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It was only two days after the gun adventure, two days after their fight, two days after Jax was sure he’d ruined everything, that Pomni sat next to him again. Not just at meals when everyone’s seats were practically assigned by an unspoken routine of weeks-months-years-built habit that was rarely strayed from, not just in adventures when Caine’s powers and the circumstances they were subjected to forced close proximity, but by choice, by purpose, by want. She’d found him in one of the common lounge areas of the circus, alone but with the invitation for company inherently open as it was with all places outside of their bedrooms, even if he denied craving anything but isolation. He was sitting on a couch, laying heavily into the cushions with his head leaned back to stare at the too-bright ceiling, and she’d interrupted his failing efforts to let the migraine-inducing neon colors drive the endless stream of thoughts out of his mind by carefully sitting next to him. She was kind enough to leave a little over a foot of space between them, but he could still feel the way the cushion dipped under her weight, still hear the deafeningly soft jingle of the bells on her hat as she settled, still taste the nauseating self-loathing bitterness her presence stained his mouth with as the memory of everything he’d said to her bubbled up in his throat like bile.
He didn’t move – he couldn’t, as if his attempt to melt into the too-soft fabric of the couch had succeeded and now he was fused to it for all digital eternity – his acknowledgement of her presence started and ended with a quick glance at her from the corner of his eye, which found her staring straight ahead, her hands clutching her knees tight enough that he was sure her knuckles would’ve been white if her gloves weren’t covering them. She didn’t speak, didn’t say a word or make a sound, and he didn’t dare to be the first to break their stalemate silence with a gunshot bullet of bullshit that would leave their ears ringing for hours, so they simply sat in wholly uncomfortable quiet for what felt like years. She wouldn’t stop fidgeting, switching constantly between tapping her fingers against her legs and wringing her hands together and shifting her weight and grabbing the bells on her hat whenever they made the slightest sound. The most he let himself do was breathe, and even that was only to ensure she wouldn’t see what happened when he didn’t; he intended to take that secret to his grave.
And then she stood up, and she left, all without ever uttering a single word, and he didn’t know what to do with that.
She didn’t reprimand or swear at him like Zooble would’ve, she didn’t berate or guilt-trip him like Ragatha tended to, she didn’t even cry or avoid him like the plague like Gangle did. She just sat next to him for a moment too long to be nothing but too short to be something, and then she left without actually saying anything, like she didn’t need to speak to make her point and she knew it. He just wished he knew what the point she was trying to make was.
He didn’t sleep that night.
The insomnia was becoming a trend for him, more so than it usually was.
The next day, Caine sent them all on another adventure, some fishing thing he couldn’t be bothered to tune into the world enough to listen to the details of. He was good at picking up context clues anyways, it was a skill he’d built over the years after realizing how much easier it was to swallow the razor-sharp abstraction-shaped pill of his hellish unreal reality when he was mentally present for as little of it as possible. With the snap of fingers and the blindingly bright flash of stepping through the portal, he found himself standing on the deck of a large fishing boat in the middle of the ocean with nothing but miles upon miles of sparkling water all around, and he grunted with displeasure when he immediately began to feel suffocatingly hot as the artificial sun beat down on his fur from the cloudless blue sky. His overalls had been replaced with waders colored the same salmon pink, though the heavy rubber boots they’d been paired with were blessedly plain black, and he could feel a fishing hat on his head doing minimal work to keep the sun’s glare out of his eyes. Around him, the others were exploring the boat in their own fishing outfits, minus Kinger, who wore a captain’s uniform and was making his way over to the helm, which Jax rolled his eyes at. They were capsizing for sure with him behind the wheel – not that Jax would’ve kept them afloat either, but at least he would’ve made it fun.
A few feet away, he spotted a rack full of fishing rods, and with a mental groan of agony for the absolute boredom he was about to suffer through, he stalked over, grabbed a rod and a bucket of bait, and went to the back corner of the boat near the rumbling engine where he would hopefully be left alone. He stabbed a squirming worm on the hook before casting his line out into the water, which churned from the movement of the propellers in a way he was sure would practically guarantee he wouldn’t get a single bite, but he didn’t care, and that was almost the worst thing about it all. This adventure was boring, which made it the perfect medium for his iconic brand of chaos; he could hijack the helm from Kinger and do doughnuts until the boat flipped, or throw Ragatha overboard and leave her to sink to the bottom of the ocean as the water weighed her dumb fabric body down, or find a way to catch an octopus and throw it on Gangle to get hopelessly tangled in her ribbons, or any other number of fun, exciting, hilarious things, but he didn’t want to. He just couldn’t find the energy to care, not when he could hide in the corner and everyone else would happily leave him there to rot, not when he knew none of it would make all the horrible feelings stirring inside of him go away, not when through it all he’d still be haunted by the knowledge that he’d completely destroyed the first good thing to happen to him since… since.
This was what he wanted though, wasn’t it? To drive them all away, to isolate himself, to carry the burden of distance because no matter how heavy it got, it would always be easier than the crushing weight of loss. He didn’t want their company, he didn’t need their companionship, as long as he had himself and his sanity, he was fine.
She was next to him again. He didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, all he knew was that he’d blinked, and she’d appeared in his peripherals, a rod in-hand with the line cast out into the propeller-disturbed ocean with just as little hope of catching anything as him. She, too, wore waders instead of her usual jester outfit, but hers were the bright yellow of her uniform’s seams and pompom buttons, and unlike him, she was given the dignity of a shirt underneath in the form of a blue and red flannel with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She still wore the same gloves, but her hat had been replaced with a fishing hat like his, revealing a tiny ponytail sticking out from underneath at the back of her head. Her face had the faintest green tint to it, and the addition of tightly-pursed lips made him realize the slight rocking of the boat was probably triggering her motion sickness, but she was holding herself together well, at least well enough to stand next to him right up against the railing where the rocking was most pronounced without spewing her breakfast as fish bait. In an outfit so normal, she almost looked cute – she almost looked real.
He turned his gaze back to the ocean.
The reflection of the sun sparkling on the water glitched, a looping visual restarted. He felt sick.
Just like last time, she didn’t say a word, and neither did he. They stood next to each other in silence, predictably failing to catch anything and listening to Ragatha and Gangle celebrate their catches on the other side of the boat while Kinger commented on the different types of fish – “the insects of the sea” – from behind the wheel. They spent a long time like that, long enough for the sun to peak in the sky and start making its slow descent towards the horizon, long enough for the excitement of catching fish to wear off in Ragatha and Gangle and for Kinger to realize his steering didn’t actually matter in endless, obstacle-less ocean and instead turn his attention to sorting the caught fish by size and species, long enough for his mind to get bored of replaying a loop of all the idiotic things he’d done that fateful day and return to its comfortable purgatory of absent static-steady nothingness.
Then, the pirates came. Because of course they did. Leave it to Caine to take a calm, even peaceful adventure and turn it into a fight for their lives. The ship had first appeared as a tiny, distant dot, but within moments, too fast to be anywhere close to realistic, it was on them. After shooting a harpoon through the side of their boat to make sure they couldn’t speed away, the pirate NPCs flooded aboard, screaming nonsense and swinging swords. The rack of fishing rods transformed into one of weapons, and everyone was quick to abandon their rods in favor of something that could actually keep them alive, picking up various swords, knives, and spears and starting to push back against the swarm of pirates. They were absurdly outnumbered, but the NPCs quickly proved to be weak and incompetent, making the two sides more evenly matched even if they were fighting ten-against-one. Caine clearly hadn’t bothered to make special designs for the nearly-fifty NPC pirates, so most were the basic blank-slate wooden figures with the most variation being in different colors and placements of bandana and the occasional hook hand or peg leg. The only exception was the captain, who took the form of a gold-toothed humanoid hammerhead shark wielding a handgun with swords sheathed on both sides of his hips and a ridiculous number of poorly hidden knives sticking out of every pocket on his coat and pants, as well as from the tops of his boots and the cuffs of his sleeves.
Jax, because his luck just couldn’t get any worse, quickly became the captain’s target after shoving the last NPC attacking him overboard. The only reason he didn’t die immediately when entering a gun fight with a sword was because he managed to knock the gun out of the captain’s hand and across the deck while the captain was spewing some monologue in a weird fish language he couldn’t understand, however that unfortunately brought the time-buying monologuing to a premature end and enraged the captain, spurring him to unsheathe both swords and start charging at Jax in earnest. Around the deck they went, Jax trying not to trip over the dropped weapons and NPC corpses littering the ground as he sped backwards away from the advancing captain, blocking the swings of the two swords and occasionally managing a jab of his own all while refusing to turn around lest he die by a stab through the back. Only a few minutes into their dance, though, the captain got payback for his gun and knocked the sword out of Jax’s hand and into the ocean, leaving him defenseless and cornered, backed against the rail of the ship. He chanced a glance over his shoulder and gulped hard when he saw the inky waters waiting to swallow him whole, what was once shimmering blue now turned into a terrifying void as the sun disappeared and the sky darkened in moonless storm cloud shadowed night.
He turned back only to find the tip of a sword inches away from his face, the captain’s imposing figure beyond staring back with a menacing, victorious grin that exposed the gleaming rows of sharp shark’s teeth waiting to sink into his skull. He spoke again in that gurgling fish language, spitting foul-smelling mocks and curses that left salty saliva splattered on his face, and then he pulled his arm back, and he raised the sword, and he aimed for Jax’s neck, and he let out a guttural yell and swung down and-
BANG!
Blood spray soaked Jax’s fur, and he only distantly registered the clatter of the sword falling to the deck as his eyes stayed locked on the captain’s, bulging wide and shocked with a large, splinter-rough hole above them in the center of his forehead gushing thick, iron-sour blood in fountain spurts, trailing heavy rivers down his face and staining his shirt where it soaked-in. It felt like an eternity before the captain’s legs finally lost strength, eyes rolling back into his head as he collapsed onto Jax, shaking him out of his shock to shove the body off of himself and heave it overboard to feed the hungry waters below. He watched it hit the surface with a sharp, booming splash, and only when the grave settled and the bubbles stopped did he dare to turn around and see who had gone out of their way to save him of all people.
Pomni stared back, bug-eyed and panting with the captain’s lost gun smoking in her hand. Around them, the fighting had quieted with only a small handful of NPCs left intact, and with their captain dead, they had no incentive to stay, so they quickly retreated back to their ship, cut the rope on the harpoon connecting them, and sped off into the distance. Jax paid no attention to the fleeing, though, he just kept looking at Pomni, and she kept looking at him. The image of her watching him, holding a gun, was entirely too familiar. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to kneel in front of her and guide her hand to point the barrel at his head. He wanted to apologize like a child and beg for forgiveness like a sinner and make promises he knew he would never be able to keep because he was a liar and a fraud through-and-through and if he took away all the fake, performative parts of himself there would be nothing left for her to have, no matter how much he wanted to give it to her.
She turned and walked away without a word, and he let her.
***
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Is this why he forced me to come on the stupid adventure again?!”
“Huh. Caine’s just getting lazier and lazier.”
They were back at Spudsy’s – well, the sign now read Zpudzy’z with a big picture of a pizza, but everything else was the same from the outside, so there was no mistaking what it once was – for what Caine dubbed ‘Food Delivery Frenzy!’, a title supported by the presence of three delivery cars waiting for them in the parking lot. They were instructed to pair-up in teams of two, one person in charge of driving while the other ran the food from the car to the houses they were supposed to deliver to; deliveries were only considered completed when the food was in the customer’s hands, and they had a very strict time limit to deliver by, so the longer an order was late, the angrier the customer would get. To put it simply, it was another day of minimum wage food service hell, and none of them were anything even remotely close to happy about it. The only one who appeared to feel anything but pure dread was Kinger, but he never dreaded any of the adventures, and since he had skipped Spudsy’s the first time, the map was still new to him, leaving him to look around at everything with interest, especially the ants and flies swarming the dumpsters they all stood next to.
Jax immediately began running down the list of his castmates in his head to figure out which one he’d force to be passenger princess – no way in hell was he letting someone else take this perfect opportunity to be behind the wheel of an actual, functional car all day when he could cause so much more excitement as the driver than any of them would be willing to – but quickly found himself hitting a desert of dissatisfaction in his options. He couldn’t choose Pomni for obvious reasons, even if she had been fun during the gun adventure before everything went to shit, and it wasn’t like she’d agree even if he did ask her, so she was out. Gangle was his usual go-to partner for duo adventures because she was so easy to mess with already, and he only had more freedom to make her life miserable when they were teamed up away from everyone else who would try to defend her, but seeing her now, standing outside Zpudzy’z with an employee uniform on, set his fur on-end with the ache of phantom hands gripping his wrists and ankles with bruising force, a migraine already pulsing sharply in his head at the memory of the flashing TV screen. He’d prefer to be as far away from her as possible for this adventure.
Sometimes Zooble was a fun target, but they had a strangely effective way of shutting him down, too, when they weren’t in the mood to deal with his shit. Given the fact that they were already pissed-off at being forced into the adventure, he was pretty confident that they wouldn’t tolerate much of his antics, and being in the car in such close quarters would only leave the two of them aggravated and bored. Besides, Zooble was already heading towards Gangle with clear intent to ask her to be their partner, so the easiest thing would be to kill two birds with one stone and let them pair together, away from him. There was a solid fifty-fifty chance that Kinger would actually be helpful in doing the adventure as instructed, but Jax couldn’t care less about doing what he was told and delivering the food, and Kinger never responded to Jax’s schemes the way he wanted him to or gave him the reactions he was searching for, he was too crazy to even comprehend any of it. He would keep Kinger as a last resort, though, because at least he would be tolerable. The only option left, then, was Ragatha, which… well, he could work with that, at least. She was reactive, which he liked, but her yelling and scolding could go from amusing to irritating fast, and he could already tell he didn’t have the patience for her moral high horse today, especially after the things she’d said to him last time while high out of her mind on Stupid Sauce. She was the best of his possible choices, though, so he would make do like he always did and find a way to enjoy the adventure in his own way the best that he could.
Pomni bulldozed over those plans as soon as he made them.
In her ever-wordless fashion, she went and stood next to him, making her choice of partner clear. No one batted an eye at it, although Ragatha looked a little upset, and it took him a minute to realize it was because they didn’t know how insane and illogical of a decision it was, because they didn’t know about the fight. Pomni had every reason and right to be angry, to hate him, to tell everyone exactly what he’d said and how horrible he’d been to her when she’d shown him nothing but kindness and wary acceptance, an opportunity to bash him that everyone else would’ve taken without a second thought, but for some confusing, idiotic, inexplicable reason, she hadn’t. They had no idea what he’d done, the lengths he’d gone to just to push her away, the fires he’d set on their rickety bridge in hopes of burning it all down. She hadn’t told them.
Why?
He wanted to ask her. He wanted to ignore her. He wanted to force her to choose another partner and he wanted to shove her in the car and drive them both to the edge of the map and stay there until the pixels pretending to be sunlight blurred together enough to look real.
A car key appeared in his hand, and the adventure started before he could decide to do anything at all. Pomni, Kinger, and Gangle went inside the restaurant, presumably to get the first of the orders, leaving Jax, Ragatha, and Zooble to figure out which of the three different cars marked with signs bearing the Zpudzy’z name and logo belonged to which team. Zooble’s key unlocked the silver CRV, which they seemed pleased enough about. Ragatha’s key let her into the small old-fashioned truck with faded green paint, and Jax couldn’t help but scowl because that car was the closest to cool compared to the others, which meant it was the one he wanted. Instead, he was left with a bright yellow Beetle of all things, the tiniest, lamest, girliest car imaginable. He groaned, loud and miserable, and glared at Ragatha where she stood at the driver-side door of her truck parked directly next to him, rushing to think of a way to convince her to switch until he remembered he could just take the key from her if he was fast enough and caught her off-guard. He only managed to take one step towards her, though, before the restaurant door opened once more and the other half of the group came filing out, each carrying two large warmer bags and looking around for where to put them. He couldn’t help but straighten-up a bit when Pomni’s gaze landed on him, then flicked to the car they’d been assigned, and he watched as her eyes sparkled as she realized it was theirs, and just like that, all plans of switching with Ragatha went out the window.
“We got a punch bug? I’ve always wanted one of these!” The excitement in her voice as she bounced over washed away all the jealous annoyance that had been grating his nerves moments ago, and an easy, teasing grin spread on his face.
“Really? I guess it’s fitting, a tiny clown car for a tiny clown girl.” Normal. He could do normal. A jab, a joke, something typical of him that everyone would expect. If she was willing to act like nothing had happened, like everything was fine, he would gladly follow. She pouted, something terribly close to playfulness dancing in the expression, and he felt the knot in his chest that had grown unbearably tight over the last few days loosen just the tiniest bit.
“I think they’re cute. I could never quite afford a car, but if I had the money, I would’ve gotten a bug.” Then, almost an afterthought, “Or a motorcycle.” He blinked, tilting his head.
“Quite the range there, really covering both ends of the spectrum, huh?” She rolled her eyes, clearly ready to defend her position, but any retort on her tongue died when her face twisted in concentration as she tried to figure out how to open the car door to load up the pizzas without dropping anything.
The thought to help barely grazed his mind before he was on the passenger side of the car, opening the back door and holding it for her while she set the warming bags on the seats inside. He only realized what he’d done when she gave him a confused, searching look after putting the food down, and before she could even try to ask him about it, he slammed the door closed much harder than necessary and stalked over to the driver’s seat, sliding in behind the wheel. A moment later, she entered the car and sat in the passenger seat next to him, closing the door with a gentle care that he hadn’t shown.
And then it was quiet.
He jammed the key into the ignition, and the engine growled to life. He immediately reached over and turned on the radio, desperate for something, anything, to drive out the silence that was somehow already crushing, even if it was weird non-copyrighted song covers sung by Caine and Bubble. For once, he welcomed the sound of Caine’s voice flooding his ears.
“Alright, where’s the first stop?” He forced the tension out of his voice, replacing it with a well-practiced feigned casualness and wishing he could do the same to the rest of his body. Pomni hummed, accepting his dizzying mood changes with far more grace than any of the others would’ve, and pulled out the first receipt, typing the address into the small GPS that had been attached to the dash of the car. The route became highlighted on the screen in pink ahead of the little blue arrow representing their car, and with that, Jax shifted into reverse, swung them out of the parking spot, and left the Zpudzy’z lot behind in a cloud of dust.
In the bottom corner of the GPS screen was a timer counting down, indicating how long they had to deliver the pizza before the customer would start getting upset; the first stop was only a few streets away, and even if they weren’t going several miles faster than the speed limit, they’d make it with plenty of time to spare. Pomni didn’t speak as they went, she just stared out the window at the blur of passing scenery, and he wasn’t nearly brave enough to be the one to break first, so all he could do was turn up the music and focus on the road, pressing the gas a little more. Their speed jumped with a slight jolt, and he noticed her hands shoot to grip the edge of her seat and the side of the door out of the corner of his eye, and his first instinct was to let-up a bit and glide to slow down, but he shook the thought away as soon as it came. He wouldn’t do that for anyone else, so why would he do it for her?
He went a hair faster instead and pointedly ignored the nauseating roll his stomach did when her hold on the car tightened even further.
He bit back a curse as he nearly sped right past the street they needed to turn onto, jerking the steering wheel and whipping them around the corner, clipping the curb as he did. She squeaked in fear, squeezing her eyes shut, and the spark of guilt that singed his chest only set him more on-edge, gripping the wheel harder. When they finally reached the first house, he slammed on the brakes, bringing them to a harsh stop in front of the driveway before putting it in park, and the moment she felt the car settle, Pomni got out on slightly wobbly legs, grabbed the order from the back seat, and approached the house. He watched her through the window, clenching and loosening his hands over and over again restlessly; the NPC customers wouldn’t do anything weird, right? The delivery was on time, so the NPC had no reason to be angry, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t programmed to behave in other strange ways. He’d heard the horror stories, he knew how off-putting and downright creepy customers could be to service workers, especially when emboldened by the comfort of being on their own home turf, and Pomni was a girl which meant she was only more likely to be treated in odd and uncomfortable ways and he’d let her go up to that house alone and-
Stop it.
He was doing that stupid thing again. Caring. He forced himself to look away right as the door in front of Pomni began to swing open, turning to reach into the back seat and grab the second order’s receipt. He kept his eyes down as he skimmed the flimsy paper for the next address and typed it into the GPS with a little too much force, and the route had just finished loading in laggy chunks when the passenger door opened and Pomni sat down. As soon as the door closed, before she could even pull her seatbelt on, Jax sent them flying down the street again, earning him a screech of terror followed by a stream of muttered, censored curses when her seatbelt locked from her efforts to tug it into place increasing tenfold. After many long seconds of struggling, she managed to get the seatbelt on, and the moment it clicked into place, she shot him a blazing glare that he pretended not to notice, keeping his eyes forward and his typical carefree grin plastered on his face. Still, the worry from before nagged him, and he found himself speaking before he remembered his sense enough to keep his stupid big mouth shut.
“That guy didn’t, like, try to flash you or anything, right?” He had to fight to keep his tone teasing, mocking, like he was only asking to make her imagine something that gross happening and not because depending on the answer, he might turn around and see how much speed it took to break through the walls of a house. Her glare turned confused, squinting, and she tilted her head in a way the ugly, weak, caring part of him mourned not being able to glance over to see in its entirety.
“No…?” Her hands fidgeted with the cuffs of her gloves, but just as quickly returned to the edge of the seat when he made another sharp, too-fast turn. “I-I mean, those wooden guys don’t really wear clothes anyways, but he just took the food and a little checkmark appeared above his head, nothing too weird.”
She shrugged, and his only response was a grunt, unsure if he should be more glad that Caine hadn’t gone for levels of realism that could become offensive or disappointed that he didn’t have an excuse to put a Beetle-shaped hole in some drywall – the former if he was honest, the latter if he was sane. They fell into tooth-grating silence once more, and this time not even Caine’s off-tune singing was enough to distract Jax from the cicada buzz of pointless unspoken monologue running through his head or the little poorly-hidden peeks Pomni kept sending his way every five seconds. He swallowed a growl as the car seemed to get even smaller than it already was, every door and window pressing in and condensing the heavy, stuffy, ear-ringingly quiet air between them until it was nearly tangible, a solid block of nothingness that neither of them could quite reach past but hummed like a plucked guitar string with each little movement, refusing to let them forget the other was sitting not even a foot away. He felt twitchy, trapped, and he knew she could tell which only made it worse. It was vulnerable, an opening, a weakness, a crack in his carefully constructed armor that she could pry open like a clamshell and look through to see the raw, meaty flesh of him underneath, his fur rubbed away from chafing against the metal for so long and the exposed skin paled by a lack of sun, even the manufactured digital kind. It was embarrassing.
Then, right when he was about one minute away from stopping in the middle of the road, getting out of the car, and walking away just to get a little space, he spotted something up ahead that made his grin turn sinister: a crosswalk, with an NPC one step into its journey across. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed with focused anticipation, and pressed the gas a little more, speeding them up when they were already hurtling towards the crossing. It was enough to make Pomni finally put her attention elsewhere, and he could hear the exact moment she processed where they were heading and what his intention was as she called his name confused and concerned, then yelled it panicked before giving up on words and just screaming while her hands flailed for something solid to grab onto as if she was the one about to get hit by a car doing highway speeds in a suburban neighborhood. The NPC continued on, oblivious, and Jax’s smile sharpened with glee because he had timed it perfectly, truly a master of his craft. The NPC got closer and closer to the middle of the crosswalk, and the car got closer and closer to the NPC until finally, with a hard thud, a crinkling crunch, and a pitiful thunk, they slammed into the NPC, sweeping it off its feet and sending it rolling into the windshield where it left a large spiderweb crack right in the center before bouncing off the roof and landing in a heap on the ground, quickly fading into a distant dot in the rearview mirror as the car continued on like it was nothing but a pothole.
Jax whooped and cackled, getting exactly the outcome he was hoping for, while Pomni’s screaming switched to rapid, shallow, panting gasps as she turned around in her seat to stare at the unmoving lump of splintered wood through the back window, clutching the headrest as they got further and further away from the scene of the crime. He sighed, content, as he came down from his blood rush high, and Pomni’s head whipped over to give him a scathing look.
“What is wrong with you?! Why did you do that?!” He scoffed as all the lingering bits of joy became infected with irritation. She sounded like Ragatha.
“Because it’s funny!” His grin already felt forced again, but he persisted, gesturing at the damaged windshield. “Look at the big crack that thing’s butt made, that’s hilarious! I bet it left a dent in the roof too, we’ve gotta check when we reach the next stop.”
She barely managed to restrain a frustrated groan, redirecting it into a harsh sigh as she looked back out of the back windshield despite the NPCs remains being long gone, and his plasticky grin finally fell. He didn’t even try to restrain his own frustrated groan, rolling his eyes through the molasses-thick tension seeping into the air for the millionth time since the stupid adventure started.
“Don’t tell me you wanna go back and check on it.” She didn’t reply, and he huffed. “C’mon, that one didn’t even have a face! It was nothing, a blank slate, filler to make this stupid, fake neighborhood look like it exists as more than just an empty set that Caine tosses us into when he wants us to put on a show just like every other stupid, fake world he’s ever sent us to. That thing’s only purpose was to show up, walk across the street, and then disappear. It doesn’t matter.”
They reached the second delivery address, and he once again brought the car to a harsh stop. She didn’t make any move to get out and complete the delivery, nor did she seem interested in responding to him, she simply stared out the window with utterly exhausted eyes and an upset, tight-lipped frown. She’d had a similar look walking back to her room after the fishing adventure, if not a little more empty, detached – the same tired, haunted eyes, the same distressed, almost angry frown that would surely carve premature wrinkles into her face if they were anywhere else, the same invisible weight pressing down on her shoulders while she put everything she had into holding her head up in spite of it because the only other option was to let it crush her, and just like all the others that had come before her and found their fates in the dark, cold, lonely cellar, once she was down, there would be no getting back up again – and it was his turn to squint as a piece of the unsolvable puzzle that made her who she was in his eyes clicked into place.
“Did you feel this guilty after shooting that shark captain guy, too?” The way she flinched as if he’d slapped her was answer enough. He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “You can’t care about the NPCs so much, Pom, it’ll kill you.”
And God, who was he to give her advice about caring?
You are my playthings, and I get joy out of making you suffer.
I’m the one that causes pain for fun.
“Can’t die in this place anyways.” Mumbled, barely audible over the sound of Caine and Bubble on the radio, and he didn’t get a chance to question or pry before she was taking her seatbelt off and stepping out of the car, fulfilling her duty and bringing the pizza up to the house.
The delivery was made with three minutes to spare.
The drive back to Zpudzy’z to get the next set of orders was nerve-itchingly quiet.
He kept the car running while she went inside, flipping through every radio station with increasing desperation to find anything that would overpower the electric white noise hum filling his head with static and making his hands tremble with jumping, searing sparks, but he was forced to give up when he circled back around to the start and resigned himself to his fate, turning the volume down until it was just loud enough to bury the sound of his own strained breathing. Two minutes into waiting, Zooble and Gangle pulled up in the CRV and parked a couple spots over. He didn’t look at them – he couldn’t even if he’d wanted to, the stupid digital sun was reflecting off the stupid digital silver car and shining blindingly bright right at him – but he swore he could feel them looking at him, and it only made his fur prickle even more. He wanted to yell at them, to bark out something mean and scare them off, but he knew he would only make a fool of himself if he tried with his mind still scattered and tingling like a shifting, pulsing, writhing swarm of ants that can’t quite organize into a colony.
Pomni came out balancing three orders in her arms when Gangle was only a couple steps away from the door and visibly startled at the sight of the other girl standing there, but she was quick to recover, putting on an amicable smile that Jax could tell was so clearly forced, but Gangle seemed to accept without question, and exchanging a few words that he couldn’t make out. He didn’t care to figure out what they were talking about at first, he had enough sense to know it was most likely meaningless small talk about the adventure, but then Pomni’s eyes darted to him, and it was only a split second, but it left him digging his glove-padded fingers into his legs as his mind erupted with a hundred thoughts all at once.
She looked at him. Was she talking about him? Was she complaining about his speeding? About running that NPC over? Was she telling Gangle how he’d warned her against caring? Was she exposing all the little observations she seemed to be so good at making about him, the details and secrets and conclusions she’d somehow come to by simply watching him, terrifying in their accuracy even if he’d never admit it?
Was she talking about their fight?
Gangle would tell Zooble, and Zooble would tell everyone.
I get joy out of making you suffer.
They wouldn’t be surprised. Pomni shouldn’t have been, either. He was clear about who he was from the start, it was her fault for trying to find something that was never there, for convincing herself that she was different from the others, special to him, that she could break down his doors when he held all the keys. Still, part of him had hoped to have a little more time before everyone found out just how deep his cruelty went and finally realized that he would never change, that he was incapable of change, that he was going to be horrible forever and the smartest thing any of them could do was shut him out completely just like he’d done to them.
He wasn’t ready to go to the cellar yet.
Then again, neither was anyone else. It didn’t make any difference in the end.
The passenger door shut. Pomni was sitting next to him, reaching over to enter the next address into the GPS, the three new orders loaded up in the back seat. He had to stop letting her sneak up on him like that. This time, he waited until she was buckled-in and secure before pulling out of the lot and heading towards the next stop, but even so, she said nothing. All three deliveries passed in similar fashion, of him speeding down roads and skidding around corners until her little tells of fear wore him down and he eased-up without acknowledging it, of sandbag silence pierced only by the sound of the radio that neither of them were really listening to, of her getting in and getting out and getting in again and him staying in the driver’s seat the whole time, watching her come and go, waiting for an NPC to slip-up and treat her poorly so he had somewhere to put all the messy emotions scrambling the code where his brain was supposed to be and an excuse to fight back with when she inevitably got mad at him for beating-up something that was even more fake than they were. The excuse never came, the NPCs were all perfectly well-behaved because the deliveries were never late despite any chaos he caused or side-quests he took because he was speeding the whole way.
By the time they returned to Zpudzy’z for the third and final set of orders, the sun was hanging low on the horizon, and the fading bits of light cast long shadows across the parking lot. Ragatha’s truck was idling in the lot, but neither her nor Kinger were in it, which could only mean they were both inside the restaurant trying to get their orders sorted. As Pomni headed in, he thought about hopping out and taking the truck for a little joyride, or even just parking it around the other side of the building to screw with Ragatha when she came out and found it gone, but the idea was dismissed as soon as it came because just like on the boat, he found he didn’t care. He didn’t have the energy to get out of the dumb Beetle and steal the truck, and it seemed more effort than it was worth to drive around the lot and find a place to hide the car for a reaction that he wouldn’t even get to see because if he stuck around to watch, she’d just yell at him and demand he bring it back, and that was no fun either. So, he just sat there in the bright yellow punch bug, waiting for Pomni to come back with more orders that they would deliver in silence, and they’d never find out what happened when the customers got angry because they were always on time, and they’d finish the adventure with a perfect score and return to the circus, pretend none of it ever happened and go back to avoiding each other as much as they possibly could.
Or, at least, he would avoid her, and maybe she would sneak up on him again just to sit next to him and not say a word, and maybe he would let her, and maybe he would wait for it, hope for it, want for it, but never ask.
Wanting never did him any good, he was supposed to stop wanting a long time ago, but she had a way of flipping everything he thought he knew on its head, subverting his expectations and refusing his long-established systems and plans and beliefs, reaching into the graveyard of his chest and unearthing things he’d thought he’d buried for good and looking his rotting, shambling, groaning zombies in the eyes and telling them that they were something worth saving too.
It would be the truth, to her. It couldn’t be anything else.
Pomni emerged from the restaurant, loaded the last couple orders in the back, took her place in the passenger seat, put the first address into the GPS, and they were off. The house they were heading towards was on the edge of town, and in the true spirit of a final lightning round, the time they had to deliver the pizza by would only barely be enough to make it to the address, even speeding as he was. They’d gotten that far into the adventure without being late, though, so he was confident they would make the deadline without issue, even if he had to sacrifice his extra bits of fun and focus fully on making every turn and following the directions exactly. He was fine with the end of the night being boring, as long as it brought him closer to the end of this shitty, tense, unbearably quiet adventure so he could go collapse in bed and shut the digital world out for a while. They just had to make the last set of deliveries, and they’d be done.
Then, they hit a roadblock. Literally.
The street the GPS wanted them to turn down was thoroughly closed-off, with emergency vehicles lighting up the now-dark sky with flashing lights and completely blocking the road and surrounding sidewalks, so he couldn’t even go up on the curb and cut across the sidewalk to go around them. NPCs stood around the blockade, and one in a high-vis vest was out in the street, directing traffic away. With no other options, they passed the turn and kept moving straight down the road, assuming they’d be able to take the next turn and circle back around to the right street. Except they couldn’t, because every turn on that side of the road for five blocks was closed, and when they finally were able to make the damn turn, they were in an entirely different part of town with no hope of making it to the delivery address before the timer ran out and the customer started getting angry. Jax’s shoulders hunched, growing more and more tense as they got further away and the GPS kept trying to reroute them back to the same closed roads until he started ignoring it entirely, and by the third block he’d abandoned the effort of trying to keep his carefree, unshakable façade up, letting his eternally-clenched toothy grin fall into a scowl. Pomni stayed quiet the whole way, and he didn’t know if that was better or worse than if she tried to help direct him as if she was any more familiar with the randomly generated streets than he was.
Pretending the GPS didn’t exist, he kept making random turns, taking them deeper into the block they’d turned onto until they finally reached a dead-end. He pulled over and put the car in park right as the GPS started sounding rapid, high-pitched beeps to let them know the timer had run out and the delivery was now considered late, and the noise set his nerves alight, sharp needle points scratching down his veins and digging through his brain to poke the backs of his eyes. His hand shot out and grabbed at the device, trying to find a button or switch or anything to turn it off, and when that failed, he ripped it off the dash entirely with an aggravated grunt, opened his door, and threw it as far away as he could before slamming the door closed again. With a heavy, defeated sigh, he turned the car off, finally putting an end to Caine’s horrible singing and letting the silence settle into his hollow bones as he leaned back in his seat.
“Um,” Something in his chest lurched at the sound of her voice, the first time he’d heard it in at least a couple hours, and it was only due to years of practice keeping every little thing hidden that he managed to not show on his face how quickly and entirely she’d stolen his attention with merely a single noise. “Aren’t we gonna go deliver the food?” He scoffed.
“Why should we?” She shifted in her seat, wringing her hands, but her brows pinched with what little determination she had left.
“Because the customer will get mad?”
“The customer is already mad,” he rolled his eyes, and her grip on her own hands squeezed the tiniest bit, just enough for him to catch it in the corner of his vision and send his stomach doing that nauseating, churning thing again. “By the time we figure out how to get there, it might just kill you in a blind rage, so what’s the point?”
“Still, it’s better to deliver it late than not at all.” Never one to back down, even from him. He didn’t know if he admired or hated it, maybe a little of both.
“If you wanna get out and walk all the way there, be my guest, but I’m staying right here until this dumb, boring adventure finally ends.” He never relented, either, and so their cycle of stubborn stalemates continued for another round.
Tinnitus-ringing silence, infinite and pressing and dense enough to feel the way his ribs creaked under its insistent weight, and then,
“You’re a really bad liar, y’know.” He blinked, processing, and finally faced her, shooting her an annoyed, confused look.
“What?” As soon as the word left his mouth, he regretted it. It was a bad idea to humor her, to allow whatever the conversation was going to become to continue past the point of no return. The silence, however uncomfortable, was better, safer, something he could maintain control over. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to ever get the solid, definitive upper-hand on her like he did the others, he couldn’t keep control when she always fought tooth and nail for the reigns.
“You don’t want me to be in pain. You don’t want me to suffer.” His mind stalled for a moment, faced so bluntly with a truth he’d done everything in his power to bury, to hide even from himself, as if the ghost of it, too, wouldn’t haunt his graveyard the way all the other banished souls did after he forced them into the ground too soon, their hearts still beating in time with his own, their skin still warm against the packed-in dirt. Then, he groaned, overdramatic and dismissive.
“Oh God, not this again!” Normal. He could do normal. He could be cruel and sarcastic and standoffish like he always was, like they all expected him to be, like it was the only thing he was capable of. It didn’t matter if she thought she had some advantage over him, it didn’t matter if he could feel the carefully built walls of himself shake with earthquake tremors under her unwavering, stern gaze. He’d said that there was nothing more to him for her to find, that what she saw was all he was, and if he stood firm in that, then she would have no choice but to give up and let it go eventually.
“Look, you can delude yourself all you want into thinking that I secretly care or wanna be friends or whatever, but the truth is that I don’t. I don’t care about you, I never have, and I never will. The sooner you can get that into that cartoonishly big head of yours, the better.”
She didn’t offer a response, and the car fell into silence once more. She continued fidgeting with her hands, and he pretended not to feel the way the maggots of his own words chewed holes through his skin, burrowing deep into his flesh where they squirmed and gnawed, insatiable. There was nothing of substance within him for them to consume, anyways. There hadn’t been for a long, long time.
“Why are we here, Jax?” She was infuriatingly persistent, and he could feel his irritation beginning to seep through the cracks even as he tried to shove it down under a patronizing smile.
“Uh, because Caine threw us into another basic, torturous adventure and we can’t leave until he lets us? Try to keep up, Pom.” She didn’t take the obvious bait. She didn’t even flinch at his mockery. He didn’t get her.
“No, I mean why are we here? Why are we parked on a random street doing nothing instead of making the deliveries like we’re supposed to?” He hated the way she so easily confused him, hated how she could ask stupid questions with obvious answers yet still somehow give the impression that she was always three steps ahead of him. He hated that he could never quite manage to predict what she wanted and where she was going and pull the strings in his own favor.
“Didn’t we already go over this? There’s no point. That house is, like, impossible to get to, and we’re already late. I’m not putting in all that effort to give a stupid NPC its stupid pizza when we won’t even get anything out of it. It’s not like any of this is real, it doesn’t matter what we do, so I’m gonna do what I want like always, and what I want is to sit here until this thing is finally over.” She was quiet for a breath, and his chest ached with ugly desperation to know what she was thinking, to see inside her head the way she somehow managed to see right into his.
“That’s not what you said before.” She said it like he was supposed to know what that meant, like it was important.
“What.” Stupid. He’d already made that mistake once. It was a bad idea to humor her, hadn’t he learned that by now?
“You said there wasn’t a point because the customer would already be angry, and it might try to hurt me when we get there.” He glared at her in disbelief, still horribly, hopelessly lost.
“What, do you want to get attacked by a wooden doll? Cause I can tell you from experience, it is not fun getting punched by one of those things.” For a split second, concerned curiosity flashed across her face, but she was quick to shake it away, refusing to let the subject at hand slip away to hear whatever story was behind that statement.
“If I were Gangle, or Ragatha, or even Zooble, would you still be parked here wasting time? Or would you be speeding down the road, crashing through fences, and launching over the blockades to get to the house and watch them face the wrath of an angry NPC?” His mind spun in a dizzying hurricane, reaching for any response, any retort to defend himself, but the hundred-mile winds tore all thought from his hands the moment the words brushed his fingers, leaving only razorblade papercuts behind. “We’re sitting here because you don’t get joy out of hurting people. At least… you don’t get joy out of hurting me.”
He stared at her with pinprick pupils, and she stared right back, confident, firm, daring him to deny what she already knew was true. Something in him crumbled, then, a piece of the flimsy foundation of himself, a pillar that helped hold up the persona he’d worked so hard to perfect, and suddenly, he just felt tired. He knew he had lost, and it was a nasty, weary feeling, to have everything he’d been running from finally catch up to him, cornered in a punch bug with nowhere else to go and nothing left in him to spur the desire to take off sprinting again. He’d been prepared to die on his mountain of lies, but instead she’d scaled the sheer cliff walls and found him all alone at the peak, and she’d grabbed his wrist and started dragging him back down, and wherever she went, against all logic and reason and sanity, he found himself inclined to follow. He crossed his arms and ripped his gaze away from hers, turning his head to look out through the windshield at the road ahead of them, lit only by a single streetlight a few feet away.
“That doesn’t make you special, it just makes me stupid.” His voice was low, bitter, but still, he tried to dissuade her, to convince her not to make the worst choice of her fake, digital life. “Trying to get close to me won’t do you any good. I’ll hurt you anyways, it’s in my nature, it’s what I do.”
“Jax… I don’t care.”
And that was new, because everyone else cared so goddamn much about every little thing, about each other and all their feelings, and it was maddening and he didn’t believe her for a second that she didn’t. His eyes dragged back to hers like a magnet, sharp, narrowed.
“Now who’s the liar?” She frowned, defensive.
“I’m not lying.”
“Then you’re dumber than I thought.” He spit the words like venom, and her hands curled into fists on her knees, but he didn’t let it deter him. She needed to hear it, he needed to make her understand. “You’re a good person, Pomni. You care about peoples’ feelings, even the NPCs’. You wanna help people, you wanna make this nightmare a little more bearable to live in, you wanna make sure no one feels abandoned or alone. You’re everything I’m not. You’re kind.”
Not nice, not polite, but kind. There was something sickeningly soft about the word, genuine where the others could be twisted, manipulated, manufactured. She was too close to real in a world that was anything but.
“You’re giving me too much credit. I’m not some guardian angel sent to save everyone, I just don’t want anyone to abstract. They’re my friends, I think. All of you are.” He wanted to laugh, she was only proving his point.
“Exactly. You think of them as friends, but I don’t believe in friends, not in a place like this. We’re all just prisoners locked in the same cell, and we only tolerate each other because we have to. You think pretending you’re all friends will make things better? It’s not real!” He was yelling, now, but he couldn’t stop the words pouring from his mouth, a flood with no rhyme or reason, only the sole goal of scaring her away for good.
“No one else seems to understand it, but nothing we do in here matters because none of it is real. I break Gangle’s mask because it’s funny to watch her cry over every little thing, but at the end of the day, all Caine has to do is snap his fingers and it’s fixed. Nothing is permanent, nothing changes, it’s all exactly the same, day after day after day. Even the adventures are the same! We’ve already been in this world, we’ve already done this job, and we’ll probably be forced to do it all over again in a few weeks the next time Caine runs out of ideas, so why bother pretending that keeping the NPCs happy matters? Why bother following speed limits or timers or the dumb GPS? Why not hit each other with our cars until we break every fake bone in our fake bodies when we all know we’ll just be put back good as new when the adventure’s over? You think our feelings mean anything? It’s all just another line of code, a simulation, a joke. It doesn’t matter. You don’t matter.”
She held his gaze, even as her hands shook where they pressed into her knees and her breaths came quick and ragged. She didn’t cry, or back away in fear, or even look strictly angry, and it pissed him off more than anything. She leaned a little closer, still staring directly into his eyes, into his soul, and he had to force himself to not lean back or look away, to not reveal the truth of his vulnerability by avoiding the point-blank firing of hers.
“I don’t believe you.”
Like a spark to the gasoline that flowed through his veins instead of blood, the words sent vicious cremation heat burning through his body, a bonfire bursting to life in his core and consuming the kindling of his organs, spreading to feed on the logs that twisted into his ribcage, poisoning his lungs with confessional-hellfire smoke that crawled, stinging, up his throat and deepened the stain of his already-yellow teeth like cigarettes to old, peeling wallpaper. He leaned closer, too, until their faces were only inches apart, and when he spoke again, he could taste the ashes of his heart polluting his harsh, dangerous growl.
“I will figure out what you’re most afraid of, and I’ll make sure you spend every day looking over your shoulders and around every corner terrified, and every night sitting awake in bed, staring into the darkness, haunted by the nightmares I create. I’ll learn what makes you tick, what makes you angry, and you’ll never know a moment of peace again, I’ll turn every happy moment into a horrible one and make every horrible moment unbearable. I’ll put you in danger in every adventure, I’ll kill you every chance I get, I’ll make sure you spend every single day in as much pain as you can possibly feel. I will hurt you.”
“Then hurt me. I’ll keep coming back to you anyway.” A whisper, but it sent him reeling back as if she’d screamed. He knew she meant it, she was too honest for her own good, too honest for the lies he’d crafted his identity out of.
“Didn’t you hear a word I said? I’ll make your life a living nightmare, I’ll ruin everything you have and everything you are, I’ll hurt you just like I hurt everyone else and I’ll like it.”
“I already told you, I don’t care.” Her hard, stubborn frown softened almost imperceptibly, just enough for a devastatingly genuine, hopeful desperation to claw its way into her eyes. “I don’t need you to be like everyone else. I don’t want you to destroy yourself trying to be whoever you think I want you to be. I don’t want a character, or a façade, or a performance. I just want you. Even when you go out of your way to scare me, or make me mad, or hurt me, I’ll still wanna talk to you and hang out with you. I’ll still choose you, even if no one else does.”
“Why?” He wanted to cry. He wanted to strangle her. He wanted to put a gun in her hand again and give her another chance to do what she should’ve done before, to prove that she could stop him if he went too far, to give him the peace of mind of knowing she wouldn’t let him destroy her entirely like he always seemed to do when he let anyone get too close.
“Because for some reason, you seem to get me in a way the others don’t, and I think I’m starting to get you, too. Because you don’t pretend that everything is fine, or that any of this is normal, and you don’t try to force anyone else to either. Because that stupid gun adventure was the most fun I’ve had since coming here, and it’s because it was with you, because you bring out something in me that feels real even when everything else is fake, even when we’re playing into that fakeness.” She shook her head, begging, pleading for him to listen, and he had no choice but to obey. “I don’t think you want to hurt me. I really, truly don’t. But if you do, then fine, hurt me. I don’t care, I can take it. What I can’t take is losing you.”
Wanting never did him any good, he was supposed to stop wanting a long time ago, but there he was, sitting in a tiny car that reeked of cheese and grease, staring at a girl that he was starting to realize might be even crazier than him, and he wanted it, wanted her and everything she promised, more than he’d ever wanted anything else. It was a bad idea, he knew. It would only end in them both getting hurt, broken beyond repair, but he’d never been known for making good decisions, and he was learning she was no stranger to making poor ones. She watched him, patiently, as he gathered the courage to stay, and when he finally nodded, short and wanting and terrified, she smiled. It was a small thing, more gentle than he could ever deserve from her, a little bit sad in the way he’d noticed she always seemed to be just under the surface, but it was real, and if he was a whole lot braver and disgustingly sappier, he might’ve admitted that it was brighter than all the digital stars in the digital sky, and he might’ve silently made it his new goal to make her smile as much as he could.
He would hurt her, it was as inevitable as the theme song playing too early in the morning and Caine shoving them through a portal into another adventure against their will and their slow, collective decline towards abstraction, and she would be the death of him, the undoing of him, the purpose of him. It was a bad idea, but maybe he was okay with that, as long as it meant he could have her for just a little while longer.