Chapter Text
Jax's reflection stares back at him from the ocean, rippling with the waves. A lame copy of the water made for you, getting all his handsome features wrong, blurring and twisting like the ocean doesn't want his face.
Sleep did nothing of use for him here, but the lack of it didn't make him feel any better when Caine launched them into a riveting adventure of masts, mildew and musty ships to collect as many fish as they could before the sun set—promising a sea-filled day of team bonding and natural wonder.
To be completely honest, he had been paying no attention to their eccentric ringmaster's spiel, but Pomni had been more than glad to fill him in on what he missed.
Speaking of her, Jax isn't going to pretend that he doesn't know when she sneaks glances at him when she thinks he isn't looking. Eyes at the back of your head, they say. Pomni may look engrossed in her assigned task; playing the steward by scrubbing every inch of the dusty hull, but really, who is she kidding? That thin ass mop isn't hiding her face well enough.
And she's smiling. A dreamlike beam that tugs at the edges of her lips, and she doesn't break from her childlike trance even after he turns.
“My eyes are up here, Pompom.”
She stifles a gasp, immediately returning to her senses. “O-Oh, sorry,” she says quickly, “I didn't mean to stare.”
His eyebrows arch expectantly for more. She twists and turns the mop in her hands. “I was just… thinking.”
Back leaning against the side of the rail, he props his elbows on either side. “While gawking at me? Somethin’ scandalous in that peanut brain?”
“What?” Her face flushes a deep tomato red. “We can’t—I wasn’t—it’s not like—forget it. Just forget it.”
“I didn't hear a ‘no'.”
Completely exasperated, her eyes narrow. “Shouldn't you be doing something remotely useful right now?”
“But I am!” He gestures out to the great beyond. “Lookout.”
“Okay, so Kinger's not up on crow's nest?”
His head snaps up to look up at the top of the ship, and sure enough, that chess piece is nestled on top, eyeballs looking every which way into the distance, waving back when he notices him.
“Oh, hello Ragatha! Fine weather up here!”
He has no idea how he got up there, and frankly, he doesn't care enough to know.
“Pfft, you can't actually trust him to keep a good eye on things. I'm being useful, I swear.”
“Sure, sure,” Pomni mutters, rolling her eyes. The wind picks up speed, the snap of sails streaking by the sea breeze sharp in the air. The little bells in Pomni's hat jingle with the wind.
Out of the corner of his eye, he only watches as Gangle, who previously was fixing up the net on the other side of the deck, is thrown into the air. She wails, her colorful body snagging on the mast of the ship.
Ragatha and Zooble notice, struggling against their tangled hands on the net that still is tossed to the side, dragging against the waters.
“Jax!” Ragatha calls, tugging to free her wrists, “Help her!”
He clicks his tongue. “Really?” He can't even hide the smirk, speaking as if through a cheese grater. “Really?”
Zooble groans. “Jax, I swear to god—” They can't even do themselves, what are they getting on? Their arm is tangled so badly to their net that it just might snap off.
He feels a gentle poke at the back of his hand, and finds the end of the mop near it.
“Help her, Jax.”
Pomni's eyes are wide with contempt, and he could almost hear the words behind them. Don't be such an asshole right now.
He surprisingly doesn't fight the urge to keep rage-baiting and stand there, rolling his eyes with a grimace. “Fine.”
He simply strides up to the tangled mass of ribbons and tugs her down by the knot. She unravels immediately, yelping as her porcelain mask breaks into pieces.
Leaving her a groaning heap on the floor, he walks up to Dollface and Ikea Parts. They remain struggling with the net. “Do the little fishermen need assistance?” He asks.
Ragatha looks aghast. Not even grateful. “After we'd begged you to come for so long, now you show up? We are struggling! Would it kill you to show up—”
That’s where he tunes her out. God, Ragatha gets so over the top. His gaze transfixes on Pomni from across the deck, and unlike him with his top notch stare detection skills, she's blissfully unaware of the eyes that watch her place the mop back into the soapy water bucket, reaching out from her back. Looks like she's learnt how to use the pocket dimension.
Her eyes dart here and there before pulling out a notebook. Small, crimson red, yellowed pages and a little ribbon bookmark flailing out the end. Her grip is unnaturally tight, almost like she was hiding the thing underneath her arm. Strange.
Zooble's arm snaps from her body and tumbles into the sea with a blip. Ragatha scoffs, breaking out of her dramatic monologue to shoot him a vicious glare.
“Jax, could you stop ogling Pomni for one second and help us?”
The jester’s actions continue to pique his interest—she's pulling out a sparkly, cobalt pen, scribbling words furiously on a page, lost in trailing the direction of the object. Writing? Right now? While they were actively trying not to drown from these oddly aggressive tidal waves?
His mouth twitches upward. Interesting.
“Hey, Pomni!” He bellows, jaw snapping open. “Whatcha got over there?”
Her eyes snap to his too quickly to not be suspicious. Her thumb brushes the edge of the book before ignoring him.
Wait, ignoring him?
He gets no warning when the ship swiftly jerks to its side, threatening to send him sprawling to the floor lest his grip on the rail loosened. He crouches, locking his knees, praying that he's not going to slam into the opposite rail like Gangle had rammed into.
She makes a painful cry from her spot on the floor. “I'm going to be sick…”
Another bump rocks the boat the opposite direction, and Jax's heart crawls up his throat. Kinger is thrown out the crow's nest.
Ragatha scrambles to maintain her balance. Her foot slips, and her hands grope at empty air as she's tossed out the ship like an afterthought.
Her screams are swallowed by the sea.
Someone calls out her name but he doesn't get the time to register who as the boat violently snaps backwards.
Half of him falls over the edge. His arms flap wildly, desperately trying to pull himself backward. Zooble is screaming.
Pomni falls forward on her abdomen, upturning the soap bucket and mop, spilling the contents across the deck. And the book; it tumbles out of her grip, slipping across the slippery substance.
It lands right by his foot.
God knows what overtakes him in that moment, because he's lunging forward, falling to the ground and clutching the thing in his hands the next second.
Eyes widening, Pomni draws in a sharp, loud squeal.
Wind muffles the roar of laughter that escapes his lungs at the sound. Water splashes into the deck, sploshing around his ankles.
“Did you just make that sound?”
“Put that down, Jax!”
He does not. He flips it side to side, grin widening even harder. Tiny, small. Practically pukes up Little Pompom’s Secret Journal from the sheen alone.
“Awh, is this a diary?” He cooed, loud enough so she could fume at his every word. “Writing all your nasty, depressing fweelings in here?”
She’s storming in his direction, each step measured and careful so she wouldn't tumble. Her brow knit together in concentration, but her burning gaze didn't leave him. “Jax, if you don't put that down right now—”
Terrifying, so very terrifying, this little jester. He flips open to a page, holding up the diary like a shield away from her as he reads:
Dear Diary, if there's one
Something collides with his gut as the boat rocks to its side, a sharp elbow twisting in his gut. He sucks in a sharp breath, stumbling backward to the rail. The diary remains vice on his chest.
Pomni had darted across the dock and landed him an uppercut that basically separated his gut from his body over this?
This is officially gold.
He hoists the diary high up over his head. “Up here, shortstack!”
Pomni bites his arm.
He's too startled to process the yell that releases from his throat. “What the hell?”
She's on his back, clamoring up his spine and wrapping her cold fingers tightly on his, still wound around the book near his chest.
She's screaming like a rabid raccoon.
“Drop the book, asshole!”
Jax does drops the book, but hurls her to the floor before she could snatch it back.
“Give it up!” Zooble hollers. “The boat's going to—”
The boat violently snaps backwards, and the soap buckets and crates crash into the waves.
She has a predatory look in her eyes.
“Pomni, don't you dare—”
Before he could even jump away from range, she lunged at him, and nothing could have prevented him from slipping over the edge into the waves below.
They unravel from the tangle of their bodies as the wind whips against the eyes.
Before the crash, Pomni looks at him and smiles.
The diary is in her hands.
God damn it.
“I hate you,” he mutters, as the seawater greets him with a hug.
They had re-emerged into the circus grounds—salty, soaking wet, dripping with seaweed and moss. Routine took over them once more when they had gone off in their own ways for the night, but Pomni hasn't given him so much a greeting since she stormed back into her room.
He looks at her portrait, in front of her door, lights flickering as he stands alone in the hallway. He's made his way over here the second he won the chance; waiting until she had joined Ragatha in the Digital Kitchen before making a move towards her bedroom.
So you've got things to hide, huh, Pomni?
He knew she had an aggressive side to her he's barely caught a wink of. But that kind of reaction back at the ship wasn't even a tad bit warranted over something that wasn't unimportant. He's on a mission this time.
For one second, he contemplates the morals of breaking into her little hobbit hole.
Too bad he doesn't respect anyone's privacy.
He slips her multicolored key into the lock, smiling as it erupts a soft click. Her room is dark, the candy-store colors still bright enough to ease his sights. How isn't she blind yet? It looks like the carcass of a unicorn with a side of glitter.
Closing the door behind him quietly, he counts down the seconds in his head as he scours the room for it.
There it is, placed delicately on her pillow, the pen popped and ready across it, like she had been readying for her next heartfelt entry.
Flipping through the pages, he reads one dated before digital seaside hell.
Dear Diary,
If there's one thing I never expected when I arrived, it was feeling like I truly belonged here.
It's not a good thing. Settling into this circus should be downright concerning at best. But at least it doesn't feel like I'm not welcome. But that's the confusing part. Because it feels like that more often than not.
I'm so grateful I'm not alone here. I have them. My friends. It could be worse. I know that. But I want this to feel normal somehow. It never does. I want to talk about normal things. Like taxes or shopping or anything that doesn't feel like it's on the verge of a mental breakdown.
It doesn't feel natural when I talk to them. Ragatha's always
coddling metreating me like I'm some child. Gangle seems like she might burst into tears if I try striking up a conversation and the last thing I want her to do is make her sad. Zooble and I seem much too different some days. Like she's putting up some kind of guard. I can't talk to Kinger without quietly feeling sad that I can't talk to the real him.
And Jax?
Where do I even start?
I hate that I like him the most, though. It’s like some stupid curse this circus put on me. This guy is a glorious asshole. Somehow I like him. I somehow like this rabbit.
Oh, ho ho ho.
He wasn’t kidding himself when he believed this thing would be gold. Pomni likes him! That oblivious, stupid jester girl liked him. She probably wasn’t realizing what she was saying. But he is giddy with delight at this news. He didn’t even chase her for approval.
He can't place this churning in his gut when he rereads the text, though. Pomni wants to talk. Lame. Plenty of things to talk about here when there's a plethora of time to spend doing nothing. She shouldn't be making any sense. Yet, something twists, like the recollection of something painfully familiar.
Stop thinking about that lame part, he chides himself. He’d found the best piece of news he would have possibly stumbled on, enough blackmail to presumably weave the best kind of teasing from. She likes him—and boy, isn’t he flattered? Too bad he doesn’t like her back, though. Quite the Grecian tragedy to play out from here.
He's been here far too long, and Pomni could make her way back any minute. Jax adjusts the diary into the same position as before, and slips out of the room without a peep. His fingers linger on the doorknob longer than they should.
He imagines all the fun he’s going to have with this.
The next morning, Jax returns to Pomni’s room in her absence to read the latest entry.
But instead of something new and juicy, a myriad of scribbled lines and strikes cross out the last lines of her previous one.
I hate that I like him the most, though. It’s like some stupid curse this circus put on me. This guy is a glorious asshole. Somehow I like him. I somehow like this rabbit.
I hate this guy.
…well, that’s a problem.