Chapter Text
“I wish you would let me do this more often.”
Jinx made a quiet, grumpy noise in the back of her throat, but she didn’t move.
The window was open, and a stray breeze that carried the scent of machine oil drifted in. It was a smell so prevalent in Piltover that Lux wondered if she would eventually forget it was there, and if she did she wondered if she would start to miss it during the times when she was called to the League or the rare occasions she intended to visit Demacia.
Jinx sat with her back to Lux, sullenly indulging Lux’s whims as she always did, and the breeze caught the edges of Jinx’s hair, which was down and pooled on the comforter of their bed between them, and Lux couldn’t keep the smile off of her face as she slowly worked a comb through the fine, soft strands. It was still cold, but their room was warm enough that Lux could stay in her overlong linen sleeping tunic, at least for the morning.
These slow, lazy mornings with Jinx were one of her favorite things about living in Piltover lately.
“Considering everything that’s happened to you, it’s kind of amazing that your hair is still so soft.” Lux kept her tone as light as she could.
Several nights ago, she’d been woken by Jinx, who had been on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Memories of her past. Memories of Zaun. They’d been ‘too much’, in Jinx’s words. Lux had the feeling that this kind of thing happened more often than she wanted to think about, and following that line of logic, Lux started to grasp why Jinx vanished so often to cause mayhem. She was distracting herself—indulging in destruction the way someone else might try to lose themselves in a good book.
Since then, Lux had tried to be more attentive.
“I like my hair,” Jinx said wearily. “So I take care of it.”
Another strange thing was that, unlike other people, the only thing that seemed to wear Jinx out quickly was not moving. The fact that she let Lux keep her here to play with her hair spoke volumes.
Lux worked her fingers through Jinx’s hair, then followed with the comb, then repeated the process. She’d been at it for almost an hour since they woke up, and today was the first day she’d had the courage to ask if she could comb Jinx’s hair. Of course, Jinx said yes. Lux knew she would. Jinx always said yes to her. That didn’t make it any easier to ask, though.
Still, Lux was glad she had because she was thoroughly enjoying herself.
“Do you have any plans for today?” Lux asked as she ran the comb through another pass.
Jinx had a lot of hair so this was taking some time which Lux was entirely alright with, not the least of which was because Jinx slept naked and had yet to put on any clothes. It’s not as though Lux needed an excuse to see Jinx in the buff, but it was a nice bonus.
For whatever her Zaunite girlfriend believed, Lux really did find Jinx incredibly attractive.
A wide yawn escaped Jinx, and she shrugged.
“Eh, I dunno… I should probably kill my stalker at some point but—”
“—pardon me but, your what?!” Lux froze and cocked her head to the side to look around Jinx’s waterfall of hair to stare at her.
Jinx turned slightly to regard Lux with one eyebrow quirked up.
“You haven’t noticed?” Jinx asked, looking genuinely surprised past her sedentary exhaustion. “The assassin, I mean. They’re not, like…subtle.”
Lux swallowed thickly and lowered the comb. An assassin? Here? Of course, that wasn’t unusual. With the amount of politicking going on in the background of every trade deal, assassins could find plentiful work. But why here?
No, more accurately…
“Why you?” Lux asked hollowly.
Jinx shrugged. “It happens sometimes. I piss off a lotta people, Blondie. They’re not the first killer who’s wanted a piece.”
The notion of that put a cube of ice in Lux’s stomach. It wasn’t that hearing that necessarily surprised Lux. The way Jinx operated, she had to have made a variety of enemies, assuming she left anyone alive and they had their wits about them enough to identify her, which, as prolific as she was, had to happen at least occasionally.
It was the reality of it that hit so hard.
“How…how long have you known?” Lux asked quietly.
A faint look of consternation crossed Jinx’s face. Something Lux had learned was that Jinx wasn’t big on the past. Just the concept of memories beyond basic information seemed to rankle. She existed largely in the moment and with a purpose, and anytime either of those two things changed, it began to strain at her fragile psyche.
“Dunno,” she said finally. “A few weeks? Why? You really didn’t—”
“Weeks?!” Lux snapped, and Jinx jerked back.
“I thought you knew!” Jinx said defensively, shifting out of Lux’s grip so she could turn face to face.
It took every iota of control in Lux’s body not to scream in frustration. “If I’d known, I would have said something! Why didn’t you say anything?!”
“Why does it matter?!” Jinx yelled although she looked scared more than anything. More than angry, more than confused, Jinx looked scared.
Lux worked her jaw open and closed repeatedly as she fished for an answer. It wasn’t that she didn’t have one, per se. It was that she had no idea what kind of answer would make any sense to Jinx. Lux couldn’t fathom why Jinx wouldn’t say anything about a stalker after her blood because it didn’t seem important!
…important…
The thought trickled through Lux’s mind, and on its heels, she found an answer that might sum up what she was feeling in a way Jinx could understand because Lux knew what Jinx thought was important. Blowing out a breath, Lux forced herself to calm down. She realized only belatedly that she’d been yelling at Jinx, something Jinx tended to react poorly to.
Jinx’s eyes were wide. Her fiercely lit, springberry irises burned with apprehension, and Lux realized, too, in that moment, that she had scared Jinx. That stuck an ugly pit of guilt inside of her. Jinx already had trouble believing that Lux would stay with her, no matter how many promises she made. Lux didn’t even blame her for it either. The first time they’d fought, she’d slapped Jinx across the face.
Gods, the guilt from that would never go away, would it?
Licking her lips, Lux forced herself to speak slowly, keeping her pitch even and volume controlled.
“I…It matters,” Lux began, “because I love you, okay?”
Jinx’s face screwed up in confusion at that.
“I love you, too, Blondie, but I don’t—”
Lux laid a thumb over Jinx’s lips, silencing her before she continued. “How would you feel if, one day, you came home, and I was gone?” Jinx scowled, but Lux didn’t let up. “Not gone to Demacia, not gone on a mission, just gone…someone killed me, and dumped my body in a sump—” Lux hated herself for using Jinx’s memories of that moment against her like that, and the pallid shock that crossed Jinx’s features was an almost-physical pain “—and I was just gone.”
Jinx stared, glassy-eyed, with a neutral rictus stretching her features into something not-quite-human. She looked like she was trying to process the notion and failing, but Lux didn’t look away. She couldn’t. She couldn’t afford for Jinx not to understand this. Her throat rolled with a visible, aching swallow as Jinx lifted a shaky hand to her chest, right over her heart, and dug her fingers into the skin under her breast. Her chewed nails bit into the flesh, leaving angry red marks as she scraped at the ribcage like she was trying to claw into herself.
“It hurts…” Jinx muttered.
“I know,” Lux replied, laying one hand over Jinx’s and the other over her own heart. “Mine hurts, too, because I thought about you being gone. About coming home and never seeing you again, okay?”
Another heavy swallow rolls Jinx’s throat.
“B-But I’d come back to you, Blondie,” Jinx said with a wide, brittle smile. “I’ll always come back to you.”
Lux forced herself not to grit her teeth and groan.
“And I’ll always come back to you,” is what she said instead, “but—” she pressed her hand down to rest on Jinx’s, “—does it still hurt? Thinking about me not coming back? About me being gone?”
This time it was Jinx who clenched her jaw, but it was in the way someone would strain while pulling a sliver from deep inside the palm of their hand. It was as much a look of genuine pain as it was stress, and slowly, Jinx lowered her head, and started to shake. “I did the wrong thing again…” she muttered shakily. “I…I did it wrong and—”
“No, no, no,” Lux said softly as she gathered Jinx up in her arms and pulled her close. “No, you didn’t do it wrong, okay? You didn’t break it or blow it up. I promise we’re okay. I’m okay, and you’re okay, and we’re okay, and I love you,” she said the final words in gutlau, in their words, and Jinx nodded.
“I’m sorry, Blondie.” Jinx’s voice was tight and muted. “My brain isn’t uhm…it’s n-not good…it’s uhm…I just…I’m sorry…”
Jinx buried her face against Lux’s shoulder while Lux gently stroked her head down the length of her hair, trailing her fingers over Jinx’s lean back, over the cords of muscle and the ridges of her spine. Jinx was so skinny, and it reminded Lux that neither of them had eaten today. Jinx ate so little in the first place, and now that she knew why she’d tried to keep a better eye on it.
To make sure Jinx stayed fed.
“Your brain is fine,” that was a small lie, but Lux was good at those, “it’s just different, and that’s fine.” Lux leaned her cheek against Jinx’s and sighed softly at the feel of her skin. “I love you just the way you are, and I wouldn’t have you any other way. I know communicating isn’t… I know it’s not your best skill, but that’s why we talk, okay?”
Jinx nodded again, hugging Lux harder as she were afraid that Lux would pull away or vanish. As if she might look up and Lux would just be gone.
“Sorry I keep doing it wrong,” Jinx murmured.
Lux shook her head. “It’s okay, we’re getting better at this.”
“I really thought you knew.”
“I know.”
Certainty was both a virtue and a flaw in Jinx. Her certainty kept her moving with sure-footed speed across even the most treacherous terrain. It kept her from hesitating on the draw. She could pull a blade or a gun fractions of a second faster than anyone, even Lux herself because there wasn’t even a shadow of hesitation.
But that certainty cut both ways. If she thought Lux knew something, it would never even occur to her to bring it up, even to the detriment of their relationship. It was, and had been, a sticking point on smaller occasions, but nothing like this.
Lux tried to work with her on it. Tried to get her to stop and consider things, but largely it was a failing endeavor. Jinx had a variety of virtues, but patience was not among them, except in the strangest contexts. For instance, Jinx seemingly had endless patience for Lux—no matter how many times Lux lost her temper or snapped or how many times she got frustrated, Jinx never once held it against her. In a way, Lux envied that. She wished she had that kind of patience with Jinx’s foibles, but she didn’t. She tried her best, but the simple truth was that patience wasn’t one of Lux’s virtues either, and unlike Jinx, she didn’t even have that odd contextual fallback to excuse herself.
But she kept trying.
Lux sighed quietly and shifted in place to lay back down on the bed, dragging Jinx down with her, and Jinx followed without question. She knew she should get breakfast, and she definitely wanted Jinx to eat something, but she just couldn’t muster the energy anymore. She hated arguing with Jinx. It felt awful and always left her with a sore kind of emptiness in her heart.
So instead, Lux just hugged Jinx tight and nestled in against her, moving down so she could lay her head on Jinx’s chest and let Jinx cradle her and make her feel safe and warm and loved.
And Jinx did.
She always did.
“The assassin…is it about Red-Grin?” Lux asked after a moment.
“Nah,” Jinx replied with that same certainty. “Red-Grin would mean a local, but I lose them too easy for that. Plus, locals aren’t this patient, a Zaunite woulda come at me by now, and a Piltovan would’ve tried to take my head off with a shot.” Lux nodded against Jinx’s chest, more to show she was following along, and she was, which meant she was reaching an unpleasant conclusion as Jinx continued to narrow it down. “They’re patient, and they want blood. Patience means a close-in killer, blood means knives, and that means—”
“—Noxus,” Lux finished wearily. “It’s about the fortress…about my brother.”
“I did kinda blow it up,” Jinx admitted with a tinny cackle.
And she’d apparently bested none other than Katarina Du Couteau to do it, even if it had been by getting the drop on the woman. Jinx hadn’t just bested her either, she’d left the assassin alive. The proud Noxians wouldn’t stand for that kind of humiliation, but it wasn’t just anyone who could bring down the likes of Katarina, so they couldn’t send just any cut-rate throat-cutter.
Lux had an inkling who they might have sent.
Sighing quietly, Lux dragged the covers back over them and curled up against Jinx, pressing a kiss to the long scar on her clavicle as she did before settling in.
“Nap first,” Lux said as she closed her eyes, “then breakfast.”
Jinx had slept fitfully, as she usually did during the rare times she slept longer than an hour, although she slept more lately than she could remember ever sleeping in her life. That wasn’t saying much, of course, Jinx didn’t really remember much of her life. Most of that was wasted space. She remembered bits and pieces—the important stuff—but so many days and weeks and even months had nothing worth remembering.
So she didn’t.
That changed when she met Lux.
The day she met Lux, she remembered with crystal clarity, and she remembered every day after that because she’d spent those days thinking about Lux, and the reason she remembered was because everything about Lux was important.
Thinking about Lux was important, talking to Lux was important, seeing Lux was important. Not seeing Lux was especially important because if she couldn’t see Lux then that meant that she needed to find Lux, and that was just…well, obviously that was really important.
It was close to noon when Jinx woke up, and Lux was still asleep. Her eyes were closed, her breathing was slow and even against Jinx’s skin, and her lips were quirked up in a small, satisfied smile. It was a good expression. Jinx liked it when Lux smiled. Of course, she liked it when Lux did almost anything because everything that Lux did was good and perfect. Because Lux was perfect. When she smiled, it was perfect. Her blue eyes (clear, clean blue eyes) shone whenever she smiled, and she smiled so often at Jinx. That’s how Jinx knew she was doing something right—because Lux would smile at her. When Lux sang, it was perfect, even though she couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket and her voice had a tendency to crack, it made Jinx laugh and smile to hear it.
And when she slept, she was perfect.
But now she needed to wake up. She said she wanted breakfast, and it was almost noon, and you couldn’t have breakfast after noon, because then it would be lunch, and having breakfast for lunch would be silly. Nothing at all like having breakfast for dinner.
Pulling an arm free from beneath the comforter, Jinx laid her hand on Lux’s shoulder with the intent to wake her up. The moment she touched Lux, though, Lux’s smile widened, fractionally but unmistakably, and oddly, that was the moment it struck Jinx more strongly than ever before. Lux liked it when Jinx touched her. Even wrapped in slumber, Lux knew that Jinx was touching her, and she liked it because she was smiling, and if Lux was smiling about something that Jinx had done then that meant Jinx had done something right.
Suddenly, a thought slipped into Jinx’s mind. Something new. Or, not quite new, but different… Jinx looked down at Lux, at her soft, golden features, and felt something stirring in her chest. It was like the hurt from before, and yet it wasn’t. It was hot and boiling in her veins, and the feeling sank down from her chest to her stomach and then lower.
Instinct. Jinx had always been good at following her instincts.
Gently, she pulled away from Lux, who let out a sleepy murr of disapproval at the loss of Jinx’s body heat, but it was only for a moment, only long enough for Jinx to move down and capture Lux’s lips with hers. Enough so that she could free her hands to roam down Lux’s body, down the soft, soft curves and creamy slopes. Over the hills and valleys of muscle in her back and sides and legs until her fingers found that warm, wet place between Lux's thighs.
Lux gasped, and her eyes fluttered open, and suddenly the heat of the kiss was being returned tenfold. Lux moaned softly against Jinx’s mouth as she writhed beneath the sheets and blankets. She clutched at Jinx desperately, shivering and shaking and making small, throaty sounds of approval.
Being gentle wasn’t in Jinx’s nature, but it was easier with Lux than at any other time or with anyone else. It was easier to hold back. Easier to touch lightly. Not too lightly, though. Lux didn't like it when she was too gentle.
“J-Jinx, th-that’s—” Lux gasped into Jinx’s chest as she shuddered around Jinx’s fingers. “Mm…th-that’s good.”
Good. Jinx smiled. Lux said she was doing good. So she called up more memories. Memories of that night. The night after the Lux had made the pillars of light and fire and split the sky open. She remembered the way Lux had softened beneath her, and the things she had liked. The way she liked to be touched. She remembered the little rough places, and how Lux liked it when she ground the heel of her palm in pleasing patterns against her.
Jinx remembered and then copied the motion.
Recollect. Calculate. Replicate.
She had to do it perfectly. No room for error. Like wiring a bomb, but so much better. Jinx had to do it absolutely right because it felt good—because it made Lux feel good—and all Jinx wanted anymore was to be good for Lux.
“Ah! Mm…I-I’m—!” Lux’s whole body went rigid, and more wetness and warmth splashed across Jinx’s fingers before going slack and languid.
Lux was practically purring as she nestled against Jinx, a soft laughing bubbling up from her chest as she took deep breaths and held on tight.
“Mmm…that was, uhm…” Lux laughed again as she drew back to peck a kiss against Jinx’s lips. “I could get used to waking up like that.”
Jinx flashed a broad smile, ear-to-ear, the way Lux always made her smile, and curled up, wrapping her long arms around the smaller, warmer body beside her. Despite not being a creature to whom contentment came easily, Jinx felt content here in a way she couldn’t describe.
Because Lux was here, and she was smiling and happy, and at least for this moment, everything was good.
“Well, now I’m really hungry,” Lux said with another bright laugh.
A reflexive cackle escaped Jinx as she sat up, and Lux grumbled as she followed. A frown crossed Lux’s face for a moment as she looked at Jinx, who raised an eyebrow.
“Jinx…wait.” Lux laid a hand over Jinx’s leg.
Jinx raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”
Lux smiled faintly and shook her head.
“Nothing’s wrong, I just…” Lux trailed off, then moved over until she was straddling Jinx’s thighs and bracing her hands on her shoulders. “Lay back.”
“I thought you were hungry,” Jinx said, even as she let Lux push her back down to the bed.
“I am,” Lux husked softly as she licked her lips, and there was a heat in her eyes as she pulled the blankets over her head and vanished beneath them.
“Wh—Oh!”
Jinx jerked in place as an unfamiliar sensation crashed over her. Lux’s teeth made marks along her inner thighs, biting hard enough to push through her numbness, and Jinx’s eyes rolled back as the overwhelming pleasure of Lux’s soft, warm tongue found new and exciting places to explore. Noises Jinx didn’t recognize were escaping her lips as she reached beneath the blankets to find Lux’s head between her thighs, and she settled her hand on her crown, rolling her hips to silently urge her forward, and Lux responded with enthusiasm.
And vigor.
“More…m-more…harder…” Jinx had slipped into gutlau without thinking as she writhed under Lux’s touch.
Everything was bright. So blindingly bright. Ever since she met Lux, things had been this way. Like an explosion that never stops. Like a star dying in reverse only to repeat the process again and again, going from dark to bright to brighter.
Jinx’s back arched as a new feeling hit her hard and stars burst in her vision. A laugh escaped her by reflex, loud and high, as her legs tightened around Lux’s head. Then it passed, and all the strength went out of her in an instant, and she was heaving hard, deep breaths like she’d just sprinted across Piltover.
She shuddered as she felt Lux take one last long, languid lick before she re-emerged from beneath the blankets with a singularly satisfied smile to drape herself on top of Jinx like a cat, prompting Jinx to wrap her arms around Lux as she slowly came down from her high.
“Wow,” Jinx muttered.
“Good?”
“Mmm…” Jinx buried her face in Lux’s hair and nodded wordlessly. “Mhm.”
“Good.”
Everything that Lux did just reinforced what Jinx already knew was true. Lux was perfect, even if she said she wasn’t. There was nothing in the world that Jinx liked more than the moment when the world was blinded by an explosion, and that’s why she loved Lux so much. When she was with Lux…everything was blinding, all the time.
“Okay, real breakfast now,” Lux murmured as she pushed herself up and smiled down at Jinx. “Then, we go out and find your stalker.”
“And kill’em?” Jinx asked brightly, a buzz of excitement starting up in her limbs.
“Oh no,” Lux replied, shaking her head, and the buzz started to die down, only to increase by an order of magnitude at the way Lux’s smile stretched across her face. “So much worse.”