Chapter Text
“What?” Jax asks for the eighth time. He’s given up on anything Gangle says making sense by now, but still makes his judgment known out of principle.
“I’m not making it up—ask Zooble, they were with me!” Her porcelain cheeks pink slightly—she clearly shared more than she meant to—but she powers on. Jax is the tiniest bit impressed. “W-we’ve been doing research on summoning rituals for a while. Sunday night was when we finally tried it for ourselves, and it worked! It was…magical.” Her eyes sparkle for a moment, and the pure sappiness of it all makes his frown deepen.
He sighs, rubbing the fur between his eyes. “So you and Zooble summoned a freaky sex demon—”
“Succubus,” Gangle corrects, and his ears flatten in irritation.
“—Sorry, summoned a succubus, over the weekend instead of hanging out like a normal couple because…why?” He’ll get to the sheer impossibility of it all in a minute. Jabs first.
Gangle’s still flushed, but throughout Jax’s needling she’s remained weirdly composed. She and Zooble only became official a few months ago, but Mx. Potatohead’s influence is already evident all over her. Jax has pulled back on the mask-shattering pranks too, in response to a simple yet very clear threat from Zooble. He’s forced to acknowledge the very real possibility that Gangle is…coming out of her shell. Weird. Weird, creepy, bad. He doesn't like it.
“Well, like I said, we’d been planning it for a while, but there's a lot that can go wrong with spells like these. Zooble and I spent a long time ironing out any possible bumps in our contract. We made sure the exchange would be as mutually beneficial as possible, for ethical purposes and avoidance of debt.”
Jax snickers. “You sure are knowledgeable about all this. You a witch or somethin’?” He wriggles his fingers mysteriously for effect.
“Yes,” Gangle says flatly.
Oh. Jax’s hands fall to his sides. It’s not like he’d put that freak shit past her, but he still feels blindsided somehow. “Okay, but you don’t, like, actually believe in that stuff, right?”
“I feel like our conversation has made it pretty obvious that I do!” She has the gall to get defensive, like Jax hasn't made a herculean effort of humoring her thus far.
“Not gonna lie, I kinda assumed you were describing your newest fanfic to me or something.” He grins down at her.
Gangle’s mouth forms a wobbly line of frustration, before she abruptly shuts her eyes and breathes in deep a couple of times. When she opens them again, those blank pits are miraculously calm. She smiles. “I’ll text you the info later if you feel like looking, okay? Let me know if you need anything explained.”
Jax scoffs. As if.
***
Jax is back in his own apartment. It’s growing dark outside. The shroud of night thankfully conceals the more embarrassing parts of his room—bug collections, sparkly figurines; nerdy shit left over from past hyperfixations. He doesn't need any more sources of angst right now.
Right, back to the topic at hand. He’s been thinking about his conversation with Gangle ever since he got home, which was…three hours ago now. Jesus.
It’s not that he’s just been sitting in bed and contemplating the whole time, he’s not that much of a loser. He did some chores and checked his mail like a normal, productive person would. It’s just been…on his mind. It’s not every day that a friend—he ignores the mental question mark that accompanies the word every time he applies it to Gangle, not the time—invites you over to infodump about the magical sex monster she and her partner got their rocks off with. He can hardly be blamed for rolling the concept around in his head. Not whatever Gangle and Zooble got into, just the idea of succubi in its entirety.
Jax is a virgin. He’s not super pumped about it. Zooble is the type to explain how virginity is a construct and placing one’s value on their body count is an unhealthy mindset, yap yap yap, but he knows for a fact how experienced they are in that area, so of course they can't relate. He doesn't care that they’ve slept around, it just irks him that they act so above it all. The closest Jax has gotten to sex is a game of seven minutes in heaven at a college party with some girl. He’d trembled like a pathetic turtle for almost the entire time, and when she eventually managed to coax him from his shell, there was hardly any time left to enjoy her lips on his. He tugs one of his ears at the memory, certain he’ll never be able to stop cringing at it.
On a logistical level he knows it’s not uncommon for people his age to not have had sex yet, but it sure feels like everyone around him is doing just dandy in comparison. It’s impossible not to feel like he’s missing out on something big.
So the thought of there being a little spell he can perform that could easily fix such an issue…ridiculous as it is, Jax sees the appeal. Sort of.
He unlocks his phone to skim through the weird, esoteric instructions Gangle texted him earlier. An image stands out. His vision adjusts to the bright light of the screen, revealing a summoning circle framed by unfamiliar symbols, captioned ‘The basic circle Zooble and I used before adding our specifications!’ A series of circles continues inside the main one, forming a hypnotic pattern. Jax finds himself staring, transfixed, before regaining his wits and shaking it off. Some kind of optical illusion, maybe. Those things always make his skin crawl.
His eyes wander back to it anyway. The image has a strange allure to it. A presence, almost. His ears twitch, picking up what sounds like a low, barely perceptible hum. Probably just the AC being weird.
Or, the image seems to whisper through its infinite circles. Or…
He stands up. Fine. Might as well 100% verify that it’s bullshit. That way he gets to rub Gangle’s creepy lie in her face.
***
Jax stares at the shoddy pencil drawing on the floor. The giant poster paper—an ancient school presentation on its other side— is ripped in places from being pressed down on too hard. The circles and symbols are all a bit…wobbly, but they’re recognizable as the same ones from the picture. He worked by lamplight rather than illuminating the entire room. It felt more appropriate. And, like the evidence of his past hobbies, the lack of light made it easier to not think about what he was doing. What he’s still doing, presently.
What’s the next step, again? He opens his text history with Gangle and scrolls to the bottom.
‘To complete the summoning ritual, place one candle in the center circle and light it. IMPORTANT: Make sure you have everything in order first!!!’
Rolling his eyes, Jax halfheartedly checks that his symbols are in the same positions as the ones in the picture. There. Order made sure of.
He grabs the unused candle Ragatha gave him for his birthday last year, pushing back a small surge of guilt; he’s putting it to use now, isn't he? It’s what she would have wanted. Probably.
Carefully, he places the candle in the center circle, the smallest one. His hands are trembling. It must be colder in here than usual. Doesn't matter. As long as they’re steady enough to light a match. A perfect swipe across the matchbox affirms that they are. Good.
Jax crouches over the paper and is suddenly hit with a distinct awareness of the absolute fire hazard in his room right now. Too late to back out. He’ll just do this one last thing and then be free to throw all this shit out. And lord his intellectual victory over Gangle.
The candle absorbs the flame quickly, like a hastily-eaten meal. Jax stands and takes a few steps back, watching the light dance. He drops the lit match in a cup of water on his nightstand, not averting his gaze. His heart beats fast with misplaced anticipation.
A minute or two goes by. His room is beginning to smell increasingly of lavender. Nothing else has changed.
He was right.
The rush of self-satisfaction he’d expected doesn't come, resulting in a disorienting sense of emptiness. He’s confused at his body’s reaction. Of course it was a waste of time. Did he expect anything else?
Whatever. He goes to pick up the candle from the floor—
And reels backward as an impossibly tall column of flame shoots from it, barely avoiding his whiskers. Jax presses himself against the far wall, frozen as the flame grows and grows, somehow not catching his entire room on fire.
Something is forming inside of it. In the center of his room, in the center of the circle, in the center of the flame. If he squints, it almost resembles a person. His hand reflexively goes to his chest, trying to calm his breathing. He wishes he still used inhalers.
The shape is darker than the flames consuming it, a black, amorphous silhouette. It bows its…head? As two long horns emerge from it, then rises to its feet and turns to observe its tail. After a moment of checking itself over, it gives a satisfied little nod, and the flames extinguish.
Standing in the ashes of what was once a summoning circle and a high school presentation on volcanic eruptions is a short woman, whose pinwheel eyes dart over him with curiosity. Her skin is pale. Her arms are folded politely behind her back.
She is also not wearing any clothes.
Jax shuts his eyes immediately, cursing himself for not registering that sooner. He’s starting to think he might actually just be dead. He died in a tragic candle explosion accident and these are the final hallucinations his stupid horny brain has managed to gurgle out before he flatlines. Typical.
“Excuse me.”
What? What now?
“You…alright over there?”
Jax keeps his eyes closed.
“My name is Pomni. I’m the succubus you summoned?” The voice has started to adopt a tinge of exasperation. The surreal comedy of his own pre-brain-death hallucination getting pissed at him grants him the boldness to open his eyes, just enough to stare at a nearby corner.
“Why aren’t you—? Ohh. I should’ve figured.” There’s a strange shift in the air, and then, “You can look now.”
Slowly, cautiously, Jax redirects his gaze to the woman in front of him. She now has a remarkably average outfit on: a black t-shirt, jeans. White socks, too, which are somehow immune to the soot covering the floor. She looks…normal. Even with the horns and tail, he’s seen plenty of people with both out in public, despite the fact that having just one or the other is more common.
Pomni appears to be waiting for him to speak. As they stare at each other in awkward silence, it finally starts to dawn on him that this is real. There is a real sex demon in his room here to cure his virginity and she very well could have burnt his house down but she’s kind of cute. Jax wants to slap himself for that last thought.
Another realization hits him, making his face curl into a grimace.
Gangle is going to be so smug about this.