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Some days, the bright lights and distant-but-plentiful noises of the circus are more prominent than others.
There's no adventure today. Caine had told them himself that he needed to "fiddle with the settings" (of course, stylized with a violin that vanished as quickly as it appeared) of the digital world and headed off with Bubble to get to that.
Most of them dispersed. Zooble and Gangle wandered off somewhere. Kinger and Pomni were having a conversation of... some sort, that didn't seem to have an end in sight.
Despite the comparatively low amount of... things going on, Ragatha finds herself feeling overwhelmed. She wanders for a while, trying to find somewhere free of the background music and SFX. She knows, of course, that this is technically impossible. But still, there's a part of her that hopes she'll be able to find just a moment or two of silence.
She doesn't.
She can't.
The noises continue to build something up inside her. Some kind of ugly mound, made of cold wet dirty rags and sink water and squeaking Styrofoam and a leaky from a ceiling drip, drip, dripping into a metal bowl.
She trudges herself back across the tent to the hallway outside of her bedroom. Her steps are heavy, far less calculated and pristine as usual. She pauses for a moment before reaching her room, looking at all the other doors down the hall. The bright red X's drawn over the faces of people she once knew. She wonders for a second if this is what it feels like before... that happens.
All of this static in her brain, and in her bones (which aren't there, but she swears she can still feel them).
She pushes that thought from her mind, though. It's insensitive to compare her big feelings to abstracting - just as it was to compare her big feelings to death before she got into the circus.
Ragatha tries to pace her breathing as she continues walking, more focused now, but still just as heavy. Her deep breaths only help so much. She finally reaches her door and goes to turn the handle - but it doesn’t turn. She's met with the rattling of a locked door instead, the quiet clicking noise joining the cacophony that surrounds her. She lets out a short, angry yelp as she loosens her grip on the handle and slams the sides of her fists against the door.
She didn't lock the door - she knows that for a fact. And she can only think of one person who might have been the one to do it.
So now she needs to go see Jax.
She thinks for a moment about how they haven't talked alone since a few days ago, when they...
A slightly louder groan comes from her now, and her foot hits the door with an even less satisfying fabric thunk than her fists did. A part of her grows very, very angry that she can't seem to make a noise loud enough to push this feeling out of her. She pushes herself away from the door to march to Jax's room, praying that he's actually in there and hasn't just f****d off to god-knows-where-else in the tent.
Finally, she reaches his door, and before she even realizes it, she's raising her hand and banging on the door quickly. When she notices how desperate her knocking sounds, she quickly pulls her hand away, and pushes it down to her side. When she hears something moving on the other side, she winces, then quickly smooths out her face into a small smile. She focuses her energy on clasping her hands and fiddling around with her fingers.
The door swings open. Jax is standing on the other side, balancing himself against the door frame with one hand, the other releasing the door handle and moving to rest on his hip.
"Raggedy Ann! If it isn't my favourite guest." He says through his grin, which was pasted on his face from the second he opened the door. "What can I do for ya?"
Ragatha's smile cracks for a moment at the sound of his voice, but she fixes it almost immediately, straightening her back to stand up taller.
"Hi, Jax. I was wondering if you- possibly, by any chance - might have... locked my door?" She asks, forcing her eye to meet his in some kind of outlandish attempt at assertive eye contact.
Jax looks off-put immediately.
"Uh..." He blinks at her. "Well, for starters. Is there a reason you're asking me this like I've got a gun to your head?"
Ragatha laughs too quickly, and moves her hands to clasp them behind her back.
"Oh, you know. Caine's got nothing planned today, and.." She searches for her reason likes she needs to preemptively provide an excuse. "I was really just hoping to turn in early and get some rest!" She nods assuredly.
"Right." Jax nods slowly. He notices something's still off about her, but he can't put his finger on it, so he puts it to the side to keep in mind while talking.
"Well," he continues, "In that case. I did, absolutely, lock your door!"
Ragatha blinks at him. He doesn't say anything. She pushes out another chuckle.
"Right! Yeah, okay, I thought so. Well, great. Good to know! Thank you." She barely manages, deeply aware she is absolutely fumbling this interaction even in the few words she's managed.
"Well then, if you wouldn't mind giving me the key, that would be great." She internally celebrates her ability to finish her sentence.
"Ohhh, yeah! Well, I could definitely get that for you." He turns into his room, leaving her standing in his doorway. Ragatha follows right behind, peering impatiently around him.
He looks behind himself just long enough to meet her eyes, and say through his smirk, "I'm just gonna have to find it!"
Jax dumps his bucket of keys onto his desk, and all of a sudden, hundreds of pieces of metal are clinking against each other and the wood of the desk all at once. Ragatha actually jumps back, like the sounds knocked her off balance like an earthquake. She brings her hands up to her ears, covering them as tightly as she can. All of the feelings she'd been trying to push down until she got to her room get the better of her all at once.
"JAX!" She shrieks, stomping her foot as she names him. "WHY did you have to DO that? Seriously! Could you have done that any louder if you tried?!"
He starts to laugh, but takes notice of her body language. Her hands over her ears, her knees that look like they're seconds from buckling under her-
The tears welling in her eye, and her button getting shiny.
His laugh stops. His smile fades, too, as he stares at her.
"Uh..." He tries another small smile. "C'mon, dollface, I was just messing with you."
"Well sometimes, Jax, the way you mess with people just isn't f*****g funny! Sometimes you're just being an a*****e for no good reason at all!"
Jax decides to stop trying the smile. As fun as it is for him to play around with her, a part of his is genuinely worried about her. This isn't a reaction he's used to seeing out of anyone here, and it's far bigger than any of the other times they'd talked alone.
He raises his eyebrow, looking her over with one hand in his pocket and the other by his side. He can't see any rips or tears on her. No chunks of her missing. Her stuffing distribution is normal. All in all, she looks completely unharmed physically - which he's more thankful for than he expects to be. After a moment of apprehension, he walks to the door and shuts it slowly.
"Ragatha?" He asks, as he steps quietly to sit down on his desk chair.
She looks up to him through her tears, lifting her hands from her ears just barely enough to hear. Her eyebrows are knit together, and she speaks so quietly that it makes her seem like she's afraid of her own voice. Which she is.
She speaks through gritted teeth. "What?"
Jax sighs. "You're being weird. What happened?"
"What do you mean, 'what happened'?"
"I mean, you're freakin' me out, here."
Ragatha notices he's actually started speaking softer. She slowly lets her hands drop from her ears, bringing them both to twist a small chunk of her hair. She sniffles.
"Ah, I'm sorry," she whispers. "I really wasn't trying to freak you out." She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist, refusing to drop her grip on her hair.
"I just really wanted to get back to my room. And you... made a lot of noise." She gestures to the now empty bucket on his desk.
Jax takes a minute to think over that answer. Struggling to understand the actual magnitude of the issue, he asks, "So... You started crying like a freshly candy-less baby because I... dumped some keys onto my desk and it was loud?"
She winces at his description of what happened, but doesn't acknowledge his question. "I'm not a baby."
That one actually makes him drop the comedian front. After his last couple of times alone with Ragatha, he's realized he's starting to learn the pattern of their interactions.
He tries to joke. She doesn't react. He tries again anyways. She says something that makes him *stop* trying to joke again.
She's said the thing that'll make him stop trying to joke.
"Well, I never said you *were* a baby, I just was... comparing the crying to that of one."
"*Well*," She mocked, "it wasn't very *funny*, so if that's what you're trying to do-"
"You're right." He interjects.
Ragatha stops. She returns her gaze to his face and scans it intently. She can't tell exactly what he's feeling, and it frightens her.
"Do you want to sit down?" Jax nods towards his bed, which is just behind her.
She nods slowly, and sits, but doesn't stop trying to read his face.
Jax rolls his chair a bit closer to the bed, still giving her some space.
"Okay," he starts, "so it's a little bit that the keys made a bunch of noise."
Ragatha nods.
"And it's a little bit some other stuff?"
"It's... everything." She sniffles.
Jax pauses, thinking. "Does this... have anything to do with the other day?" His eyes lock on her face.
Ragatha needs to focus to process what he's asked her, but when she realizes what he's talking about, she shakes her head quickly.
"No." She swallows. "Not- not that. Everything else? Like..." She trails off, unable to find the correct word, and gestures to the *everything*, waggling her arms about like she's never used them before in her life. She groans, and lets her upper body fall back onto the bed, leaving her lower legs dangling off the side of it. The weirdness that she's laying on Jax's bed right now is outweighed by the 'everything else' she's been talking about. Her ears still hurt. Her head is still pounding, and she still feels too warm, and too cold. But she realizes it's a little bit darker in his room than it was in the hallway. It's helping.
Jax watches her gesture wildly. He nods. "Okay, got it. The everything else." He mocks her arm movements. She can only see it in her peripheral vision, but it makes her smile a bit. He notices, and doesn't say anything.
"Well, honestly, I'm just relieved the dick wasn't so bad that you banged on my door just to scream at me." He leans back in his chair.
"Jax," Ragatha scoffs. "That's... obviously not what's going on." She chooses to not think about what the 'obviously' might imply.
"Hey, god forbid a guy cover his a**, huh?"
She props herself up on her elbows to look at him. She's still speaking softly. "I don't know why we keep ending up like this."
Jax tilts his head. "What d'ya mean?"
She shrugs and lets the quiet of his room wash over her for a minute. Jax doesn't break the silence. He watches her looking around his room slowly.
"Like... we keep ending up alone. In some way or another."
Jax shrugs, and then nods. "Yeah, we do. But the other times, you needed a patch-up. Bit different here."
Ragatha hums in agreement.
"I mean," she starts, nervously, "I kind of needed a patch-up when I got here. Getting into my room when I needed to probably would've patched me up nice and good." She eyes him.
He looks back at her, and his eyebrows furrow.
"What, so I'm not allowed to lock up your door every now and then to ragebait you just in case you *might* be feeling a little overwhelmed? Seems kind of restrictive to me." He smirked.
"What? No, that's not- what-..." She pauses. "What does that *mean*?"
"It means I'm baiting you. Into rage. Come on, Rags, that one's easy!" Jax laughs.
Ragatha actually agrees. She pushes her upper body up and pulls her feet onto the bed, sitting criss-cross. "... Yeah, I guess that one was a little on the nose, huh." She looks down at her hands on his bed sheets.
They're quiet together for a minute. Ragatha feels most of that buildup in her brain and chest melting away. It's hard to have all of it dissipate when she's not completely on her own, but this is giving her a different kind of comfort that she's not used to having in the circus.
She finds herself grateful for the darkness. Grateful for the way the walls of his room dampen all the noise outside. Grateful for his company.
Ragatha feels strange. She and Jax have never really gotten along. Their ways of just *existing* cause them to constantly butt heads in almost every single situation. But the past couple of times they'd been alone together had been nice. And he'd patched her up each time with surprisingly soft, caring hands. And sure, the second time was after he... ravaged her. But to her, the stitches were what stood out most.
She wonders, for a moment, if she's seeing a side of him that he hasn't shown the others. It makes her feel warm to think that might be the case.
Jax is the first to speak again.
"You can have the key to your room, if you want."
Ragatha looks at him. "Oh. Yeah, yeah. I can go." She gets off the bed and steps up to his desk to look through the key pile. She's about to start rummaging when she feels something small and cold pressing against her back.
"It wasn't in the pile." Jax says, from behind her.
Ragatha feels her breath catch. She steps forward so the contact with her back is broken, and spins around. Jax is holding the key to her room out to her. She laughs nervously, and reaches out to take it.
"So you were just gonna make me rummage through all those for nothing?"
"Basically, yup." He nods.
As her hand closes around the key, she notices Jax's other hand close around her wrist. She lets out a small noise of confusion and looks up to his face.
"But, now you don't have to. 'Cause I handed it to you."
Ragatha flushes. "... Yes."
Jax raises his eyebrow.
"Uh." Her flustered, blushing face starts to shift back to confusion.
Jax realizes she's not picking up what he's putting down.
"You're welcome." He feeds.
Ragatha snaps into it. "Oh! Thank... Thank you."
He sighs loudly, releasing his grip on her wrist.
"Those're the manners I was looking for!" Jax steps back from her and dramatically gestures towards the door.
Unsure what exactly is going on, Ragatha starts towards the door.
"Parting really is such sweet sorrow." He jokes.
"... I'll see you soon, Jax." She smiles at him, and reaches for the handle.
She turns it.
She's met with the same clicking she heard from her own door before coming here. She squints, and tries again.
Jax watches her as she tries a third time. Then tries twisting the other way. It still just jiggles in it's place.
"Um... Jax?"
"Yes?"
"It won't open."
"Oh, that's 'cause it's locked."
Ragatha turns back to him. She picks up what's going on quickly this time, and her eyes flick from him to the key-covered desk.
"... Oh." She sighs.
Jax chuckles at her, stepping aside to fully clear the path from the door to his desk. "Whaaaat? I said you can have the key to your room, I didn't say you could leave *mine*."
She rubs her arm, her nerves building up. "It's just... You know, that's usually the kind of thing that's implied. Like, 'oh, here's the key to your room, also you can leave'?"
"Welp, wasn't implied here! You've got some work to do if you wanna get out of here."
Ragatha thinks for a moment.
She's fairly certain that if she told him she was done messing around, that she was upset and overwhelmed and wanted to leave and go to her own room - that he would listen. He'd unlock his door and let her go on her way. She *is* upset, and overwhelmed. And she *does* want to leave to go to her own room.
But she also doesn't find herself able to tell him that. She's not sure if it's because she wants him to like her, or if it's because she wants to stay. Maybe it's neither. Maybe it's a bit of both.
She weighs her options. Then she approaches the desk. She looks it over for a few seconds, her hand coming up just to push the top layer of keys around.
"What does yours look like?"
Jax grins. "What, you didn't see it last time? Were you that distracted?"
"What?" She huffs. Her eyes flash as she realizes what he means, and her face goes red. "Oh! No, no, no, that's not what I meant! Oh my god... Your key. What does your *key* look like?"
He just shrugs. "Dunno. Looks like you'll just have to try... all of them."
Ragatha blinks. She looks at him. And then at the pile of keys. Then back at him.
"... You can't be serious."
Jax hums. "I don't know how else either of us are getting out of here." He points to the pile. "It's one of those ones. I'm sure of it."
She decides very quickly to resign herself to her fate. She picks up the bucket, and holds it against the edge of the desk. She pushes the keys into the bucket, watching as some of them fall to the floor. When she's pushed them all off the desk, she places the bucket onto the floor and bends over to collect the ones she'd dropped onto the ground. Her skirt doesn't lift much - but it does lift just enough that Jax can see purple stitching on the inside of her leg. He grins.
"So, that seam hasn't split open again, huh?" He questions.
Ragatha finishes collecting the keys from the ground and stands up straight, holding it in front of her like a kettlebell. She blushes, and shakes her head.
"Ah... Nope. That one... That one has stayed well intact."
He watches her walk towards the door with the heavy bucket.
"Good," he says. "Wouldn't want anything - or, anybody - to mess up the beautiful stitching I did."
"Anybody?" She lifts her eyebrow at him. "Hey, I can rip open any of my seams for anybody I want, anytime I want. It's not like I'm your possession or something." She says it seriously - and means it, at least partially - but she's going along with the bit.
Jax laughs. "You literally got off on being called 'fuckdoll'."
She regrets going along with the bit. She quickly turns towards the door so her face is out of sight and she puts the bucket down. She doesn't answer. Not because she doesn't try, but because it doesn't work.
Ragatha tries a few keys. Whenever one doesn't work, she drops it on the floor beside the bucket and keeps going. Jax is watching her for a minute, deeply amused.
"Y'know, I'm sure my memory could be jogged. There's a lot of keys there. I think the last time I remember really *looking* at mine was... In the tent the other night, on the way back from spending time with you."
She scoffs. "That's a really bad excuse."
He hums. "That's okay. Doesn't really matter what I say, I'm getting what I want out of you either way."
Ragatha whips her head to look at him, her expression a mixture of embarrassed and angry. "... What is *that* supposed to mean?"
Jax looks her up and down. His expression turns serious.
"Ragatha, do you actually want to leave right now?"
She stares at him. She doesn't answer.
Jax waits for a moment. When she doesn't say anything, he lets the smile crawl back onto his face.
"Yeah... Didn't think so, doll."
Before Ragatha can even process what's going on, Jax is behind her, and her arms are pulled behind her back. He all but picks her up and throws her down face-first into his bed, releasing her hands as he shoves her down so she's bent over. She exclaims, the noise being cut off by the bed sheet she's found her mouth against. She tries to turn her head around, but Jax grabs a handful of her hair and pushes her head back face-down.
"You're gonna stay where I put you. Got it?"
She doesn't do anything, for a second.
He takes the handful of her hair and twists it around his hand to give it a little tug.
"I said, got it?"
A harsh breath leaves Ragatha's lips. She nods.
She can hear his grin as he speaks.
"Good girl."
With her laid in front of him, Jax takes a moment to consider what he should do. He hikes her skirt up over her ass, taking a moment to admire his handiwork from where he stitched her up & stitched her panties back on. He reaches around her, rifling through the fabric of her dress to try and find her pocket. He finds one on the side of her dress, and he awkwardly reaches into it, pulling out her sewing kit. He pulls open the drawstring bag and dumps it's contents out on the foot of the bed. He eyes the seam ripper, picking it up and spinning it around in his fingers. He squints at it.
"Hm... Nah." He tosses it back onto the bed and grabs her panties and tugs.
Ragatha yelps. They're literally sewn on to her skin, and the pull hurts in the same way a piercing does when it gets caught on something. "That- that hurts!"
Jax laughs. "Oh, it hurts? That's okay."
He tugs again and the stitching snaps on one side. She whimpers. He watches her squirm as he pulls the other side until the string there snaps as well. He pulls the panties down her legs, looking her over from behind. He traces the seam in the centre of her ass with one finger. "Is this original stitching?" He asks. He's not completely sure how her body works, but he assumes there have to be *some* seams she's never fully ripped.
She thinks, and nods. "I... I think so? It's kind of... hard to keep track. But I can't really reach back there, and nobody has ever helped me sew it up, so..."
"Cool." Jax picks up the seam ripper and Ragatha hears the quiet snaps of her seams. She gasps.
She thinks, for a moment, that she really should have expected this.
Ragatha feels him tracing the edges of the hole he'd ripped into her. It feels the way it always does when she rips a seam at first - dull, but painful nonetheless. She's largely stopped squirming, but she can't really help it with the situation she's in. She takes a moment to feel glad that Jax doesn't seem to count this as not "staying where he put her".
She doesn't have much more than that moment, though, because she feels fingers in her stuffing and gasps.
It feels different than it felt before the circus. It's less... Detailed. She can't feel specific things, really, just more of the general shape and size of the obtrusion. She makes a little noise into the pillow as she adjusts to the feeling.
Jax spends a few minutes like that, just fingering her. Every now and then, he gets bored, and pulls her fabric to pop another stitch of the hole before he continues. Not making the hole bigger enough that it mattered, but just making her hurt. She whines every time.
Ragatha's noises continue as they were - soft sighs, little whimpers when he did something she didn't expect. She considered moving to get more comfortable a few times - but she wasn't sure if she wanted to see what would happen.
After working up some courage, she shifts significantly on the bed to reposition herself a bit.
Jax huffs. "Excuse me?"
Ragatha holds her breath. She waits to see what's coming, but she doesn't get what she expects. He lets go of her completely, his fingers slipping out of her. She feels him getting off the bed.
She can't tell if she's relieved.
But she doesn't have much time to think about it. She hears clothing fall to the floor, and then the bed shifts again and she can feel him propped up on top of her. One of his hands is on the centre of her back, propping himself up, and the other grabs her hip firmly. She's pinned down hard to his bed, and doesn't have any time to object before he pushes into her.
Ragatha lets out a loud groan. Neither of them can tell if it's pleasure or protest. Neither of them do anything about it. Jax takes a hard but steady pace with her, using his grip on her hip to pull her up to meet his thrusts over and over.
Ragatha's brain is flooded with thoughts, and there are too many for her to rifle through when she's at the level of cohesion that she is. She considers them all like she's skimming the newspaper, and then quickly discards all of them to the side. She's feeling a lot - it hurts, but it feels good. She's having a hard time breathing, with her face in the blanket and all this pressure on her chest, but she burning in her throat is almost welcome. All she can think about is how one thing has been consistent since before she came to find him - she's deeply overstimulated.
A minute or so in, Jax's breathing and groaning has stayed the same, but Ragatha's groans have turned into weak whimpers. Jax moves his hand off of her back and plants it beside her, instead. She turns her head to the side and pants heavily, chasing the air like she's never tasted it before in her life. Her whole body is shivering and shaking, and her brain feels like it's been completely emptied.
Jax is watching her face as she breathes like if he looks away he'll die. He sees her eye unfocused, her face reacting only partially to every movement. He notices the small puddle of drool she'd left on the bed sheet before she'd turned her head to breathe.
His eyes still locked on her, he speeds up, chasing what he needs (and knows she needs, too). When he finds himself almost there, he grunts. He's so lost in his own head that he forgets where he is for a moment, and pulls out of her in a brief panic. He sighs loudly as he cums on the underside of her hiked-up dress. Ragatha gasps, too, and spends all her energy on focusing her eyes. She's at an awkward angle, but she stares at him from where she's laying, eye glossy and distant. He hovers over her for a few seconds, panting to catch his breath, before slowly lifting himself off of her.
Ragatha doesn't move at all as he goes about cleaning himself up, breathing shallowly and trying to come back to her own mind.
Jax returns to the bed a minute later, half-laying down on his side beside her, propped up on one elbow. He wants to make a joke.
He doesn't.
"... You okay?"
Ragatha hums. Processes. Blinks.
She nods.
"Want me to clean you up?"
Ragatha knits her eyebrows, and tries to move to worm a little bit of life back into her body. She opens her mouth to protest, and nothing comes out. She looks lost for a moment, and then her expression fades to frustration. She keeps opening her mouth and trying to push out words, but only being able to get out little breaths or only the first part of a word.
Jax waits for her to try, but she gives up. He thinks for a moment.
"It seems like you want to say no," he looks at her face. "Do you want to say no because..."
He repositions himself.
He holds out his right hand in a fist. "You don't want me to?"
"Or, because..."
He holds out his left hand in a fist. "You don't want to be a burden?"
Ragatha looks at him like he's exposed all of her secrets to everybody she's ever known and ever will know. He worries for a moment, but she slowly reaches one of her hands up and touches his left hand.
He wants to make a joke again. He still doesn't. He just pushes himself up all the way, grabs some of the supplies he'd dumped on the bed, and gets to work stitching her back up. Ragatha dozes for most of it. She's exhausted out of her mind, and doesn't mind actually letting herself rest after... Doing all of that.
He works carefully again. When he's done, he sews her panties on again. He considers not doing that - easy access, and all - but he decides that if this does happen again, he'd like to get to rip them off her fabric like he just did.
Jax notices her half-asleep, and decides to keep quiet. At some point, he wipes her dress clean and pulls it back over her. At some point, he moves her just enough to be able to put one of his pillows under her head and a light sheet over her.
When Ragatha wakes up, she's not sure how much time has passed. Everything feels fuzzy, like when you come to from being half asleep and having those weird micro-dreams. She scans the room. Jax isn't there. She sits up to notice she's sitting on something cold.
She pushes herself out of his bed, looking under where she was sitting... and there's nothing there. Come to think of it - it still feels cold on her ass. She makes a quiet, confused noise, before putting a hand over her skirt to feel her butt. There's definitely something there. She notices Jax has a mirror - so she walks herself up to it, turns around, looks over her shoulder, and hikes up her skirt above her hips.
The first thing she notices is the source of the cold feeling - a metal key is sewn to her rear. Not tightly - just stitched around it in some points - but done well enough that it'll hold it on there unless she takes her ripper to it. But there's something else there, too. It takes her a minute to figure it out, but it's horribly stitched lettering. She struggles to read it the correct way due to the reflection, but after a minute of squinting and stretching her head at an awkward angle, she finally manages to read it. She groans and rolls her eyes.
'In case of emergency: Break A**'