C&A representatives and her mother. By the time they finally let her go back to the apartment that Mom stubbornly paid for in her absence, the smell of hand sanitizer made her skin crawl.
She’s still in therapy twice a week. She lies to her therapist a lot. Her mother, too. But she’s in contact with the rest of the circus survivors, and they get the truth. She watches Samantha stream her art. She gets texted pictures of Anastacia’s rescue horses. She visits Grant in the memory care unit. Alex keeps a bartender’s hours and is usually awake when Christine has nightmares. Trying to get Felix’s contact information had been like bathing a pissed-off cat, and she really hadn’t expected to hear from him ever again until he sent her a random clown meme and a text reading ‘this u?’ after several weeks of radio silence. After that, he contacts her once every few days with a joke or a meme and resists anything more serious than that. She never expected him to ask for help.
(Honestly, she never expected him to forgive her for dragging him back into the real world by the scruff no matter how hard he fought her. He'd wanted to stay behind alone and abstract in peace. In the end, none of them would let him.)
The front desk gives her a room number for the ER. It’s more like a closet-sized gap between privacy curtains. Felix is sitting on the edge of the bed, already dressed and practically vibrating with impatience. It’s the first time she’s actually seen him since shortly after they left the circus. Dark circles, pale skin, greasy hair, one hell of a black eye. He’s swimming in an oversized sweatshirt somebody must’ve recovered from the lost and found; for all that he’s tall, he’s built scrawny. His left arm is bandaged and in a sling, and he’s guarding his ribs. When he sees Christine, he plasters on a shit-eating grin. Talking seems to take more effort than usual, but he says as smoothly as he can, “Long time no see, Pommers.”
“Wow, you look like crap,” she says.
“Words hurt,” he says. “Cute pajamas. Sushi, really? What are you, a weeb?”
“Nice shiner,” she says.
“Adds to my masculine mystique,” Felix says. He gets up. It’s a slow and painful process, but when she goes to try to help, he bares his teeth at her. “I got it.”
Christine holds her hands up in a universal gesture for peace. “Okay. Should they really be letting you leave?”
“I’m fine,” he says with a dramatic roll of his eyes. It’s a little grotesque considering that one of them is swollen shut. “It’s just some cracked ribs and a teeny little stab wound. I’ve survived worse.”
“If you say so,” she says, not bothering to hide her skepticism. “Did they actually discharge you yet?”
Felix holds up a plastic bag with his good hand. It has a bunch of papers, two pill bottles, a roll of gauze and some antibiotic ointment in a tube, and a bloody shirt. The shirt is probably a loss. “Yeah, I’ve been sprung. Let’s get out of here already.”
Before Christine can offer to pull the car around, Felix shoves the plastic bag into her hands and starts shuffling out of the cubicle. Normally it’s a pain in the ass to keep up with him; his legs are about as long as they were in the circus, and he doesn’t usually slow down for anyone. Now she can keep pace with him. His grin looks more like a grimace, and he’s a little gray under the fluorescent lights. It’s not like him to be this quiet, but with his ribs, he might not be able to walk and talk at the same time. She’s bracing herself to shove him into a chair or something. If she looks at those discharge papers, she has a bad feeling that there’s a waiver for checking himself out against medical advice. That or his doctor is an idiot. Having dealt with a lot of stupid doctors in those first two weeks, she isn’t sure which is more likely.
Once they get outside, the cool night air seems to help. Felix eases out of his defensive hunch as he follows her to her car. When she unlocks it with the keyfob, his grin looks slightly more real. “Nice ‘Coexist’ sticker. Kinda cringe. Don’t tell me you’re a hippie.”
“It’s my mom’s old car,” Christine says.
“This explains so much about you,” Felix says. “Does your mom do a lot of yoga?”
“Shut up,” Christine says. Her mom goes to yoga at the Y once a week and has since Christine was little, but like hell is she giving Felix the satisfaction of being right. She unlocks the passenger side door and opens it wide. “Need any help with the seatbelt?”
“I got it,” Felix says. He gingerly lowers himself into the seat, and Christine watches as he realizes he’d have to buckle with the arm currently in a sling. With a groan, he thumps the back of his head against the headrest. “Fuck it. Buckle me in, daddy, I wanna play passenger princess.”
“Way to make it weird,” Christine says.
“This is already weird,” Felix says. He turns his face away as she carefully buckles him in and tries her hardest to avoid hurting him, but she hears the soft grunt as the belt draws tight across his chest.
“Sorry,” Christine says with a wince.
“It’s fine,” Felix says, terse. Then he clears his throat and grins. “Just get me to my place so I can take the good stuff.”
Well, that answers the question of whether she’s only ferrying him to his apartment and leaving him there to lick his wounds in private. Fair enough. Not unexpected. Never mind that he woke her up in the middle of the night with a call from the emergency room; she’s not allowed to worry about him.
Of course, does she call her mom when she wakes up shaking in the middle of the night? Does she even admit it to the others unless they call her on it? Not really.
Christine carefully closes him in and gets in the car herself. As she buckles in, she jokes, “I guess this is one way to finally see your apartment.”
“Heh,” Felix says. “You really think I'm gonna ruin the mystery like that? Please. Drop me off at the Z-Mart on 4th.”
“What?” Christine says, turning sharply in her seat to look at him. He has his good eye closed and his head tipped back against the headrest, grinning that stupid Cheshire grin. “Why?”
“Maybe I really want a chili dog,” Felix says.
“I’ll get you one,” Christine says. “But I’m not just gonna--”
“I need to pick up my car,” Felix says.
“Bullshit,” Christine says. “Your arm’s in a sling and you can’t see out of one eye.”
“So I’ll get an Uber,” Felix says. There’s an edge beginning to creep into his voice. “I don’t need you to babysit me.”
“That’s tough, because you called me and now you’re stuck with me,” Christine says.
Felix sighs. “Yeah, I guess I did. That’ll teach me.”
“Better me than the hospital,” Christine says.
“At least the hospital has Jello,” Felix grumbles.
“We can go to your apartment or mine,” Christine says. “Those are your options.”
“God, you’re so annoying,” Felix says. “I actually forgot how annoying you are.”
“Thank you,” Christine says flatly. “That means so much coming from you. You know I’ll sit in this parking lot until you stop flailing.”
“I’m not flailing, I’m--” Felix stops. Takes a shallow breath. Then he visibly gives up, which is somehow worse than when he gets vicious. “Fuck. Fuck! Fine. Can I crash on your couch or whatever?”
Christine stares at him. “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” Felix says. “I don’t think you’re gonna let me sleep in the back of my car. Or you could drop me at a no-tell motel, but my wallet and phone are gone and you’d have to spot me the cash.”
Christine’s heart drops. Slowly, she says, “You don’t have an apartment.”
“Nope,” Felix says.
“You’ve been sleeping in your car,” Christine says.
Felix huffs a painful laugh. “How much are you sleeping these days?”
“Shit.” Christine pinches the bridge of her nose hard. “You could have told me instead of sending clown memes.”
“I don’t need your help,” Felix says.
Christine just looks at him, bruised to hell and recently stabbed, and raises an eyebrow. He glances sidelong at her, catches her expression, and grimaces before looking away.
“Well, you’ve got me anyway,” Christine says. She starts the car. “So suck it up, buttercup.”
Felix snorts. “Always trying to save me, aren’t you?”
“Somebody has to,” Christine says.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Christine says. “Maybe it has nothing to do with you. Maybe I just want to be able to live with myself.”
“How’s that going for you?” Felix asks.
“Not bad, actually,” Christine says. “I have my new job. I’ve got my mom. I have friends. It keeps me too busy to think about… y’know.”
“Good for you,” Felix says. There’s probably supposed to be venom in the words, but he just sounds exhausted.
When he doesn’t say anything else, Christine nudges the volume up on her music. The crunchy guitars make Felix stop sulking and lift his head off the window. The grin spreads slowly across his face, and it actually looks genuine for once. “Hey, nice. I always kinda figured your taste in music would suck.”
“Thanks,” Christine deadpans.
“Just a total sad indie girl soundtrack,” Felix says. “Music to make you wanna throw yourself off a bridge.”
“What’re you into, then?” Christine demands.
“I dunno, a little of everything,” Felix says. “Radiohead is badass.”
“Oh, and that’s not depression music?” Christine says.
“Creep is a classic for a reason,” Felix says.
“Yeah, a classic for emo boys to sing at karaoke,” Christine says.
“Ouch,” Felix says. “Just stab me again, why don’t you?”
“I can’t believe you dared them to stab you,” Christine says. Then she remembers Felix pressing his forehead against the barrel of her gun, his pupils dilated and his grin wide. “Actually, I take that back. I totally believe you’d dare somebody to stab you.”
“Please, like there’s anything they could do to me that compares to being trapped in a simulation with you people,” Felix says. “Now the part where they kicked the shit out of me, that was a little uncalled for.”
Christine considers her angle of approach for a moment before saying, “Well, you are pretty punchable.”
“Hey, it's not my fault he was sensitive about the size of his knife,” Felix says.
Despite everything, Christine laughs. “Oh my god. Did you make a crack about his knife size before or after he stabbed you?”
“After,” Felix says.
Damn. Felix is lucky they didn't kill him. Christine drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “So you said a dumb one-liner instead of yelling for help. That tracks.”
“It was a really good one-liner,” Felix says with wounded dignity.
“Mediocre,” Christine says, trying not to smile.
Felix sucks in a dramatic outraged breath and then coughs it out, pressing a hand to his side. Before Christine can apologize or ask if he needs anything, he continues like nothing ever happened. “And I’m sure you’d do better if you just got stabbed.”
“I try not to get stabbed,” Christine says. “That sounds like a skill issue.”
Felix snickers and then groans. “Fuck, don’t make me laugh.”
“Maybe you should talk less,” Christine says.
“Trying to shut me up?” Felix asks.
“It never works,” Christine says.
It’s so easy to slide into this rhythm with Felix when he’s not trying his hardest to be an asshole. He likes it when she’s mean. Maybe that’s him bringing out the worst in her like Anastacia seemed to be afraid of, but she doesn’t feel like she’s at her worst when she’s with him. Running around the circus with guns blazing was the most fun she’d ever had in her life until he got vicious about trying to push her away.
The sad truth is that Christine doesn’t have many friends. She had a few work friends from her old accounting job, the kind where she’d talk to them about what they did on the weekends and their kids’ soccer games without ever actually caring. They didn’t see her. They didn’t get her.
Does Felix get her? Maybe. Better than most people do, at least. She should probably be worried about that. But she has the feeling that she sees through his crap better than most people, as much as he hates it. Two messed-up peas in a pod.
“Admit it,” Felix says. “You’d be bored without me around.”
“You’re right,” Christine says, wielding sincerity like a prison shank. “I would.”
“Ugh, don’t do that,” Felix complains, as if he’s not the one who opened that door in the first place. “I will fling myself out of this car, I swear to god.”
“Good luck unbuckling your seatbelt one-handed,” Christine says.
“I hate you,” Felix says. There’s no real venom in the words. Not like the last time he’d told her that, when they all woke up together in the real world and he realized that he’d lost his chance to be left behind. Something in him had broken that night. The desolate look in his eyes still haunts her.
If he wants a fight, she’s not giving it to him. All she says is, “I know.”
It’s a short drive back to Christine’s apartment, and Felix is quiet the rest of the way. As they pull into the parking lot, he finally says, “God, you take everything so seriously. Relax! I hate everybody. You’re not special.”
“Thanks,” Christine says. “But I don’t need you to like me. I’m still helping you.”
Felix scoffs. “I bet when you, Gangle, Rags and Zooble play D&D like total losers you’re a knight in shining armor.”
Interesting. As far as she knew, she was the only one from the circus that he bothered to talk to. Maybe he’s been texting Alex on the side, or at least he’s stalking their social media. “How’d you hear about that?”
“I was guessing,” Felix says. “Zooble’s literally got blue hair and pronouns. They’re a walking cliche. Of course they play D&D.”
“I play a bard, actually,” Christine says. She’s not very good at it.
“Of course you do,” Felix says with an eyeroll. “You think you can talk anybody into anything. Just bat those big brown eyes and give a little inspirational speech and everything’s all better.”
“I talked you into sleeping on my couch, didn’t I?” Christine says.
Felix gives her a sour look. “Are you gonna unbuckle me or what?”
So she turns the car off and comes around to unleash him. Up close, he smells like blood, fear sweat, and disinfectant. It’s unfortunate. Then again, if he’s been sleeping in his car then showers have probably been in short supply for a while. She’ll have to see if he wants to borrow hers from time to time once he leaves.
“There’s gonna be stairs,” Christine says. “I’m on the second floor. Sorry.”
“I’ll live,” Felix says wearily.
All she can do is trail behind him and watch him painfully navigate the steps. By the time they get to her floor, his jaw is set tight and he’s sweating. She almost puts a hand on his good shoulder, remembers how badly it went when she tried to hug him, and draws back. She doesn’t need him to instinctively shove her down the stairs in a panic. The faster she gets him inside, the sooner he can take pain meds.
So she unlocks the door, pushes it open, and makes jazz hands to accompany her weak, “Tada.”
Felix ignores her and goes in. Her living room is close by the door, so he arrows straight for her couch and lowers himself onto it with a carefulness that says a lot about how much he’s hurting. Back in the circus, he used to fling himself around dramatically like the cartoon character he pretended to be. Now he acts like he’ll break if he moves wrong. He lays his head back against her wall, closes his eyes, and grins at nothing.
“Nice digs,” Felix says.
“Thanks,” she says cautiously, waiting for the barb. It doesn’t come. “Can I get you anything?”
She’s expecting a flat no, but he says without opening his eyes, “I got pills in the bag.”
“Oh, right!” Rummaging in the bag, she comes up with two bottles. She probably shouldn’t read the labels, but she does. Looks like an antibiotic and a handful of painkillers. Better to fish the pills out for him instead of making him fight with the childproof cap. What was he planning to do if she’d let him sleep in the car alone, gnaw right through the plastic? Stubborn jerk. “Here. Let me get you some water or something.”
When she goes to press the pills into his good hand, he twitches as soon as she makes contact. Almost a flinch. Before she can apologize, he smoothly pops both pills into his mouth and dry-swallows them.
“Uh,” she says. “Okay, then. Are you hungry? I've got some leftover pizza.”
“Nah.” Felix shifts on the couch, pain creasing his forehead for a moment before smoothing out into careful neutrality. “Are you just gonna stand there and stare at me all night? A little creepy, but if that’s what you’re into…”
She looks at him slouched on her couch, long legs stretched out in front of him, and tries to imagine him lying down to sleep. There’s no way in hell he’ll fit. He’ll end up sleeping upright like one of Anastacia’s rescue horses, and that can’t be good for his ribs.
“Let me change the sheets on my bed,” she says. “You can sleep there.”
That gets a reaction. His good eye shoots open, and he gives her a surprisingly vulnerable look. She caught him off-guard. Then his expression closes down, and he scoffs. “Wow, your timing is terrible.”
The blush scalds her face. She crosses her arms defensively. “I'm not coming on to you, you jerk. You're just too tall for my couch. I'll sleep here instead.”
“I'm not sleeping in your bed,” he says. “That's weird. You're making it weird.”
“How is it weirder than sleeping in the back of your car?” Christine demands.
“You wanna let some random homeless guy sleep in your bed?”
“You're not some random homeless guy, you're--”
My friend.
She stops just shy of finishing that sentence. Judging by the dark look on his face, he heard her anyway. He laughs, a painful sound that's more like a wheeze, and lets his head thump back against the wall behind her couch.
“You never know when to give up, do you?” Felix says. “You're not my friend.”
“That doesn’t mean you're not mine,” she says.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Since when does anything about this make sense?”
“Ugh.” Felix squinches his good eye shut like she’s giving him a vicious headache. The feeling is mutual. “I'm not taking your bed.”
“Well, neither am I,” she says.
“Seriously?”
“Yep,” she says, popping the ‘p’ as obnoxiously as he would. “Guess I'll be sleeping on the floor. The bed'll just go to waste. What a shame.”
“You stubborn little asshole,” he says with something like wonder. “Why do you even care?”
“You really want an answer to that question?” Christine says. “Or are you gonna throw another tantrum because somebody dared to give a crap about you?”
“Don't,” he says, and the sudden raw desperation in that word stabs her in the heart. He's terrified. “Just--”
“Okay,” she says softly. “Okay. We'll drop it.”
“I'm not taking the bed,” he says. The fingers of his good hand grip the upholstery of her couch for dear life. “It's too much.”
Hard to tell what he means by that. Too much closeness? Too much kindness? Maybe both. She sighs. “Are you even gonna be able to sleep like this?”
Felix snorts. “Don’t worry about me. I can sleep anywhere. Add in the painkiller and I'll be out like a light.”
“If you change your mind--”
“I won't,” he says. “Now quit hovering. Either go to bed or sit down.”
She wasn't expecting an invitation to sit beside him. It startles her out of overthinking. She sits down on the other end of the couch as carefully as possible, trying not to jostle him. He relaxes by degrees, his good eye sliding shut. If she didn't know better, she'd think he was drawing some kind of comfort out of having her close.
“Long night, huh?” Christine says.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “I haven't gotten my ass kicked this hard since foster care.”
It startles a horrified laugh out of her. He grins, clearly pleased with himself. She tells him, “That's terrible.”
“You laughed,” he says smugly. “We're both horrible people.”
“I guess so,” she says. A pause. “Um, were you really--?”
“Never take me seriously,” he says. “That's like rule number one.”
It figures he'd blow it off as just a joke. That’s as good as confirmation that it’s true, but he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. She says, “What's rule number two, then?”
“Never talk about Fight Club,” he says.
“Nerd,” she says. “You want to watch some TV until your drugs kick in?”
He tries to shrug and winces, one hand going to his wounded shoulder. “Ow, shit.”
“Don’t do that,” she says, alarmed.
“Thanks, genius, I couldn’t figure that out,” he says.
She decides to ignore that. “Do you need to do anything with that before you sleep? To change the bandages and stuff?”
“They told me to leave it alone until tomorrow,” he says. “Then I change the bandages. That’ll suck.”
“I’ll help you,” she says.
“I don’t need--”
She says again with steel in her voice, “I’ll help you. Or do you really think you can do it one-handed?”
Felix gives her a death glare. She stares right back and doesn’t blink. Finally, he looks away and mutters, “Fine. Whatever.”
“Thank you,” she tells him. He ignores her like a cat that just fell off a table and wants to pretend nobody saw that, so she picks up the remote and turns it on. “Any requests?”
“Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3,” he says.
“Nope,” she says. “Any requests where people don’t get murdered with chainsaws?”
“Lame,” he says. “Put on the shopping channel. They sell the ugliest stuff after midnight. It’s hilarious.”
So she puts on the shopping channel. True to his word, there’s the world’s most hideous jewelry box on a rotating plinth. It’s encrusted in so many rhinestones that it looks like a misshapen disco ball. She recoils instinctively. “Oh wow. You’re not kidding.”
“Look, it’s the perfect place to store Grandma’s ashes,” he says.
She laughs, and he gives her a sly grin in return. She settles more deeply into the couch, making herself comfortable now that she’s relatively sure he won’t tell her to go away. “I guess Grandma was really into glam rock.”
The next several items aren’t much better. Felix slouches ever deeper into the sofa as the drugs kick in. It’s like his bones are melting. He seems to breathe a little easier, his eyes half-lidded and dark. Apparently they either gave him the good stuff or he’s a serious lightweight, but the sight of him genuinely relaxed for once does soft and squishy things to her heart.
“That's an ugly-ass dress,” he says. The edges of the words are blurry.
“I didn't know you had such strong feelings about fashion,” she teases.
“I know what I like,” he says. “The colors clash.”
“Like purple fur and pink overalls?”
“Exactly,” he says, dragging the word out long. “You get me.”
“Yeah, I do,” she says.
“It's really annoying.”
“Too bad.”
“Ha,” he says. “You're a mean little shit.”
“Sometimes,” she admits.
“That's kinda cool,” he says.
Fondly, she says, “Stop giving me blackmail material.”
“Your face is blackmail material,” he mumbles. “Your mom is blackmail material.”
“Go to sleep,” she says.
She's expecting pushback. Instead he sighs, mutters something, and settles down. She stares in disbelief as he seems to fully sink into sleep with her still sitting right next to him.
Maybe he doesn’t think they're friends, but he trusts her. That's not nothing.
“Hey,” she says softly. “Felix?”
Nothing. His eyelashes don't even flutter. He looks younger like this, the weight of his cynical crap stripped away. She wonders how long it's been since he had a decent night's sleep. As long as it's been for her, probably.
Moving slowly and carefully, she reaches out and grabs a folded quilt off the guest chair. Then she drapes it over him. He doesn’t even twitch. It's strange to see him so still.
Quietly, she says, “I'm just gonna sit with you for a couple more minutes, okay?”
There's no answer. Of course there isn't. He’s out cold. It's kind of sweet, which is a word she probably shouldn’t use to describe him in case he senses it and starts biting her.
So she snuggles into her corner of the sofa and admires the ugliest dress she's ever seen, feeling more at peace than she has in a while.
***
”You’re dreaming again,” Ribbit says.
They’re in her bedroom, the two of them crammed into her single bed like they used to when things got bad. There’s barely any room for Jax; his feet are dangling off the end and into open space. That’s all right. Ribbit is small enough to curl up against his side with her head propped on his shoulder. He can feel her breathing.
“Yeah,” he says distantly. “I guess so.”
The stars painted on her ceiling glow with a gentle but thoroughly fake light. Caine made them in different colors, yellows and pinks and purples, and it probably wasn’t supposed to remind them of the abstraction looming above all their heads. Caine wasn’t usually cruel on purpose.
(Until he was.)
“It’s like you miss me or something,” Ribbit says.
This is his cue to say something casually insulting like they used to, a barb with no teeth. (At least until the end, when every word he said was wrong and everything she snarled at him was meant to draw blood.) The words have all dried up. He stares up at the stars, frozen in place under the weight of how much that’s true. He misses her like a lost limb. He let himself depend on her, and then she was ripped away from him. Stupid. He knew better.
“That’s funny, isn’t it?” Ribbit continues. There’s razor-wire under the cotton candy sweetness of her voice. “You left me and Kaufmo behind in the basement like it was nothing.”
“I was trying to--”
“You didn’t try hard enough,” she snaps. “It was supposed to be the three of us together, remember? But as soon as I abstracted, you let Kaufmo crash and burn. I trusted you. It was your job to take care of him.”
“I know.”
Ribbit lifts her head to stare down at him. Her eyes glow the same pink and yellow as the stars, pinning him to the mattress. It’s like the last time he saw her, twisted and glitching and mindless. He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t save her. “You didn’t even go to the funeral.”
He doesn’t flinch. He lets her flay him. He has it coming. Distantly, he can feel his breaths coming faster and it hurts, it fucking hurts, but he can’t stop himself. He can’t ever stop anything.
“You’re pathetic,” she tells him, and it’s not just her. It’s Kaufmo. It’s Pomni. She looms above him, blotting out the fake stars, a hole in the world where his friend used to be. “I never should’ve bothered with you. I--”
Pain pops the dream like a bubble.
Jax stares numbly at the room around him, shaking like a leaf. His ribs are screaming in protest even as he gasps quietly for air. This isn’t his car. This isn’t the circus. He has no idea where the hell he is or why he can’t move one arm or what’s wrong with his left eye or why it hurts to breathe and he can’t, he can’t, he--
A hellaciously loud snore punctures the quiet. It’s like a goddamn revving chainsaw. His head snaps around, and he finds that there’s a woman on the other end of the couch. Her hair is black, her nose is adorable, and she’s pocket-sized in her stupid sushi pajamas.
Pomni.
The night comes back in all its mortifying glory. God, he actually had to call her and beg for help just because he got his ass kicked like a loser. Truly pathetic. He fell asleep right beside her like--
(Like he used to with Ribbit.)
He should kick her awake. Snarl at her a little. Dig his fingers into whatever open wounds he can find until she leaves him alone. Instead he just watches her snore. It’s a lot of noise to come out of such a teeny person. It’s almost impressive.
His breathing is slowing down as he stares at her like a total creep. Maybe he’ll blame it on the painkillers taking the sharp edges off the world. It’s not anything more complicated than that. He doesn’t feel safer with her around. He’s not that pitiful.
When he glances down at himself, he realizes there’s a blanket draped over him. It looks like a quilt somebody’s grandma made. Ugly as hell. Not that he’d know anything about grandmas or family in general, but he gets the impression that people have gross sentimental feelings about that stuff. The fact that she put it on him so he’d be warm is… weird.
Pomni covered him up while he was sleeping. She got that close to him and it didn’t wake him up. It’s exactly the kind of soppy bullshit that she’d do. He hates it. He hates her. Or at least he would if he could work up the energy right now.
(The quilt smells nice, though. Like laundry detergent.)
“Get up,” he tells her, but the words are drowned out by her snoring. “Pomni. Pommers. Pompom. Pommala.”
Nothing. She’s really out. When he looks closer at her, he sees the shadows under her eyes. Apparently she’s not sleeping any better than he is. Neither are Zooble or Gangle or Ragatha, judging by what he sees on their socials, which he’s only checking to be sure to avoid them better. He doesn’t give a shit. Obviously.
Pomni looks so tired.
“Ugh.” Jax rests his head back against the wall and turns his attention to the TV. They’re advertising some creepy porcelain doll, and he does not think of the way Gangle’s mask crunched under his feet after he broke it. That would be a stupid thing to think about. “Fine. Sleep where you want. I don’t care.”
(He hates it when he doesn’t even believe his own lies.)
The dancing lights of the television make his head swim dizzily as he stares at them. It’s like being on the carousel in a dark void. He hates painkillers. He closes his eyes and lets the darkness swallow him down, breathing in time to the rhythm of Pomni’s godawful snoring. It’s more soothing than he should let it be.
Sleep comes. For the first time in months, he doesn’t dream.