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“Are you sure this is… a good idea?” Gangle fidgets with her ribbons nervously.
Pomni rubs her eyes. She’d still been asleep when Caine summoned them all, and she’s still waking up. “I mean, I think it’ll be fine. It’s just a game, right?”
“Yeah, it’s just a game.” Zooble sits across from Gangle. “If anybody gets weird about it,” they look at Jax, “I’m sure Caine will call it off.”
“What’s the matter, Crybaby?” Jax leans forward, plopping down next to Pomni in the makeshift circle. “Scared you’re gonna end up in there with—”
Zooble huffs. “It would have been a good idea, before—”
Caine appears in a burst of confetti. “Welcome to our NEWEST in-house adventure, Seven Minutes in Heaven! Hold on to your oversized bunny slippers, because we’re going to be SPINNING THAT BOTTLE and hiding in a closet! What could be more fun than sitting in complete silence in a small, dark room?” He wipes a non-existent tear from his eye. “Ah, human games!”
Zooble rolls their eyes. “Caine, nobody asked you to do this.”
“What are you talking about? You did!”
“No, I suggested the idea to Gangle for us to play with Pomni and Ragatha. You decided to turn it into an adventure. Do you even know what people usually do during seven minutes in heaven?”
He tilts his head. “Hide in a closet and have deep, meaningful conversations?”
“Usually, when they’re not in digital hell with toys for bodies, they have sex.”
Caine freezes in place, head tilting further and further to the side until his whole body is wrapped into a contorted spiral. After a moment, he pops back into shape as if nothing happened. “ANYWAY! I’ll spin the bottle, and whoever’s on either side of it will have to sit in This Closet—” he summons a brand-new closet that sits in the middle of the room, “— for seven minutes. When the timer is up, I’ll open the door and you can rejoin the circle! And, as per Zooble’s instructions, there will be no death-defying feats, no crazed bloodthirsty hellhounds, and no surprise Bubble checks!”
Bubble floats up next to him. “Not unless you find the secret stash I hid in the floorboards!”
Caine stops. “The stash of… what, Bubble?”
“Tentacle porn.”
Caine pops him. “NOW! Are you all ready! For! Seven Minutes in Heaven!?” He summons a brightly-colored bottle that floats in the middle of the circle. “Let the game begin!”
The bottle begins to spin around and around, before eventually landing between Kinger and Jax.
Jax leans back, relaxed. His pupils dilate. “Well, Hoo-ha, looks like we’re—”
The bottle suddenly folds sharply in half. “WOWIE, folks, it looks like our first closet-bound couple is JAX AND POMNI!”
Jax’s pupils suddenly shrink to pinpricks. “What?! You can’t just—!”
“Off you go!” A disembodied hand snares Jax and Pomni with a hooked cane, pulling them into the closet before disappearing. The door slams shut behind them, and they can hear the click of a lock. “Your timer starts now!”
Silence fills the small, dark room. Jax mutters, “#*$#!%@ sadist…” under his breath before he shakes his head and leans back against the wall. He shoots Pomni a grin, pupils blown wide. “Guess it’s just you and me, Pom-Pom.”
“Guess so.” Pomni runs her nails through the cracks between the floorboards. “Do you think Bubble really hid tentacle !*#% in here?” Huh, she thinks. Caine must have already censored that one.
Jax laughs, cocky as anything. “That’s what you’re thinking about, Poms? We’re stuck in a dark closet, alone, playing seven minutes in heaven, and you wanna go treasure hunting?” He shakes his head, teasing, “I’m hurt.”
Pomni rolls her eyes. “Shut up.” After a moment, she says, “I wonder why Caine wanted us in here so badly.”
He shrugs. “Who knows what goes on in his head? Eh, at least you’re not the worst person to be stuck in here with.”
“Speak for yourself,” she jokes.
“Hey! I’m #*$%!#@ delightful! With my rugged good looks and masculine charm, everybody’s dying to play seven minutes in heaven with me.”
Pomni raises her eyebrows, thinking about how everyone except for her had groaned when Caine brought Jax out to play with them, but decides not to mention it.
Jax sighs, sinking further against the wall. “So, what? We’re just gonna sit here until the timer goes off? Boooring.”
“I don’t know— I just woke up. It’s too early for this.” She shrugs. “Is there something you want to do?”
“Nah. Hey, maybe we should look for Bubble’s !*#%, since you don’t have any better ideas.” He picks at the floorboards, mostly for show.
Pomni rubs her eyes with a groan. “It’s too early for your $#!%, Jax. What great idea do you have? Since mine’s so bad, apparently.”
He snorts. “You’re really that tired, Poms? It’s almost noon!” With a little head tilt, he says, “You know, the others probably think we’re #*$#!%@ right now.”
Pomni blinks. “What?” She shakes her head, as if she could shake the words into place and make them make sense. “No, what? What are you talking about?”
Jax laughs, pupils growing impossibly larger. “Ha! I’m just kidding around. Learn to take a joke sometime.”
“We don’t even have genitals!”
“Jeez, Pom-Pom, I know. It was a joke— lay off it, would ya?” He huffs.
“Is that your great idea? Something we don’t even have the equipment for?” Pomni narrows her eyes, scrutinizing him.
Jax’s pupils slowly shrink. “Hey, I wasn’t actually—”
She grins, looking every bit like the cat that got the cream. “You really want me that badly?”
He backs up, pupils turning to pinpricks. “I didn’t say anything about—”
Pomni crawls forward, gaze playfully predatory. “We may not be able to have sex, but last I checked, we can still make out.” She stops inches away from Jax. “Final offer, best I can do. What do you say?”
“I— what, you’ve checked?!”
She rolls her eyes. “Figure of speech. So, what do you say?” After a beat of silence, she uncertainly adds, “Uh, if you don’t want to, we can just forget this ever—”
Jax grabs her by the collar and kisses her hard.
Pomni freezes at first, before leaning into it and giving as good as she gets. It’s effortless how she takes control, and it leaves Jax’s head spinning. Once her tongue has just slipped past his lips, she leans back. “Uh-uh, bunny. You’ve gotta use your words.”
Jax stares at her blankly before grabbing for her collar again, trying to pull her into another kiss.
She grabs his wrists and pins them above his head. “Nope, that’s not what I asked.”
“I—!” Jax makes a frustrated, strangled noise. “God, Pomni, yes, just do something—”
She presses against him again in another firm, mind-bending kiss. He lets out an embarrassing whine as she pulls back again. “Tell me if I do something you don’t like, okay?”
“Fine, whatever!” She fixes him with a look that leaves him an equal mixture of scared and turned on with nothing to do about it. “... okay,” he mumbles. “Whatever.”
Pomni leans ever-closer with an evil grin. “Good girl.” Jax’s mind whites out as Pomni takes him— her?— into another kiss. Why the hell did she— he— like that so much?
All thoughts about what Pomni must be doing to his brain are forgotten when one of those clever, evil hands slips down and starts playing with her tail. Jax gasps, eyes fluttering open before slamming back closed. She’s desperately horny, but with nothing to do about it. Is this what it feels like to be Zooble?
Pomni breaks away from the kiss, trailing a series of bites and wet, open-mouthed kisses up his neck. She whispers, “Pretty girl.”
Jax makes a choked noise. “Shut up.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “Does that mean you want me to stop?”
“You know it #*$#!%@ doesn’t!”
Pomni giggles, and Jax thinks he must be going mad. All the blood has left his brain, even though he has no dick for it to rush to. Does he even have blood? He can’t be bothered to think about it any longer as Pomni lightly trails deceptively sharp teeth up one of his ears, drawing out a squeaky sound he’d deny on her deathbed.
Jax is going to die. She’s going to fucking die if Pomni doesn’t kiss her again, so he pulls her up into another bruising kiss. He bites her lip hard enough to draw blood, lapping it up like a starving woman. When Pomni scratches between his ears, he’s the one to pull away, gasping for air. Pomni pulls her into a tight hug, resting her head between Jax’s ears and effectively trapping his head between her tits. Jax can hardly breathe, but she can’t even complain. If she dies like this, what a hell of a way to go.
Suddenly, the door swings open, flooding the room with light and making them both jump. “Time’s up, my little superstars! You can come out now!” Jax shoots Caine a withering glare as he slinks out of the closet, face flushed. Pomni’s not faring much better, ducking her head and adjusting her clothes while she makes her way back to the circle.
Ragatha looks up as they come back. Kinger’s braiding her hair, and Gangle and Zooble are having a whispered conversation. “Have, uh… fun, you two?” She gives them a half-hearted smile.
Jax scoffs as he sits down, suddenly extremely grateful for his lack of dick. “Shut up. Who’s next?” Pomni takes her seat next to him, scooting awkwardly far away from him.
As the game continues and Jax and Pomni make it increasingly obvious that something happened in there, Caine floats above the circle. He surveys the two of them a happy sigh, resting his hands on his hips like a proud father. “I am such a good matchmaker.”