Caine woke from that horrid nightmare with a gasp, his gloved hands digging into the wood of his desk. His chest rose and fell rapidly with breaths he wasn't capable of taking. A few seconds passed, and he looked around his office with panicked, wide eyes. It wasn’t real. He was back with the rest of his friends in the circus. He wasn’t alone anymore.
His thoughts were brought back to the worst part of the dream. You lying on your side, unconscious. He tried calling out your name, but no sound came out. He crawled towards you until he was by your side. His hands shakily reached out to you to try to wake you up, but your eyes slid open just enough to see that you were looking at him. Caine's eyes softened when he saw you conscious enough to open your eyes. But after a moment, his teeth creased, your eyes were so far away. You weren't looking at him, but past him as though he weren't there at all.
He finally reached his hands out to each of your shoulders and shook them ever so slightly. His eyes scanned your face. Your expression was changing, your brows shifting towards each other in discomfort, and your mouth twisting up into a pained grimace. His hands grew more desperate to try to gain your attention. To try and help you. One hand shifted to the back of your head so that you weren't on the cold ground.
Your breath grew more frantic, hands scratching at the ground. Caine felt useless; no matter how many times he called your name, you didn't respond. Your hands reached up to his chest and pushed him away. He slid back a few feet from the force and looked at you leaning on your side. You had begun to curl into yourself when you suddenly changed. Instead of the comforting person he had come to care about, jagged dark edges replaced you. Dozens of multi colored eyes were littered over your huge form. You swayed back and forth, your elongated legs tripping over themselves. Caine's mouth hung open in shock. He felt the unfamiliar sting of tears blur his vision.
Caine shook his head to clear his mind of the nightmare. The darkness of his office wasn't helping calm his nerves. He thought of you once more, and an idea pushed its way into his mind. Maybe he could go to your room and just check on you, because that's what friends do! No other reason. Definitely.
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers, popping onto the soft surface of your bed. His eyes searched through the darkness of your room until he was sure you were still soundly sleeping on your bed. Caine just stared at your calm figure under your blankets for a few minutes. This wasn't creepy! He was just concerned about a friend! Friends go into each other's rooms to stare at the other sleeping all the time!
He looked down from you to your blanket for a moment. Then stretched his hand over to your light switch next to your door. The light allowed the colors of your room to pop and calm Caine's nerves ever so slightly. His eyes snapped back up to you when he heard you groan and rub your eyes. He stuffed his hands into the hole where he sat criss-cross.
Your eyes opened to the ceiling and let them wander down until you saw the familiar set of dentures sitting on the end of your bed. What was he doing here in what you guessed was the middle of the night? A groan leaves you, and you rub your eyes to help them clear up. Caine looked back up to you from the bed, and you pushed yourself up to lean against your pillows to look at him. "Caine? What're you doing here?" You now just notice he's rocking back and forth. "Is something wrong?"
Caine stops his rocking and speaks, "Don't you worry your sleepy head, my dear friend!" You would recognize that forced tone anywhere, something definitely happened. You force yourself to sober up and pay as much attention to him as you can. His eyes are not as calm as they have been since he came back to the circus, telling by the little lines around his pupils. Before you can analyze him more, he continues talking, his tone the unusual calm you had not gotten used to. "Say you wouldn't be planning to abstract any time in the near future, would you? No specific reason."
What? What could've happened for him to ask that? "Uh, no, I don't think that's anywhere on my calendar. I can check again if you want." You tried lifting the mood, which got a painfully forced laugh from Caine. "That's what I like to hear! Well, uh, I'd better get going, you know how it is! Ahah." He brings his hands up from his lap to shoot finger guns at you, which deflate as quickly as he brought them to life.
Your brows come together, and you narrow your eyes at him. Caine looks at your eyes from under his teeth and jumps from the seriousness in them. He plants one of his hands on his hip and brings the other up, preparing to snap his way out of this situation, when you catch on and call him out. "Wait, Caine. Please." Caine looks as if he's about to lie to you with an excuse when he just deflates instead, looking away from you.
"It's nothing to worry about, really. I'm sorry that I woke you." You don't think you'll ever get used to hearing his calm voice. You take the blanket off yourself and scoot closer to him, sitting across from him. He still doesn’t look at you, despite your one-sided eye contact. "Don't be sorry, Caine. I always like being with you, even if it's in the middle of the night."
Caine looks back up to you, his shoulders drooping and his eyes shimmering in the light of your room. You smile back at him to reassure him. "It's alright, Caine, I know it's hard to talk about stuff that makes you feel bad. Just know that I really care about you, and I don't want you to-" As you spoke, Caine's teeth pushed up and together. He interrupted you. "I… had a nightmare. T-that everyone abstracted, and I was alone. When I woke up, I felt so scared." Caine began to fidget with his gloved hands. "I saw you abstract, and I couldn't do anything to stop it."
So that's what this is about. He wanted to make sure you were okay. You put your hands over his to stop his fidgeting. "Caine, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here, we all are. We're okay." You take his hands in yours. Caine froze up, looking at your joined hands. You waited until his jittery eyes looked back into yours. "Thank you for checking on me. That was sweet of you." He looked away from your warm gaze and shrugged his shoulders. "Of course! I mean its nothing really."
Your gaze falters, and you drop your hands in your lap, releasing Caine's hands. You don't notice how his hands followed yours for a moment before snapping back to his own lap. "Caine, would you like to stay the night?" Caine's teeth widen, and his eyes shrink once more. You continue, "I mean, I know when I'm not feeling good, being around people would always make me feel better." You look back up to him, and your eyes widen from his expression. "Only if you want to! Sorry, that was a stupid suggestion, forget-" Caine reaches out this time and takes your hands back in his, successfully shutting you up. "I'd love to. I've always wanted to have a sleepover with a human!"
You both smile at each other for a moment and squeeze his hands. You've forgotten how pretty his eyes were. You slip your hands out of his slowly and back up to your pillow, making sure to scoot to one side so Caine can have the other. Lifting the blanket, you pat the open side beside you. His shoulders tense up, and he looks to the side before floating over to the empty side and lying stiffly on his back. You get yourself comfortable on your back and look over to Caine with a smile, trying to stifle your laughter. "Caine its okay! Beds are supposed to be relaxed in, I won't bite!"
He shoots a glance at you and back to the ceiling quickly before forcibly relaxing his shoulders. You look up at the top of his teeth and notice he's still wearing his top hat in bed. You sit up once more and reach a hand out towards his hat while looking down at him, "May I?" Caine looked between your hand and face before nodding his teeth. You gingerly take his hat from his head and place it on one of the poles on your headboard, before lying back down.
You let a deep breath, before looking over to Caine to see if he was asleep yet. Instead of sleeping, you saw that he was fidgeting nervously. The small lines around his eyes returning. You frown and turn on your side to face him entirely, letting one of your hands rest beside your pillow. "You want to talk about the nightmare more?" Caine flinched as your voice brought him out of his thoughts. He turned his teeth to you, looking downwards. His eyes softened, though you could tell he was still nervous about something. "No, thank you, it's just, what if I go to sleep and I have that same nightmare?"
You looked away from him as he spoke so you wouldn't make him uncomfortable with your eye contact, deciding to bring your gaze back up to him when you spoke so he knew you were serious. "Then I'd be right here for you, if you needed me." Caine chuckled at that, turning his body towards you. You raised a brow at him as he looked up at you. His gaze was calmer from your reassurance, much to your satisfaction.
"What?" You playfully frowned as you noted the glint in his softened eyes. Caine had brought one of his hands up to lie beside him on the bed. You felt your hand clam up when he literally just rested his hand near yours, but when his pinkie moved to lay over yours, Jesus, it feels like the wind was sucked out of your body. "Just, you're very sweet too, you've always been kind to me. Even when I didn't deserve it." It took you a beat to organize your attention from his touch. Alright, just be cool. Your expression faltered slightly, and you looked away for a moment to think of something to say. "What's important is how far you've come, you should be proud of that."
You don't know how much longer you could handle his giant, soft eyes staring at you. Whoa, wait, forget you, was Caine blushing You let your eyes drift away from his gaze to where his cheeks would be if he had any. And just as you had thought, comical pink lines were radiating a pink glow. You subconsciously move your hand deeper under his. "Did I say something wrong?" His eyes shot down to your hands, and you could swear his blush grew a deeper shade. He shook his head. "I didn't think you had paid that much attention, is all." Now it was your turn to blush, you hoped it wasn't too noticeable. You could only bring yourself to answer with a shrug of your shoulders.
It somehow only dawned on you how close the two had gotten when Caine turned himself to face you. Like really close, yet you couldn't bring yourself to turn back around. You wanted to be this close to him, closer if you were being honest. Jesus, control yourself, dude, holy.
You flop to your side, where your back was to him, and immediately miss the touch of his hand. You turn your head to him. "We should probably try to sleep. If you need me, please wake me up. I probably won't mind." You could see Caine looking at where your hand was, his hand remaining a moment longer before he rolled onto his back. "Of course, thank you for doing this." You smiled at him and let your eyes close as your head rested on your pillow. "It's no problem, really. Goodnight, Caine." Caine shifted his head to the side to look at the back of your head. "Goodnight."
It surprisingly didn't take long for you to fall back asleep after that. You remember tossing a few times, though. One of the times when the lights had been turned off, which you don't remember doing, you subconsciously opened your eyes enough just to check on Caine. You remember smiling as you saw his closed mouth, which must've meant he was asleep. Another time, you could've sworn you felt Caine's arm around your stomach when you were on your back. You didn't care enough to move it.
It was probably a few hours later when your body woke itself up. You were on your side, with your arm resting on something, eh, it's probably just a pillow. You stretch your legs out and pull the pillow closer to you, refusing to open your eyes in a poor attempt to drift back off to sleep. You tried to curl further around your pillow, but frowned when your forehead hit something hard. Did your pillow just move? Alright, what was up with this thing?
You force your eyes to open and see white. Huh? You look up and- oh shit. Your eyes blew open wide, and the pillow you had wrapped around was Caine. You looked down to see that your arm was around his waist, and your damn legs were tangled in his. His own hand held the upper arm that was wrapped around him. It was good that his teeth were still closed because you had practically nuzzled him just moments ago. Okay, if you just move slowly, maybe you won't wake him- Caine's mouth began to slowly open, making his eyes look lidded. You froze as he went through the same process of realization as you did.
His mouth opened wide, and his pupils shrank as he looked down at your arm around him. As you saw him blush once more, you're sure you didn't look any worse. You cleared your throat awkwardly. "Uh, good morning."
I love how they make him pose so much he's so dynamic and fun 😭😭😭 I hope I get to the point where I can draw him as expressive as I want him to look because GAAAH
Note: This is actually just slop bro I can’t. Anyways, I saw the tadc movie a couple of days ago and the rot is eroding my brain. This is short af but I needed to write something about this movie or else I’d explode. Might post my other fics from my ao3 on here but idk. ALSO I can’t remember exact dialogue from the movie so I winged it in some places. Okay I hope the 3 people who read this slop enjoy.
Summary: this basically follows the plot of the last 20 minutes of the movie. If you’ve seen it you’ll know what scenes I’m talking about lol.
Word count: 1.6k
Tags: light angst, canon deaths, fluff, guilt (if you squint), reunions, could be read as romantic or platonic (kinda leaning towards romantic icl), second person pov (I’m so bad at knowing the differences between povs it’s bad).
Things were looking up. Well, as up as things could look, recent events considered. After Jax's abstraction you, Gangle, and Zooble grouped to stay safe while trying to think of ways to safely deal with Jax. Sure, Jax was an asshole, and you always kinda resented him for how he treated Gangle, but you couldn't help how your heart felt heavy seeing his jagged form ram into objects.
You had tried your best to justify Gangle mumbling on about how she couldn't bring herself to cry for Jax. Said that she didn't need to do anything for him, not after how he treated her for who knows how long. She left you with a sad smile.
Before Jax had left everyone looking over their shoulders, you had spent more time with Kinger, especially after Jax called him out at the beginning of all of this. This wasn't his fault, not close to it. It was a mistake. Sure, a huge one on his part, but a mistake nonetheless. Anyone could have messed up in his situation, you know he tried his best. Most of the time you spent with him was learning to conjure things like shapes and flat surfaces. Once you had managed to conjure up a good-sized square, only for it to pathetically glide down to the floor like a piece of paper. The genuine chuckle that you heard from Kinger was worth it.
You thought about Caine. His last moments with everyone were always in the back of your mind, really. His frustrated pleas towards everyone stuck with you. You should've been beyond angry at him for how he tortured your friends, yourself included, but when he had you pinned to the wall alongside everyone else, you felt your heart break. Caine had to have seen your sympathetic expression aimed towards him because he refused to look your way a second time while he gushed to the unwilling circus members.
You wanted to talk about him with Kinger, but you didn't want to rub salt in the wound. You would feel like the scum of the earth if you confessed your sympathies towards the AI and were only to be met with betrayed looks.
When Ragatha pulled you with her to a hallway, alongside with everyone else, you asked what was wrong. She had said something about Pomni going to confront Jax before you were forced to squint your eyes from the sheer blinding white light that made everyone stop in their tracks. You barely had time to recognize Pomnis' figure before you were helping reel her back in with everyone else. She skidded to a halt in front of everyone, her entire body glitching in different places. You offered a hand to her and hoisted her up to her feet. You smiled at Ragatha as she promised Pomni that everyone was in this together.
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Sometimes you'd get distracted by the softer memories you had with the ringmaster. Once you had found two differently colored pieces of small paper in a drawer in one of the halls. It was corny in retrospect, but you thought it would be a nice gesture. You had folded the papers to form a small flower. You had hesitated to call out for Caine at first, but did it before you could talk yourself out of it. He poofed into the air in front of you, lying on his side, cane in hand.
"Yes, my frabjous crab cake!" He had batted his eyes at you. You looked down at the small flower in your hand and offered it to him between two fingers. "Thought you'd like this. I learned to make these when I was younger and didn't see why not." You smiled at him. He had straightened his body from his lying position and stared down at the gift with small pupils. You didn't miss the uncertainty in his body language as he held his hands. As if he were unsure if you were actually giving him something. "You… You made that for me?" The hopeful shimmer in his eyes had cemented the idea in your mind to give him more handmade gifts in the future.
You nodded and ushered the craft towards him once more. He looked at the combined pieces of paper and carefully reached his hand out. His hand wrapped around your own for a moment as he grabbed the flower. When he brought the flower closer to him, he remained silent for a moment, only to take in the gift fully. He slowly looked back up to your eyes in a way that made you fidget in place. For a moment, you had thought that he might not have appreciated the quick gift, though that was shot down as he swung an arm around your shoulder and brought you into a side hug.
"Why, you shouldn't have! I'm simply so excited I could POP! It's not every day a human gifts me something!" You shrug your shoulders humbly at his thanks. "It's no problem, I'm glad you like it."
Oh, what you'd do to see his softened eyes again.
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After a few more days, everyone had pitched in to help make Jax get more comfortable in the towering peaks of the blankets and pillows that made up the purple tent. You were glad Jax was as comfortable as he could be, no matter how much of a jerk he was.
After that, things had fallen into a strange calm. You and the others sat on the couches that made up the common area. Pomni lay on the purple coach, her jester body glitching near constantly. That was until the sounds of the glitches coming from her suddenly cut off with a small 'pop!'. Rightly confused, she looked down at her body and patted her seemingly healed self. You jumped to your feet, feeling your heart clench, and whipped your eyes to search the area.
There was only one person everyone knew who had done that many times before.
From a distance ahead of everyone, you saw him, Caine. He was holding his cane to his chest in a sheepish way, and his eyes were barely visible from behind his teeth. The others also rose to their feet, justifiably just as confused as you were. Because there he was, as if he had been here the whole time. You hadn't realized you had taken a step closer to him. "Caine?" If this were any other meeting with him, you're sure you would have been looked at weirdly by the others for how tenderly you regarded him. Caine's upper set of teeth lifted at the sound of your voice, and when he looked to you, his shoulders relaxed.
Though he quickly shut his teeth and shook his head as though to regain his thoughts. He looked back towards everyone. "Wait, I just need to say this." He spared a glance at you as an apology for changing the subject. "I… I'm sorry. For not listening to all of you, for keeping you under my thumb, for everything. I've had time to think about all my wrongdoings, and I know now that I should never have done that. To any of you. I won't ask you to forgive me." He took time to look at each of you as he spoke. His voice was so uncharacteristically quiet and soft, it took you way off guard.
You glanced at everyone around you and weren't surprised to see everyone in tense postures. Most of their faces were set in hesitant expressions. You heard the unexpected, but familiar sigh of Zooble, and everyone turned their attention to them. "Look, Caine, what you did to me, to everyone, is not something that we'll be able to just forgive." Caine's expression fell, and he closed his teeth. "But that doesn’t mean we can't work our way there eventually." Caine's teeth rose back up, and he looked at Zooble, awed.
Zoobles' words thankfully seemed to take off a good amount of the edge from everyone, physically at least. Caine straightened his posture, trying to resemble the confidence of his old self. "Well, I have a surprise for everyone! When you all are ready, you can meet me at the stage." With that, he floated off towards the stage, his eyes downcast. While the others cast unsure glances at each other, you wasted no time in following him.
You didn't call for his attention immediately, wanting to have a little privacy from the distance from the common area and the stage. When you thought the two of you were far enough, you broke the silence. "Caine?" He could sense you had closely followed him, so the sight of you hadn't surprised him. He glanced at you from over his shoulder before turning his body to face you. The two of you didn't break eye contact as he slowly lowered himself from the air until he was eye level with you. He uttered your name with the same sureness he spoke with a few moments ago.
Your expression softened, and a smile formed on your lips. "I'm glad you're back, Caine. Really." He released the nervous grip he had on his cane. His teeth lifted once more, and his eyes were blown wide.
This might have been too soon for him, but you'd regret not trying. You spread your arms open and look at him with a quirked brow. His gaze lowers to your open arms for a moment, then back to your warm gaze. You playfully tilted your head. "Gonna leave me han- oof!" Caine, wrapping his arms around you and burying his teeth as much as he could into your shoulder, cut your words short. You were taken aback by his quick movements for a moment. Though you quickly wrapped your arms around him in return and pressed your face against the side of his teeth.
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