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Lux watched the sun rise over Piltover from the broad bay window that opened to a perfect view of the eastern sky. A month ago, the space in front of the window had been occupied by her desk—well, it was nominally hers but, in practice, Jinx used it more—but that desk now rested against the wall to the right of their bedroom door.
A few weeks ago, she’d wrangled Jinx into helping her move the couch in front of the window and put a small, low-set table between the two so they could put their feet up and watch the sunrise.
Sunrise had become something of a tradition for them. Jinx slept so seldom and Lux liked to be up with the dawn, so it was an easy change and one that they both enjoyed. It gave them time to spend with one another regardless of how busy the day was slated to become.
Lux had her duties to the Radiant and Jinx had her…activities, but the mornings? Those belonged to the two of them alone. Even in a city numbering tens of thousands, the morning was theirs.
Lux curled up on the couch and leaned her head to the side, resting it on Jinx’s shoulder, and Jinx laid her head atop Lux’s messy crown of gold. Both of them had fine-stranded hair and this early in the morning Jinx never had her hair in her braids, so their separate messy waterfalls of bright blonde and electric blue became tangling rivers.
The mornings were freezing, as usual, and Lux was bundled up in a blanket over her sweater and sleep gown to ward off the chill, while Jinx wore a loose tunic and trousers. She was far more used to the cold air of Piltover than Lux and she probably always would be.
In truth, Lux didn’t mind it. It gave her more of an excuse to cuddle up next to Jinx. As if she needed an excuse. They’d been together long enough that they’d long since dispensed with excuses.
Still, it was nice.
The moment the sun peeked over the horizon and between the spires of the City of Progress, Jinx murmured the words that had started to become so familiar. Words in gutlau, a language that, years ago, she knew she would have looked down on as gutterspeak. Now, though, she had learned to appreciate the beauty in the chaotic tongue. Gutlau had so many wonderful variations, not to mention it made a perfect private cant between herself and Jinx. Not only that but the way Jinx spoke the language was just…really beautiful.
So Lux always treasured that phrase that inevitably followed the sunrise.
“Good morning, Lux.”
Lux smiled and nestled in a little closer. “Good morning, Jinx,” she replied softly around a small yawn before saying in gutlau: “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Jinx murmured back as she slid an arm around Lux’s waist and pulled her a little closer. “Busy day today?”
“M-mm.” Lux shook her head. “Actually, I’ve got nothing to do for once,” she admitted. “Nothing to do at all.”
Lux glanced up at Jinx who was still watching the sunrise with wide eyes. Those eyes were so captivating in the morning and Lux wasn’t entirely sure why that was. Maybe it was the way Jinx stared unblinkingly at the dawn. It was definitely odd. Most people would find it unsettling. In fact, Lux wasn’t entirely sure how she did it without accruing permanent eye damage.
Just one more thing that made Jinx ‘Jinx’, Lux supposed.
One of the many things she liked to think of as endearing rather than simply weird or creepy. By that logic, of course, Jinx had a multitude of ‘endearing’ qualities.
And she did. At least, to Lux she did.
Lux loved the way the dawn sparked off of Jinx’s too-bright, springberry eyes, and the way it banished the shadows from around her rictus-grin smile. Lux always thought that the light of dawn had a curious way of illuminating the very best in a person, and in Jinx she saw boundless, mad creativity cast in stark relief. She saw Jinx’s courage, bravery, and no-holds-barred zeal for living life to the extreme and spitting in the eye of death.
On the heels of that thought, something occurred to Lux. It was a simple thought, but charming for all its simplicity, and coaxed a small chuckle out of Lux that drew Jinx’s eyes down to her for a moment.
“Hey, Jinx?” Lux said as their eyes met.
“What’s up, Blondie?” Jinx asked, still grinning so wide it nearly split her face. “Get bored of the sunrise.”
Lux shook her head. “Never, I’m a morning bird, you know that,” she said with a laugh before pecking a kiss on Jinx’s cheek. “I just realized something about you—or maybe about me? Or us, I guess?”
“Yeah?” Jinx reached up with those long fingers of hers and let them weave through the tangle of their hair. “What’s that? Is it exciting?”
“I dunno,” Lux said as she settled her head into the crook of Jinx’s neck to look back out the window at the rising sun. “It’s just…weird, I guess. I think about you all the time, you know that, right?”
Jinx’s breath hitched for a moment then resumed its usual in-and-out as she settled and slowly nodded. Lux had surprised her, that much was obvious. Lux had learned to translate the odd little changes in Jinx’s expression and breathing during their relationship. Jinx didn’t emote like anyone Lux knew, but she did emote.
There was no lack of emotions in Jinx. She emoted just as much anyone, she just did it differently from most people, that was all.
She was easy to read once Lux got used to it.
“I…think about you a lot too, Blondie,” Jinx said quietly.
“I know,” Lux said with a soft smile. “Did you know that you say my name when you sleep?”
Jinx stiffened slightly at that, then relaxed again as she shook her head. Lux took her hand and threaded their fingers together. The first time Jinx had called out for Lux in her sleep, it had scared the daylights out of Lux. The second time had been less extreme. Now, she was used to it, although this was the first time she’d ever alerted Jinx to the fact that it happened.
When Jinx did sleep, which was rarer than Lux liked, Lux’s name always passed her lips at least once in the night.
It was incredibly charming in its own way.
“I dream about you,” Jinx said quietly. “Every time I close my eyes, I dream about you.”
Lux frowned at the dark tone Jinx’s voice had taken on. That, Lux realized, was actually a better indicator of Jinx’s mood than her expressions. Her tone of voice changed even when her face didn’t. The tonal changes were subtle, but they were always there. From high to low to brittle to strong to thready and a million other variations. It was all the emotions of Jinx.
“Why do you sound sad?” Lux asked.
“Because,” Jinx replied, and her voice actually shook, “in my dreams…you always die.”
Whatever it was Lux had been expecting, that hadn’t been it.
“I—I die?” Lux repeated in confusion, then chuckled weakly and shook her head. “They’re just dreams, though, you know?”
“Maybe,” Jinx said.
For some reason, Lux thought that Jinx didn’t believe it when she said that. There was an infinitely fragile look to her rictus grin. It was brittle in a way that Lux wasn’t sure she’d ever seen it. Not even when Jinx had been standing in front of her after breaking her brother free of a Noxian fortress-prison, asking her if it was enough for Lux to forgive her.
“Can…I ask what happens?”
Lux curled up closer, the sunrise all but forgotten as Jinx turned to look down at her, and Lux felt her heart freeze over.
Jinx wasn’t smiling.
Jinx blinked owlishly for a moment, then her eyes grew distant and—
“There were stars in the last one,” Jinx said hollowly. “Stars going dark, worlds too,” she tipped her head back and stared up at the ceiling, but the look on her face told Lux she was looking far beyond it. “I remember running like mad across the sky, lighting fires, burning everything, lighting up the dark and you’d follow me, putting them out, and…and then eventually, your light went out too.”
“Putting the lights…out?” Lux repeated quietly.
Jinx nodded, and she still wasn’t smiling. This was the longest Lux had ever seen Jinx go without smiling, and it was breaking her heart.
“Is that the way it is every night?” Lux asked.
“No,” Jinx said, shaking her head. “It’s always a different dream, and we always die at the end. I…I always lose you, and I wake up and I find you again, and then I go to sleep and lose you, and then find you, and then I lose you and wake up and—”
“But you always find me, right?” Lux said as she sat up and gripped Jinx’s hand tightly. Their fingers were still twined together, Jinx with her long, scarred digits, and Lux with the smooth, clean hands of a noble’s daughter.
Jinx slowly nodded.
“Yeah, I always find you,” she said, and her smile started to slowly grow as she turned to look back down at Lux. “Just like this time! I found you!”
Lux laughed. “Well, yeah, but this isn’t a dream,” she pointed out.
Her rictus grin was back. Then she shrugged and asked a question that chilled Lux down to the bone.
“What’s the difference?”
It took Lux a moment to parse that question. Jinx had to know the difference between dreams and reality, right? No, maybe that was the wrong question. This was Jinx she was talking about. Dreams, reality, those were just divisions. She needed to calm down, take a breath, and think. This was Jinx. Dreams and Reality didn’t mean the same thing to her that they did to other people.
“I guess…I don’t know,” Lux said quietly, not looking away from Jinx. “Can uhm, can you tell me what you think the difference is?”
Jinx screwed her face up in a look of comical concentration, it would have been endearing if the situation hadn’t been so strange. Jinx scratched her head with her free hand as she hemmed and hawed her way through Lux’s question, then shrugged again and look back at Lux.
“This,” she said, “is the dream that I wake up to! The others are the ones I fall asleep to!”
Lux laughed a little weakly. That was a very ‘Jinx’ answer. Of course, that very much begged a follow-up question.
“What happens when this dream ends?” Lux asked. The question filled her chest with an ache that she hated.
The notion of an ‘end’ pained her so much that it made her heart hurt. She didn’t want to think about her time with Jinx ending. Even if they spent a lifetime together it wouldn’t be enough. No single amount of time with Jinx would ever be enough for her.
“Then…I guess we have a new dream,” Jinx said, then laughed as she turned her head. “And I’ll find you in that one too.”
Lux looked up at Jinx with tears in her eyes.
“Do you promise?” Lux asked shakily. “That you’ll find me, I mean? Do you promise?”
Jinx’s rictus grin softened as she loosened her hand from Lux’s and laid her palm over Lux’s cheek. Her thumb traced the lines of her face, brushing away a stray tear, and Jinx nodded.
“Yeah, Blondie, I promise,” she said firmly. “Every night. Every dream! I’ll find you!”
“Or I’ll find you,” Lux said as she leaned in and met Jinx’s lips.
They were warm and soft, and their tongues met gently as Lux leaned into her lover. Jinx was more than her lover, honestly. She was her everything. Jinx was her missing half. Her better half, in a sense. Before she met Jinx, Lux had never believed in soulmates, but now, being here in Piltover with Jinx, being in her arms and considering the idea that that time would eventually come to an end?
Well, the concept seemed far more plausible, even if it was just wishful thinking.
But if anyone could find her again, even past the veil of time and death, it would be Jinx.
After all, Jinx could do anything.
As they pulled back, Lux was pleased to find that Jinx’s smile had returned, and she brushed a kiss across her grinning lips.
“Hey, Blondie, y’never told me what you realized,” Jinx said suddenly, and Lux had to back-track in her own mind for a moment to realize that Jinx was right.
She’d gotten side-tracked.
“It seems silly now,” Lux said with a laugh.
“Nah! Tell me!” Jinx scrambled around on the couch until she was sitting cross-legged across from Lux and looking for all the world like an excited child. “C’mon! Tell me~!”
Lux absolutely loved this about Jinx. She never failed to make Lux feel like the most important person in the world. Probably because, to Jinx, Lux was the most important person in the world. Just like Jinx was to her.
“Okay, it’s just…” Lux trailed off as she gathered her thoughts, then looked back down to Jinx as she took a deep breath.
In and out.
“I used to be a lot duller than all this,” Lux began softly. “I was just a collection of masks—daughter, champion, operative, along with whatever I had to be at the time during missions or galas, but that’s all it was, that’s all I—” Lux gestured vaguely around herself— “was. Just masks.”
“You were kinda stiff when we first met,” Jinx said with a chuckle.
Lux nodded. “Yeah, I was. And now I’m—I’m happy, Jinx,” she said with a teary smile that was every bit as wide as Jinx’s. “I’m really just…I’m just really happy! Because of you! Because you found me!” She leaned in and laid her hands on either side of Jinx’s face. “You took off my mask and…and I was so scared that there wouldn’t be anything underneath it! But there was! Because you found it!”
She was sobbing. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The tears—there weren’t supposed to be this many tears, but there were. Maybe it was because of what they’d talked about before, or maybe this had all just been buried in her heart to begin with. Whatever the case, it was there and the tears were too.
“You took my mask off, Jinx,” Lux said shakily, “and you found me!”
Tears were slipping down Jinx’s cheeks too as she leaned into Lux’s palms. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then repeated the process a few times as she tried to find her words before finally settling on: “I’ll always find you, Blondie, okay? Because…Because you’re my girl!”
“Yeah!” Lux said with a frantic, fragile nod. “Yeah, I am! And that’s the stupid thing I realized, Jinx! That you’re my hero! Because even if you are crazy, I’m yours! And I know you’ll always find me no matter how many masks I wear!”
They crashed together in a kiss that was as much desperation as it was love. Lux pressed her body against Jinx’s, suddenly frantic to be touching her and to know that they were both real and here and that everything was going to be alright.
She pulled Jinx under the blanket in the same motion that she heaved her sweater over her head, taking her sleeping gown with it. Jinx already had her own shirt off and tossed somewhere onto the floor. It didn’t matter where. They would clean up later. Lux tugged at Jinx’s trousers as she climbed up her lean, whipcord body, feathering kisses along her scarred chest, up along her modest breasts, to her narrow shoulders and neck before finding Jinx’s lips again.
In moments, they were both bared to each other again. Jinx’s trousers were bunched up at the end of the couch, Lux’s clothes were piled at the foot of it, and they were both tangled up with each other as much as they were with the blanket. Hands swept over skin, dragging fingernails and leaving behind faint red lines, and after several minutes Lux wasn’t entirely sure where she ended and Jinx began.
Eventually, though, Jinx’s fingers reminded her as they slipped first between her legs, and then inside of her.
Lux gasped softly as she bucked her hips, breathing in against Jinx’s mouth as she scraped at her chest and then dragged her fingers down to return the affection she was receiving. Jinx was just as wet as she was, and the ragged breath that left her as Lux found her sensitive core was intoxicating against her lips.
“Jinx…Jinx…” Lux murmured the name over and over again, as she pressed her face into the hollow of Jinx’s throat and against the pale column of her neck. “I l-love you…I love you s-so much~!”
Lux shuddered to her climax, spilling across Jinx’s fingers as Jinx muttered out the same words in ragged gutlau.
“I love you~ always…a-always~” Jinx promised as she reached her own peak at Lux’s talented fingers.
Always.
They dozed for hours after that, and, in the end, Lux wasn’t certain how much time had passed. What she did know was that the sun had left the sight of the window by the time she really bothered to look up from where she’d nestled against Jinx.
That was fine.
The sun would keep, and so would Piltover and Zaun and Demacia and Shurima, and even thrice-damned Noxus. Every ragged corner of Runeterra would keep.
For now, Lux just laid her head back down against Jinx’s narrow chest and breathed. The scent of sweat and their lovemaking, and of dust and gunpowder and chaos, filled her nose, and it was good. If this dream lasted forever, then Lux would be happy, even though she knew it wouldn’t.
A girl could dream, though, right?
“Jinx?”
“Mm?” Jinx murred sleepily.
“I don’t want to wake up from this dream.”
Jinx laid a hand over Lux’s head and stroked her hair, and Lux nuzzled against Lux’s neck as a few more stray tears leaked from her eyes.
“Me neither,” Jinx said quietly.
Even though Lux couldn’t see Jinx’s face, she knew she’d stopped smiling again, if only briefly. After a moment, though, Jinx said: “but even after we wake up, I’ll just find you again, remember? Or…you know.”
“Or I’ll find you,” Lux agreed.
Propping herself up on her elbows on Jinx’s chest, Lux wiped her eyes and smiled broadly at Jinx who grinned down at her with that cocky rictus.
“You know that means that we’re gonna be together forever, right?” Lux said happily.
“Yup!” Jinx’s grin widened fractionally. “And you’re easy to find, Blondie! You’re so bright I can’t miss you!”
“Yeah,” Lux said softly as she unfolded her arms and wrapped them around Jinx, then laid her head down and took a long breath. “Because without me there’s no light, right?”
Lux watched as Jinx tucked one arm under her head, and laid the other over Lux’s to thread into her hair, and nodded.
“Right,” Jinx said.
“Say it.” Jinx looked down to meet Lux’s eyes as Lux stared up at her and repeated the quiet request.
“Please?” Lux said softly. “Say it?”
Jinx laughed; an odd shadow of a cackle, and nodded as she relaxed her head back and started to slowly stroke Lux’s head in gentle petting motions.
“That’s my girl.”
A smile stretched across Lux’s face as she let herself be lulled back into a doze. Jinx would still be here when she woke up, and even if she wasn’t, well…she’d promised, right? Jinx had promised, and Jinx always kept her promises.
So even if Jinx wasn’t here when she woke up, Jinx would find her.
Always.