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To Jax’s complete and utter lack of surprise, the attacks keep happening.
Jax knows he’s fucked, so why bother doing anything about it? It’d be like trying to change a river’s course with a single stone. There’s no delaying the inevitable, and denying it will only make the breaking point worse. All of them will be nothing more than a cautionary tale for the next generation of cast members brought in for Caine to play with. Every single one of them will face the same fate—insane, broken, monstrous—and Jax is just pissed he won’t get to see it happen.
Gangle would be particularly interesting to watch implode. The Wimp Becomes Apoplectic. They could make movies about that.
Jax would watch them.
The attack after the theatre is, thankfully, when he’s alone in his room. It’s sometime during the night when the hallway outside harbours nothing but dead silence. His breaths come short and strangled, his bitter heart pounding, his head feeling as though something is repeatedly skewering his brain through the ruptures in his skull.
It wouldn’t surprise him if Caine pulled a sick stunt like this, having their bodies fight them from the inside out, but Caine isn’t here right now, and Jax’s mind had been wandering to dangerous places.
I do not care about you, or anyone else in this circus in the slightest. End of story.
His argument with Pomni—was it a real argument though, because Jax doesn’t really do serious—had been excruciatingly seared into his memory. He still remembers her every expression, the quivering in her hands when she couldn’t decide whether to throttle him again or give in and shoot him. The look of sheer disappointment had been a real highlight. Not a typical response he gets to his outbursts, but the changeup is welcome.
Only…it didn’t make him feel great. It made him feel like shit, quite frankly, and that scared him more than any gun to his head ever could. Maybe that’s why he pushed back as hard as he did.
Pomni, for lack of a better word, had become a worm. She’d infiltrated his carefully fashioned armour, burrowing her way into places she had no business being. Jax hadn’t even realised until it was too late. She’d drawn him in with her asinine questions about corn and earnest excitement when they’d won the game, knocking his walls right down until he stood completely defenceless before her, every wound and ache and scar on full display.
Thank god she didn’t know where to look.
And then she’d hugged him, pressing against bruises that had long since healed but never stopped hurting, and Jax reacted out of instinct.
Like in most things, he shoved her away.
She’d hit pretty close to home with some of her accusations, he’d grant her that. Spewing her bullshit about him not being The Funny One and thinking they were friends just because they went around and shot the others to hell and back together. They aren’t friends and they never were. Jax doesn’t do friends. And he doesn’t do serious or real because that’s not what any of this is.
They’re in a circus. A fucking digital circus. What part of that feels serious and real?
What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?
Well fucking shit. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? Did she expect him to get on his knees and grovel for forgiveness? Take her by the hand and tell her how right she is, that he’s a piece of heartless shit and that he’d miss her senselessly if she digitally died tomorrow?
That’s not how this works. Of course, he would have to fucking move on, just like he knew she would if he abstracted. There’s nothing to be found in yesterday. If they want a chance to survive this—if there is any surviving this hell—that chance is in tomorrow.
Why didn’t you fight back?
That’s a good question, actually. He wishes he knew. It’s not like him to stand there and let someone take a swing at him, or throw a Rubik’s cube at his head and let them live to see the sunrise. That had hurt, man. Maybe he should have taken the golden opportunity when it presented itself. Give in to the carnal side of himself and tear her to pieces, if only to revel in the catharsis it would bring.
But he didn’t. And he doesn’t know why. So he’d given it some thought—that, as well as everything else—which drove him to be standing hunched over his bed, hands gripping the frame, in a kind of pain he didn’t know existed in the circus.
Then it had faded, like the tide pulling a grain of sand out to sea. The moment coasted by and Jax let it go, crumbling into a pile of sweaty bedclothes and taut muscles.
Sleep didn’t find him after that, but the nightmares sure did.
The third time he feels himself drifting, it’s bang in the middle of an adventure.
They’re on some kind of plane when, mid-flight, it hits. Jax slides from his seat, mouth stretched in a cocky smile as he wanders down the aisle. Pomni and Ragatha had gotten closer again in recent days, the two of them tucked away against a window and talking quietly to one another. It grinds on Jax’s nerves. Ragatha’s hand has been making its way over to Pomni—touching her sleeve, her hand, her hair—since takeoff, and Jax wants to blast the hunk of fabric from its seams again.
But all of that falls by the wayside right now.
Nobody seems to notice as Jax slips into the tiny toilet cubicle, shutting the door softly behind himself. He doesn’t even know why the plane has a toilet—none of their bodies require one. He closes the lid and plonks himself down, letting the grin fall and the panic set in.
It’s close to a panic attack, he’d realised after last time. The loss of air, the cloudiness in his mind, the fuzziness that blurs his surroundings.
It’s like he’s trapped beneath a dome of frosted glass, unable to see or breathe or reach for help.
Jax ducks his head between his knees, grappling for any scrap of aid he can remember from the real world. He thinks this is supposed to do something, but he can’t imagine what. It kind of helps to stare at the gap between his feet, a narrow slot of unchanging space that feels sickeningly real.
The haze along the edge of his vision returns, only it’s worse than all the previous times. It’s thick and flickering, narrowing his eyesight until the only thing he can see is the linoleum beneath his feet, and suddenly he can’t bear to stare at it anymore.
He leans back and lifts his eyes to the overhead light, trying to steady his erratic breathing. In for five. Hold for five. Out for five. Ragatha had told him that once. He’d shouted at her. Huh. He’d almost forgotten about that.
In the madness of it all, his argument with Pomni—The Argument, since it’s the only real one he’s had in the circus, his bickering with Ragatha and Zooble not counting—circles back to the forefront of his mind, like a bad song stuck on repeat.
I do not care about you, or anyone else in this circus in the slightest. End of story.
And for the briefest of seconds, a truly baffling stretch of time, he considers going to her.
She’d been angry with him then, but there was something else in her face that day, too. It might have been pity, and Jax won’t stand for it if it had been, but there’s a sliver of a chance that he could be wrong. Plus, she hadn’t seemed particularly pissed at him lately. The distance he’d created between them had done its job and she’d left him alone.
He’d driven as many wedges between himself and everyone else as it took to keep them at arm’s length. Distance was safe, and walls meant he didn’t need to be on his guard all the time.
And then came Pomni with her little jester sledgehammer, knocking them all down again.
Fucking Pomni, with her ridiculous pinwheel eyes and bouncy hat that he wants to knock off.
Should have kept her name as Xddcc, then maybe it wouldn’t be on the tip of his tongue so often.
No, he can’t go to her. Everyone else is out there for a start. But even if they weren’t, she wouldn’t let him, not after last time. Never again after last time.
Jax isn’t stupid. He knew what she was offering him: friendship, a confidante, a shoulder to cry on. And he’d told her exactly where to shove it. She had reminded him so much of Ragatha in that moment, trying to peel his layers away like he’s a goddamn onion. He doesn’t need peeling. He doesn’t need to be saved.
He didn’t need her then, and he doesn’t need her now.
“Jax? You okay in there?”
If his heart weren’t already lodged in his throat, choking him, it would have done so at the sound of her barely five feet away.
Fucking Pomni, with her aggravatingly soft voice and genuine concern.
Pull yourself together, man. Pull yourself to-fucking-gether.
Jax stands, squaring his embarrassingly narrow shoulders and flips the tap on. Pomni knocks again.
“Just wait!” he calls through the thin door, relieved at how normal his voice sounds. He splashes some water on his face—that’s what people do after they have a meltdown, right?—and shakes his hands dry. He stares at the mirror for a beat, barely seeing his reflection through the static glazing his eyes.
He flicks off the tap and slides the door open.
Pomni, clearly not expecting him to answer her so quickly, stumbles backwards, staring up at him with those wide eyes he can’t get out of his head.
“Uh…”
Jax arches his eyebrow, folding his arms over his roiling stomach. “You need something, shortstack?”
Pomni’s mouth opens and closes several times before he receives an answer. “What were you doing in there?”
Jax scoffs. Loudly. It’s really too easy. “You go around asking people what they do in a toilet? Damn, who raised you?”
“That’s not—I just—Ugh!” Pomni buries her face in her hands. “That’s not what I meant, a[BEEP]hole.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jax says, stepping around her, feeling like he’s been standing still for too long. His knees are one dizzy spell away from buckling. “It’s all yours, anyway. Caine gave us First Class, it’d only make sense to check out all the facilities, am I right?”
Pomni squawks something else and Jax cackles, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat. He sits before he can fall, hoping he can at least wait until he’s alone before keeling over.
The fourth time isn’t as bad as the second and third, but it’s no less unpleasant.
It’s during dinner one night and, for whatever reason, the others are talking about the abstracted. Certain names are avoided, though Jax can’t fathom why when he would never have given the others the same consideration. He catches Pomni watching him silently, like she’s waiting for him to react. He would’ve thought she’d be all over this kind of talk, learning about the others who’d played the game wrong so she won’t make the same mistakes.
What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?
Jax feels the haze coming on, the ache behind his eyes and the fuzziness encroaching on his mind, so he excuses himself with a curt scrape of chair feet and stalks off without a word. He can feel eyes on the back of his head, but all of that fades as the discomfort takes over. He doesn’t even make it to his room. He tucks himself into a corner where he knows the others won’t go looking—or stumble upon, since he doubts they’ll actively seek him out.
You are my playthings.
The sickness is very real, churning in a stomach that doesn’t exist, but his breaths come easier than last time. The tightness in his chest doesn’t feel so all-consuming, and he has the naivety to think that, maybe, he’s going to be okay.
Famous last fucking words.
The fifth time, he thinks it’s going to be his last. He’s put up a good fight. He wonders whether he made it longer than the others. He likes to think so.
It claims him in some dusty corner of the circus he’s not sure even Caine knows exists, let alone the others. He’d spent his morning wandering, hoping to escape whatever scheme Caine had planned. He doesn’t feel like it today. If he’s going out soon, he’d rather spend his time doing whatever he wants. Plus, if it gets him away from the rest of the cast, that’s even better. Abstraction feels like an overtly personal thing.
The pain in his head is the worst part. It’s like something is growing in there, coiling around his brain and squeezing. The pressure behind his eyes is unbearable. The ringing in his ears is almost as bad.
He slumps to the floor, back pressed against the wall and head against his knees, praying that it’ll be over quickly. They don’t think the abstracted live on within the abstraction, but none of them can be sure. He doesn’t want it to hurt for so long. He just wants it all to be over.
The circus. The adventures. The twisted game Caine plays. He grew tired of it years ago.
He feels a pressure on his shoulder, pushing him forward. This is it, he thinks. I’m so fucking dead. The pressure moves to his back, urging him further forward. He goes. What else is he supposed to do? Fight it? There’s no fighting this. It’s inevitable.
A distant, very, very embarrassing part of himself hopes that Pomni’s abstraction won’t hurt this much.
“Come on, breathe. In and out,” a careful voice says. He wants to choke out We don’t need fucking air in here, dumbass, but the words are lodged in his throat, trapped behind the grimace he can’t shake. “In and out, Jax. I need you to breathe.”
The voice sounds alarmingly real, slipping through the cracks of the distortion closing in on all sides. It takes a moment to register that it’s not even his own.
“Dude, I need you to look at me. You need to relax.”
Sure, not like I’m dying or anything. Let me just whip out my recliner and grab a fucking piña colada. Fucking relax. Fucking idiot.
The pressure rubbing circles on his back moves, and suddenly something pulls his legs out flat and sits on them. Which, okay, first of all, rude, and second of all, what the fuck?
“Jax, I need you to look at me.”
He doesn’t recognise the voice, but whoever they are is annoyingly persistent. If it’s an NPC, he’s going to be so pissed.
“No…” he wheezes, trying to push them away. Don’t they realise what’s happening? If they don’t leave, then—
Jax convulses, muscles spasming, and he falls forward.
It hurts. He wants it to stop.
“Oh my god, oh my god—” someone is muttering in his ear, too fast for him to keep up with. “Jax? Jax, can you stand?”
Can he stand? He can’t even sit up.
His stomach turns over itself like an ocean caught in a storm. His head spins with it, throat clenching when his abdomen seizes like he’s about to be sick. He dry heaves, tasting something acidic and foul on his tongue.
He can’t see a thing.
The hand returns to his back and his forehead finds something solid to rest against. The weight lifts from his legs, untethering him. He wishes it would come back. He tries to say exactly that, but his mouth doesn’t work. His joints don’t, either. That cannot possibly be a good sign.
“Jax?” The person tilts his head up and hisses, “Fu[BEEP. Fu[BEEP], fu[BEEP], fu[BEEP].”
And Jax suddenly finds himself wanting to cry. God, he’s dying. Who the fuck knows what abstraction really is? They could be returning to the real world, sure, but they could also be dying. For real. Caine has never said that death in the circus isn’t death in the real world.
This person is right. Fuck.
“Jax, please.”
Huh. That’s new.
“Please, Jax, don’t do this. Don’t go. Not like this.”
His head feels like it’s about to implode.
Jax has wondered for some time about who would be the next to go. When she first arrived, he thought it’d be Pomni. She was as scattered as a shattered window, flinching at every new noise and cowering from every shadow. After the Spudsy’s incident, his mind had drifted to Gangle. Later, it had been Ragatha. Kinger was always an active threat, treading the dangerous line between insanity and genuine lostness.
Funnily enough, he hadn’t thought it would be him. Maybe that had been his first mistake. False invincibility can only take you so far, it seems.
“Please, Jax. Please.”
The hand rises from his back to cradle his head, pressing his face more firmly into whoever is in front of him.
Their hand is warm. He didn’t think that was possible.
And just like a crack of lightning, the haze fractures down the middle. Jax screws his eyes shut, not bothering to hide his whimper because what use will his ego be when he’s dead?
But the sliver of light doesn’t give way to the unending darkness. His body doesn’t split down the middle. His mind doesn’t tumble into insanity or cave under the pressure. He’s still there, breathing like he’d been drowning, head pounding, hands grasping the front of someone else’s clothes.
His gasping breaths hitch, his entire body shuddering with the movement, and the thumb softly swiping back and forth across his head stills.
Jax is alive, and his first thought is, sixth time’s the charm.
“Jax?”
His vision is blurry like he’s just waking up, and nausea rolls around his stomach like dice in a cup, but he supposes feeling like shit is better than feeling like death itself. Jax hums, lifting his head ever so slightly and letting it drop again when his muscles protest. He’s exhausted.
“Jax?” There’s hope in the voice now, a fluttering edge that borders on excitement. It might be relief. “Jax, can you hear me?”
“I…” His voice cracks, failing him. He nods instead, and the hand on his head disappears. Two arms wrap tightly around his middle, pinning his arms to his sides, but he’s too tired to care.
He’s alive. How in the ever-loving hell did he manage that?
“Thank god,” the person says, clinging to him like he’s their lifeline, not the other way around. It makes him want to laugh. There are a lot of things he wants to do right now, like messing with Zooble or telling Caine to go fuck himself, but he can’t bring himself to move.
Instead, he turns his face into the person’s shoulder and lets them hold him.
“You scared me, jacka[BEEP].”
The warmth around him is gone too soon, and suddenly he’s being held at arm’s length. Specks of light dance across his vision, like moonbeams split by a sun-catcher. Day and night collide between the fleeting moments, leaving Jax suspended in somewhere that is neither here nor there.
Pomni stares back at him.
And for the first time in god knows how long, Jax doesn’t have anything to say. No snarky comments, no cutting insults, no awkward jokes. Nothing. Pomni doesn’t seem to either, the way she’s staring at him like she’s a deer and he’s the headlights. It’s almost hypnotic. She slumps back down on his legs—his thighs, he belatedly thinks—and lets her hands drop to her sides.
What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?
“You scared me,” Pomni repeats, so softly that Jax wonders whether she’d even meant to say it aloud.
You are my playthings, and I get joy out of making you suffer.
Jax’s stomach twists like he’s walking a tightrope, suspended so high in the air he can’t tell how far the drop is. He can’t see behind him, and ahead is nothing but shadows split open by technicolour eyes and teeth dripping blood.
He presses his lips together, his pupils blown mortifyingly wide, but he can’t fight any of it. Not while Pomni is staring at him like he’s the miracle that has fallen into her lap.
As though she isn’t the most marvellous thing he’d ever seen.
“Your—Your eyes,” she mumbles, hand straying towards his face, then freezing. “They were all…weird. I remember my own eyes going like that when I first arrived. All…squiggly. Not right.” She watches him for a reaction, but he doesn’t have one to give. His consciousness still doesn’t feel his own, like he’s coasting through the seconds on someone else’s time. “Are…Are you okay?”
Jax knows this is the point where he should answer, but he just…can’t. Forming a single thought that she isn’t at the centre of is beyond him.
Why was she following him?
Why did she try to help?
Why does he feel relieved that it’s she who found him?
Why is he glad she didn’t have to see him abstract?
Why is he relieved as fuck that this hasn’t happened to her?
After their argument, Jax thought it was all over. The tenuous bond they’d grown and awkwardly nurtured would shrivel in the blink of an eye and would be dead long before he would consider doing anything about it. He’d expected Pomni to shun him—because she’s far too good to be cruel—and he wouldn’t have blamed her. It’s what the others would do if it weren’t for Caine’s adventures constantly throwing them all back into the mixing bowl.
But most importantly, Jax had been ready for something. Something he could grab by the horns and push the limits of.
He should have known Pomni would be different.
In the days that turned into weeks after The Argument, nothing happened. Pomni continued as normal, offering her thoughts here and there, snorting at his funnier jokes and glaring when he crossed lines. She’d drifted back into Ragatha’s orbit, but never so close that she would be eclipsed by their delicate friendship.
Pomni became an impenetrable fortress of impassiveness, and Jax was dying to break in.
And now here she is, sitting on his lap, watching him like he’s a stray cat she’s trying not to scare off.
At the same time he thinks about it, Pomni must realise how this looks. She scrambles to her feet, muttering rapid-fire apologies under her breath, but Jax catches her hand before she can go too far. With a gentle tug, she collapses onto his lap again, further up this time, close enough there’s barely a hairsbreadth of space between them.
Pomni’s brow furrows. Jax almost laughs when she presses the back of her hand to his forehead. “You feeling okay?”
Well, he feels like he’s just cheated death out of a warm meal and now he’s got a girl in his lap, so right now he’s the textbook definition of All Over The Place. He watches her, eyes roaming over her pale face and the red circles of blush that never leave. He wonders whether he can make them darken.
In the stretch of silence, Pomni’s frown deepens. She shuffles down Jax’s legs until she’s perched on his knees. “I think we should get you to your room. You need to sleep this off. Then, maybe, we can talk to Caine? He might know how to—”
“No.” Even Jax blinks in surprise when he finds his voice. “Not Caine, he won’t…” He won’t help. I don’t think he could if he tried.
Or he might send Jax down to the Cellar early.
“Jax…” Pomni’s hand finds the curve of his cheek, and whatever was left of Jax’s resolve crumbles. He slouches forward, his head colliding with her shoulder. Tears sting his eyes—because he nearly died, give him a break—so he turns his face into her neck to preserve the last shreds of his dignity.
You’re scared you’ll show an actual human emotion.
Jax almost laughs. This enough emotion for you, shortstack?
“How many times has this happened?”
He barely registers the question, caught up in the memories of then and the reality of now. The past and present are two pieces that don’t fit together; Pomni shouldn’t be here holding him like this, not after what he’d said to her.
You are my playthings, and I get joy out of making you suffer.
Those damning words had been playing on a torturous loop in his fracturing mind. Sometimes he thinks he meant every word of it, and the greater part of himself wishes he did. It would make all of this so much easier. Everything in the circus—except the circus itself, of course—is impermanent. The cast members come and go like fish in a river, pulled by the mad current until they’re inevitably caught in Caine’s net of adventures and lose themselves in the process. Caring about them is the worst possible thing to do because it’ll only end in hurt.
And then there’s Pomni. It’s always goddamned Pomni.
“A few times,” Jax rasps. “Nothing to worry about, I’m sure.”
“Nothing to—” Pomni’s scoff is a choked thing that almost makes Jax feel bad. “You’re a fu[BEEP]ing idiot.”
“Heh. I’ve been told.”
“Seriously.”
“Oh, Pom,” Jax chides, rolling his head to the side to peer up at the side of her face. He doesn’t expect her to already be studying him. “Have I taught you nothing? None of this is serious. This isn’t real—”
A glove hits the floor beside their legs. For a split second, Jax thinks she’s going to try to fight him again. He considers bracing himself because for whatever reason, fighting back still isn’t an option, but the brawl never comes.
A hand touches his face instead, delicate and careful and achingly kind. A second joins it, guiding him up from Pomni’s shoulder so that they’re face to face again. His tears had gathered and dried against his cheek. He hopes she doesn’t notice.
What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?
He’s never seen Pomni’s hands before. They’re powdery white and each nail is painted in alternating shades of blue and red. They’re pretty. He didn’t know hands could be pretty.
Jax lifts his eyes and Pomni consumes his every sense.
Her eyes are all he can see, her touch all he can feel. He can hear her soft breaths, and he revels in the way they’re so close he can feel them against his throat. His sigh is a stuttering, silent thing as he drinks in the distinct scent she carries with her—cinnamon and cotton candy and fireworks.
She’s like warmth and chaos. Stars and light. A flickering candle in the eye of a storm.
She is peace and Jax is madness.
“Does this feel real to you?” she asks, and dammit Jax wants to say no, it doesn’t, because you’re not real.
As it turns out, not real is not quite the same as unreal.
Pomni’s touch is very much there, her fingers carding ever so slowly through his short fur, warming him as though there’s real skin beneath it. Jax has to fight the urge to pull her closer, to feel her weight against him fully.
She’s unreal, but she’s there.
Jax thinks this might be the most grounded he’s ever been since landing in the circus.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks, because he must be reading this wrong. There’s no way she could feel anything towards him that isn’t contempt. Jax had made sure to burn every bridge he could. “Why aren’t you telling me to fu[BEEP] off? I’ve not given you a single reason to be nice to me.”
Pomni makes a face. “Yeah, you did. All that stuff we talked about during the shootout. You know, like your thing about corn and stuff.”
“Corn? That’s why you’re being nice to me?”
“Well, not just that—”
“Pomni, I’m not a nice person.” That silences her, then every emotion drops from her face in a way that Jax has only ever seen in the mirror. “I…I know I’m not the funny one,” he says. “I know exactly what I am. This—” he waves a finger between them “—is not what something like me deserves.”
“Something?” Pomni echoes, aghast.
Jax bites his tongue. “You’re not listening. Whatever you think I am, I’m not—”
“You’re right.”
Jax blinks. “What?”
“You’re right. I have no idea who you are. I don’t know what you look like, what your real name is, how old you are—”
“Twenty-two.” The words spill from his lips before he can stop them. It’s the only answer he has to any of her questions.
Pomni’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t take the bait. Jax can see she’s practically dying to. He was surprised to learn he’s younger than her, too.
She continues, saying, “And you don’t know me, not really. And I…I don’t know where I’m going with this, but, Jax, you’re not just some figment of Caine’s imagination. You’re not a toy in his adventures, and you’re sure as hell not a thing. You’re…You’re you. Whoever that is. Whoever you think that is.”
Jax has so many rebuttals to that. It’s a list he would comprise late at night when he didn’t feel like faking sleep.
A list of reasons as to why he is the way he is.
The circus isn’t real. The others are strangers. Caine is a monster. We’re all going to die—
“You were right about one thing, though,” Pomni says, finally lifting her gaze to meet his.
Jax grins through his nerves. “Only one?”
“In here, we can be anything we want to be. And I’m not asking to be friends. I’m just saying that…we can be people who hang out sometimes, without all the other stuff. People who talk and partner up, because I don’t know about you, but I actually enjoyed spending time together. We don’t have to talk about anything real, but we can just be…us. You know, you and me. Chaotic evil, or whatever.”
Something cracks. Jax can’t figure out if it’s in his head or if it’s his bones crunching from the way he’s balling his fists too tightly.
Not friends. That’s what he’d said. That’s the safe option—no strings, no promises, no expectations. Just two people who talk. And go on adventures together. And who hang out sometimes, when the biting loneliness of digital isolation becomes too much. Maybe…
Maybe.
Maybe he could do that.
“Chaotic evil, huh?” he says, seeing a flicker of hope in Pomni’s eyes. “Who’s evil and who’s chaos?”
“Eh, I think we’ve each got a bit of both.”
Jax laughs, sharp and sardonic. “There’s not an evil bone in your body, Pom-pom.”
“I think the flowerpot you took to the face suggests otherwise.”
Damn. That had hurt. Maybe she has a point there.
“You’re weird,” he tells her.
“We’re all weird.”
“Okay, you’re super weird.” He flicks the little bell on the tip of her hat.
Pomni’s face splits into a smirk and Jax’s heart trips over itself at the sight.
“Are you coming onto me?” Her grin widens as she leans forward, bracing herself on Jax’s thighs. “Because that’s what everyone wants, right? A straight couple.”
She cackles, terribly pleased with herself, and rises to her feet. She offers her hand—ungloved, bare, warm—to Jax.
Jax stares.
Are you coming onto me?
He remembers saying that. He’d been joking—probably, maybe, almost definitely—as one does to rile another up. He’d meant it just about as much as everything else he’d said.
Which, in retrospect, is not nearly as black and white as he’d hoped for.
There’s not a chance in hell that she’s serious, right? She has to be messing with him. Of course, she is. That’s what Not Friends do. Mess around. Poke fun. Flirt, apparently.
Yeah. That’s gotta be it.
But even so, Jax doesn’t let himself take her hand. He slaps her gloves into her palm and stands by himself, ignoring the wave of dizziness that makes the hallway spin beneath his feet. It’ll pass, like most things.
It all feels so far away from him in that moment. The fading, the pain, the spiralling into an inky oblivion. Like he’s been plucked out of the ether and shoved back into his own body. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, rolling his shoulders, feeling out the way his stiff joints move and the digital muscles contract beneath his skin. It’s familiar in the same way an old song you’d forgotten about is.
He knows the eyes are still watching from the corners of his mind. Waiting. Prowling for a weak spot. They’ll find one eventually. Maybe later today, or tomorrow.
It’s inevitable, right?
He glances down at Pomni, who’s sliding her gloves back on and then smiling up at him. That little twist of her lips she does when she’s secretly pleased about something brightening the encroaching darkness.
Jax swallows, pulling his wide eyes away.
Not Friends. Damn fucking right about that.
Are you coming onto me?
He can’t even tell whose voice that is anymore.
Fucking…fuck.